"Splendid."

  "It was, yes, until a German group bought control and canned the entire staff."

  "I don't want to hurry this reunion, gentlemen," said Harry with a glance at his chronometer, "but it's growing late and I've a few other matters to look after once I've got Al off my shoulders."

  "Harry, by George, don't always rush me," Yvor protested, jouncing up and down on his toes, moving his elbows, cheerful and bustling as ever. Next, he asked me how many physical checkups I'd had while in Mexico? I said none. Yvor said, "None?" and looked worried. He then asked, let's see, I'd left his hospital about two years ago, wasn't it? And I'd been there at least four months? No, closer to five. By George, hadn't he warned me I might possibly require additional surgical repair work after I'd had a year or so to build up my strength?

  I disliked Yvor's implying, in front of the man hiring me, that I might not be in adequate physical condition. So I protested, I felt O.K. never better. Yvor promptly asked what that limp he'd noticed as I entered?

  By now, Harry had taken Yvor by the elbow. He was easing Yvor step by step toward the door while Yvor questioned me. Before we came to the door, Yvor balked. He stopped and said, "Harry, devil take you, don't shove me," and then very seriously asked me to phone his office nurse at his hospital and ask her for the first two-hour appointment open next week, for a complete physical checkup and X-rays. Would I remember to do that? I said yes, I'd phone his nurse.

  "See here, Yvor," said Harry, "let's don't hold your damn clinic in my office, O.K.?" And he grinned at Yvor to show no ill will was meant.

  Yvor said, "Give me a minute, will you? I haven't seen Albin for two years," and then asked if my chess game had improved while I'd been in Mexico. I said I hadn't played chess since my last game with him in the hospital. Where was I living now? For the present I was camping out in my house in the Los Flores tract ... if he remembered? East of Santa Ana Boulevard on Linden. Yes, of course Yvor remembered.

  If I failed to show up at his hospital, Yvor threatened to drop around at my place some evening with his chessboard. Clapping his. battered felt on his head, he waved a flap of hand at Harry, said, "Off on my rounds, gentlemen-" and went out the door.

  Harry closed the door, said grimly, "That didn't take too many minutes, did it?" and walked across to his desk, stooped, and quickly spoke into the intercom. He asked Mrs. Cunningham to shut off all calls until he finished with Mr. Durango.

  I glanced at my watch. 4:4= 1 = There hadn't been as many minutes lost with Yvor, after all, as I'd thought. I still had easily over an hour remaining in which to catch the 5:59 to Colfax Springs this evening where Laurel had said she'd meet me. Harry switched off the intercom and looked across at me. "All right. What brings you here?"

  = 2 =

  "I'm here," I explained, "because it looks like someone’s trying to steal an extra copy of your Skyjack bid from the Research and Development Building."

  "Impossible!"

  Harry half came up to his feet, took a long breath, and dropped back into the chair. Then he said in a hard voice, "It might not be impossible at that-" and reached to switch on his intercom, telling me, "I want Paul Perugia to hear what you've got to say-"

  He paused. He switched off the intercom. "Too late. Paul was going off early to San Jose. Well, let's have it."

  "First-is there any chance of Paul quitting SMC in the near future?"

  That brought me a blank stare from Harry:

  "What the hell do you mean by such a question? Unless we succeed in getting additional business there's a good possibility of all of us quitting-by request from our Board Chairman. San Jose'll shut this plant down if we don't get out of the red."

  I explained I'd heard talk around, latrine gossip was all. Harry shot me a black frowning look:

  "I brought Paul into SMC Electronics and Aerospace research when we were still futtering around with unprofitable systems engineering crap-trying to sell a so-called problem-solving approach to any industry that'd buy. I've backed Paul to the hilt. Yes-we're having policy conflicts with the San Jose parent corporation. It's no secret. This evening, Paul's seeing our Board Chairman, hoping to obtain another commitment to keep us going a little longer. However, with Paul as our research director we've attracted some of the finest younger brains in the combined aerospace and electronics industries. Moreover, we've come up with an advanced propulsion system for the Skyjack program that can't be beat. I believe we'll win out. So does Paul. Does that answer you?"

