Joe said unhopefully: “I’m sure Sally’d be glad if you came with us.”
Major Holt’s plain, unglamorous assistant shook her head.
“I haven’t had a day off since the work began here,” she said frowning. “The Major depends on me. Nobody else could do what I do! You’re going to Red Canyon Lake?”
“Yes,” agreed Joe. “Sally thought it might be pleasant.”
“It’s terribly dry and arid here,” said Miss Ross sadly. “That’s the only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it’s pretty there. I’ve never seen it.”
She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!
Sally came out, smiled at her father’s secretary, and led Joe down to the entrance.
“I have the car,” she said cheerfully, “and there’ll be a lunch basket waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it’s nice to look at.”
They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She regarded the men swarming on the busses.