Which was nice to hear.
"We've just got to find her," I said earnestly.
He looked at me quizzically. "Bob, my boy, is the old perennial bachelor's veneer cracking?"
I thought that one over. "I guess it is," I admitted. "Now, Al, any suggestions?"
"I'm essentially a computerman," he said. "Give me some data and I might come up with something."
I knew what HOAGS had been intended to do: guide streams of particles in a chainlike pattern through the influence of magnetic fields of alternating direction so that head-on collisions of particles would result. Theoretically this should yield energies as enormous as the satellites reported present in cosmic radiation in space. But what side effects might result from HOAGS' activation was difficult for even computers to conclude.
There were other data: times of vanishment; durations of presence here and at Phoenix; the fact that the parka had gone with Elaine from here to Phoenix but had remained at Phoenix upon her vanishment there—
"She's drawn to an AGS unit upon its activation," Benson said. That was already obvious to me but I didn't say so; Al Benson keeps his computer pretty high up on a throne. He went on, "Your parka came here with Elaine because it had picked up some manner of static charge from her. For some reason it was discharged—degaussed, maybe—while she was here and so it stayed when she—er—didn't."
I had looked at the wall clock as he was talking. "Look, Al," I cried, "cut for now. Hanford AGS should have been activated a few minutes ago. I'm going to call Ted Sosnowski there. Out, boy!"
I rang Hanford, Washington.