  "Could you reduce the five-hundred-page Skyjack proposal by photographic impressions on photomagnetic wire fine enough for a coil of the wire to measure less than, say, twenty or thirty inches?"

  "No," Harry said.

  Then not quite as quickly he said, "At least I don't think so. I wish Paul were here. He'd tell us. Don't forget," Harry added, "we include a cost estimate in our proposal and keep it to as few pages as possible. There's also the summary that reviews the entire program at the end of any detailed proposal."

  "How many pages for only cost estimates and summary of the Skyjack bid, could you say?"

  "Twenty. Perhaps less."

  "Couldn't magnetic photo-wire reduce twenty pages into a small length of wire?"

  "Yes. As I think of it, too, we've been researching thermoplastic material as a possible information-storage method. Thermoplastic comes out like catgut or violin strings. A six-inch length of it would easily hold all the impressions of more than twenty pages of print and diagrams."

  I found I was on my feet as I asked, "Any competitor getting at your cost estimates and summary might cost you your bid at NASA?"

  "God, yes."

  I had a feeling of participating in an extremely dramatic moment for both Harry and myself as I stepped to the desk and in silence placed Laurel's silver dollar on the desk.

  I asked if we could get the dollar either opened or cut in two without other people knowing? Harry picked up the dollar between his big fingers. He studied it. He dropped it, listening to its ring on the wood. Harry then considered me with an expression of enormous power and alertness:

  "It's hollow?"

  "The trouble is-I'm not certain."

  "We'll damn well find out in a hurry."

  Harry cleared through on the intercom to Mrs. Cunningham. He asked her please to get hold of whoever was night foreman in charge of maintenance. Have the foreman send her a cold-steel chisel and mallet in a hurry.

  Immediately I heard Mrs. Cunningham's even voice answer "Yes, sir" through the intercom, no questioning in her voice, no suggestion of surprise; and Harry shot me another black-browed look, flipped off the intercom, and grunted that the only way to have complete and unquestioning efficiency from a confidential secretary was to pay her highly for it.

  While we waited for a foreman to locate a cold-steel chisel and mallet and scurry up with them to Mrs. Cunningham's office, again Harry lifted the silver dollar from his desk.

  He turned it around in his fingers and then said, "Assume there's a coil of photo-wire or "even a photo-plastic cord hidden inside that dollar. Who up in Publications Section gave the dollar to you?"

  "Nobody."

  "What d'you mean, 'nobody'?"

  "When I started work here you asked me to go temporarily up to Pubs Section, presumably as a tech writer, actually as a company spy to act as your eyes and ears-"

  "Now, wait a minute," Harry said in a suddenly solemn deep voice. "Wait a minute, fellow. Nobody asked you to do anything as a company spy. This organization doesn't hire company spies. I thought I explained that to you a month ago when we discussed what I wanted you to do for me up in Publications Section, as somebody I trusted."

  "Harry, whatever you care to call it-"

  "You'd better get straightened out, right. I repeat: we do not employ company spies. However, we have a problem at all times to prevent our know-how-our research developments-everything we're doing here from leaking to competitors. We do employ high-grade security men. And security women. We've as impregnable a security setup as both Paul and I can make. At the same time, I'm aware that most leaks in space and electronics developments usually come either from some research scientist who sells out, or while a proposal is being processed in a Publications Section for final submission.

  "I wanted you up there," Harry said, "not as a company spy but simply to be on hand while our Skyjack proposal was being processed for Washington. As I told you a month ago, a trained newspaperman has almost an intuitive feeling anytime a hot spot develops. Isn't that true? And you've always had a go-to-hell way of getting along with most people and listening to what they say. Furthermore, once you were in Publications there'd always be a bare possibility, let's admit it, that someone might approach you because your reputation is ... well ..."

  Harry boggled on saying it; I helped him:

  "Because everyone who knew me at Stanford probably hasn't forgotten the old Call-Bulletin caught me taking a politician's bribe in an election fight?"

