When he was thoroughly satisfied that he could learn nothing more from a superficial examination of the machine, he turned to the technicians. "All right, let's go upstairs. Mr. Klythe wants to talk to you."
It was the incident in the hall of the executive offices that decided Lewis Crayley once and for all that he now had not only a motive but a method for murdering Berin Klythe.
As the recording technicians were filing into the briefing room, Berin stepped out of the lift tube and headed toward the door. Several other engineering executives of North American Sub-nucleonics followed him.
Klythe started to walk in through the door of the conference room, and one of the Space Force techs stepped on his toe. It wasn't painful, and it wasn't done on purpose; the tech was quite polite when he said, "Excuse me, sonny."
Klythe said nothing, but his eyes blazed with sudden anger, and his face grew crimson as he tried successfully to suppress it.
Behind his face, Crayley grinned gleefully. He rubbed his nose with a concealing hand.
Inside the room, as they all seated themselves in the chairs, Crayley watched the face of the man who had done the toe-mashing. He was solidly-built, young, good-looking in an ugly sort of way, sensitive and intelligent, as a waldo recorder had to be. When Klythe walked up behind the desk and said: "Good morning, gentlemen: I'm Berin Klythe," the tech's eyes opened a little wider for a fraction of a second, but there was no further reaction. Crayley was satisfied; he turned to watch Klythe.
Klythe was furious, but there was nothing he could do about it. The crimson in his face had died, to be replaced by the faint pallor of anger.
"You may ask me questions later," he said bluntly. "Right now, I'd like to ask you one. Which one of you is co-ordinator here?" One of the men stood. "Your name? Russ? Mr. Russ, may I ask why the Space Force felt that our recording men were not capable of doing this job?"
Russ fumbled uncomfortably. Finally: "Well, sir, this gadget is of—uh—rather radically new design. Since we, as a team, had built the various designs that led up to this one, our superiors felt that we would have a better working knowledge of the piece. They felt it would save time if we made the recording. I'm sure there was no slight intended to your own recording staff."