"The radiation barrier, or at least most of it, is artificially maintained. And there are not more than two generators, and possibly one, maintaining it."
"How do you generate radiation?" Tomar asked.
"I don't know," Clea said. "But somebody has been doing it."
"I don't want to knock your genius, but how come nobody else figured it out?"
"I just guess nobody thought it was a possibility, or thought of gratuitously taking the second derivative, or bothered to look at them before they fed them into the computers. In twenty minutes I can figure out the location for you."
"You do that," he said, "and I'll get the information to whomever it's supposed to get to. You know, this is the first piece of information of import that we've gotten from this whole battery of slide-rule slippers up there. I should have figured it would have probably come from you. Thanks, if we can use it."
She blew him a kiss as his face winked out. Then she got out her notebook again. Then minutes later the visiphone crackled at her. She turned to it and tried to get the operator. The operator was not to be gotten. She reached into her desk and got out a small pocket tool kit and was about to attack the housing of the frequency-filterer when the crackling increased and she heard a voice. She put the screw driver down and put the instrument back on the desk. A face flickered onto the screen and then flickered off. The face had dark hair, seemed perhaps familiar. But it was gone before she was sure she had made it out.
Crossed signals from another line, she figured. Maybe a short in the dialing mechanism. She glanced down at her notebook and took up her pencil when the picture flashed onto the screen again. This time it was clear and there was no static. The familiarity, she did not realize, was the familiarity of her own face on a man.
"Hello," he said. "Hello, Hello, Clea?"
"Who is this?" she asked.