  "I didn't say that, Al. I never implied that. However, to spur your interest I dangled an offer under your nose I knew you'd give your right arm to get. And next month if all goes well you'll have that job, too. You'll be managing-editor of our new promotional quarterly-journal for our shareholders and possible customers, vitally interested in aerospace and electronics developments."

  "There's nothing I want more."

  "If all goes well, as I promised, you'll have it."

  "You don't know how much it will mean to me to get back into an editor's chair again. Harry, I'd give two right arms."

  "I'm not forgetting. But I'm expecting you to cooperate with me at a'time like this. Now-what about this dollar? Don't try to crawfish with me, either. If you didn't get the dollar from someone upstairs in Publications, who gave it to you?"

  I'd prepared myself for Harry's question:

  "When I worked for the old Call-Bulletin I used to road-race in an old M.G. I needed money badly to rebuild its engine. There was a political fight on, in San Francisco. I took a five-hundred-dollar payoff an assemblyman gave me to write a favorable story on him and I placed it in the paper where I was night editor-"

  "That's all old history to me. How does it relate to this situation?"

  "I'm trying to tell you."

  "Cut it short."

  "After the Call-Bulletin fired me, I couldn't get another newspaper job. Fair enough. I earned it. But until I've more facts, I'm not blowing a whistle on someone who out of pure dumbness is mixed up in an attempted theft-"

  "Oh, for God's sake!" Harry heaved up his full six feet and more. "Don't crawfish with me! Who is it? I've twenty-five hundred people Paul and I are fighting to keep employed-"

  The intercom buzzed. Mrs. Cunningham's voice said that the equipment Mr. Weymouth asked for was here. Dropping into his chair, Harry slipped the dollar under his desk blotter and said, "Bring it in, please." She did, placing a package wrapped in burlap on his desk. Would that be all, sir? Yes, thank you.

  Harry got up. He went to the door with her, locking the door after she went out. He returned to his desk while I watched, in silence. After placing a telephone book on his desk he hastily unwrapped a cold-steel chisel and mallet. He removed the silver dollar from under the blotter and put it on top of the telephone book. He struck one blow with the mallet and the chisel cleanly divided the dollar into two solid silver halves. Thunderstruck, I gazed down upon the silver halves.

  No hollow. No coil of photo-wire. No nothing.

  I started to say something to Harry, I don't know what, and heard my own voice trailing out into a wordless sound. All told, it was another highly dramatic moment in my life but this one was not one I cared ever to remember, for it left me feeling as though I'd played the fool with Harry and blown my chance of ever being appointed as the editor of SMC's quarterly journal.

  "Whatever made you think a coil of either photo-wire or microfilm was hidden inside this dollar?" Harry asked furiously. "Why, goddamn it all to hell, Al, some of those writers up in Publications have discovered you're acting for me. You've been given a hotfoot. It's a gag."

  Without replying I picked up the two silver halves, examined them, and then used the mallet and chisel to cut each half into two pie-shaped quarter pieces. Still solid silver, all the way through.

  I heard Harry say sardonically, "Satisfied? Al, my friend, you've been had, badly." And the feeling of being played the fool was replaced by one of anger for getting myself in a hole like this; and then, if only out of a kind of stubbornness or refusal to accept an easy answer, it occurred to me to wonder if there mightn't be another explanation.

  "Harry, suppose it was only a trial run?" Harry threw me a sharp questioning look. "To see how far I'd go?" I explained. "Suppose I'd given the solid dollar to Security with a story about an attempt to steal your bid? What proof would I have? You don't accept it yourself."

  Harry rubbed thoughtfully at his long chin, and gave a sudden short laugh.

  "I apologize. That's possible, yes. Damn it> I don't like this at all-"

  He then pulled a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and once more examined the four pieces, remarking that it was a 1957 dollar, common enough, with no markings he could see. Impatiently he said to give him the whole story. Deliberately leaving out Laurel's name, I ran through everything, from being picked up the third week I had started working at SMC until last night, when I had been paid a thousand dollars as an advance.

