"Over," said the general formally.
"Out," whispered Jennings.
The two men looked at him questioningly.
"It seems," he answered their look, "we are to have an observer. Senator O'Noonan."
"Even in Germany," Professor Stein said quietly, "they knew enough to leave us alone at a critical moment."
"He can't do it, Jim," Major Eddy looked at Jennings with pleading eyes.
"Oh, but he can," Jennings answered bitterly. "Orders. And you know what orders are, don't you, Major?"
"Yes, sir," Major Eddy said stiffly.
Professor Stein smiled ruefully.
Both of them turned back to their instrument boards, their radar screens, to the protective obscurity of subordinates carrying out an assignment. They were no longer three men coming close together, almost understanding one another in this moment of waiting, when the world and all in it had been shut away, and nothing real existed except the silvery spire out there on the desert and the life of it in the controls at their fingertips.