"Quicker, you mean—not better." Ed Wilkes riffled through the specification booklet. "Lump this for me, huh?"
"Right. But first you tell me something, chum. Why should you, an M.I.T. honor grad—a laddie with more degrees than the Kremlin has Reds—bury yourself down here in the mouldering South, presiding angel over the destiny of an insignificant little college?"
He waved his hand in an encompassing gesture that pointed up the stained lab table, the cracks in the wall and ceiling, the general air of save and make do that characterized the entire campus. "Insignificant and crumbling even when Lincoln was president."
"I like Virginia," Wilkes replied. "I am not buried, I am not presiding angel but just Chair of Higher Math—and this place was new in Lincoln's time. I have no intention of fighting the Civil War with you just now but allow me to say—as a Northerner, mind you—that the South has done pretty good. Now sum up this sheaf of High Brass doubletalk." He tossed the papers back to Major Hall. "First, though, let me call in Mosby."
"Who and why?"
Ed swiveled around and flicked a switch on an office-to-office phone. "Worked with me before the war on the argon-valve gimmick."
"The what?"
"A widget to help stabilize thiotimoline," he obliged with bland level gaze.
"Oh."
Wilkes jiggled the switch again. "Hello, Doc Mosby? Wilkes. Got something that might interest you. Wouldst cross the hall and look in? Swell." He hung up. "You'll like Mosby, Pete. Smart as hell. Awful nice to work with too. We've both got classes this summer."