  Harry demanded: "Who's the girl?"

  "She wants quick money as once I wanted for quick money when I worked on the Call-Bulletin. Unless I have to, I'm not blowing the whistle on her."

  Harry observed that he could ask Security for a report on where I had been in the R & D building during every minute of the day and then question everyone I'd seen. Didn't I know that?

  "Yes, I said. And since morning I had been in every section on the high-security side, with the exception of the Operations Research wing. He would find me logged in and out of publications, upstairs; and downstairs, in print-shop, photo-lab dispensary, records, and computer.

  “Whose side are you on?"

  "Yours."

  Harry finally laughed. "As long as you don't forget that, all right"

  "Is the girl herself so important if somewhere in R and D there's still hidden a microfilm, or wire, or thermoplastic copy of your Skyjack bid? When were you sending the bid to Washington?'

  "Paul flies out with it Tuesday, providing we can get satisfactory bound copies printed, proofed and fully corrected over the weekend."

  I said that that was going to be close, wasn't it? Harry nodded and got up. For a moment or so he silently gazed out of the one-way window into a rain-swept swimming pool.

  A guard passed along the recreation area. I saw him, but I knew he would be unable to see Harry or myself. To anyone outside, the large one-way window would appear only as a gray reflecting mirror.

  Harry turned, asking suddenly, "You plan to see this girl of yours this evening?"

  I said yes, but she wasn't my girl, nothing like that. He asked if I wouldn't need a whole 1957 dollar. I had thought of that, yes.

  Harry said there might be a 1957 dollar to be found in the secretary's cashbox. Wait a minute. As he stepped out, I glanced again at the time. 5:1= 6 = I was going to have to leave shortly.

  Returning with a whole handful of silver dollars, Harry spread the six or seven on his desk. Among them we found two 1957 dollars. One was too badly worn to compare with the original dollar which we had divided like Gaul into four parts. The other one, however, looked all right, so I pocketed it and was ready to get away. But Harry detained me by saying grimly, "Hold on. We've got to get you back into the security side. First, I’ll write you a pass. I can't even return you to the security side without a pass and having you logged in again."

  "I hadn't thought of that."

  "You'd better," Harry said. "I'm as subject to a security check myself, when either entering or leaving the high-security section, as you are. So's Paul. We all are. And every copy of a presentation or report is numbered on a time sheet, logged in and out from Records. We have tried to make it impossible for our top-secret research to leak out to competitors. Now-it looks like we've missed an opening somewhere."

  Harry handed me the pass. "Now, suppose this girl won't talk and tries to run?"

  "I'll give you her name."

  "Fair enough." He walked with me to the door. "I'll agree to go along this far with you then. Offer her five hundred dollars and my promise to allow her to resign quietly on the condition that she volunteers a full confession with names. Understand?"

  "You don't have to pay her," I said. "I don't ask that-"

  "Offer any reasonable amount of money to make her talk. If a competitor has leaked information on our bid to Washington in the next few days, SMC Electronics could lose the contract. We'd be closed down."

  Harry rested his hand on the doorknob without opening the door. "Good God, I've thought of something else! Giving you a solid silver dollar-a dollar not hollowed out-to return at this evening's rendezvous means there'll be a next step for you, doesn't it?"

  "It looks that way to me."

  "Want me to assign a security guard to tail you?"

  "Not this evening, no. If there's any danger, it won't be on the trial run tonight. ItH be when and if a next step starts."

  "Phone me this evening, as soon as possible."

  "I will. Don't worry-"

  "Hell," Harry said, frowning, "in this business you always worry. Just to make sure, you'd better give me your home phone number."

  I said my phone hadn't been connected yet and Harry said he didn't much like that. Suppose an emergency came up? So I gave him my address. Harry wrote that down in his pocket notebook and then gripped my hand, hard.

  "There is only one thing more," he said. "Once we get this wrapped up, you're going to take over as the editor of what we want to be the finest publication in the whole electronics industry. Understand?"

 

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