"I've had enough," Norris said gloomily, refilling their glasses as he spoke. "But as I was saying, that Proxy won't run for a bunch of politicians and their ham-handed operators like he ran for me. He'll know that I'm gone, and he won't be the same. He'll pine." "That's the way it goes, Doug," Kincaid said sadly. "You lose your best friend--I mean, your best Proxy--and I lose my Project, just because we can't furnish enough uranium for power over there." He gestured bitterly toward the distant stacks of New York Power Station that soared like towers of light in the distant darkness. "You know, I've got an idea in my mind about that," Kincaid added slowly, as he stared at those towers. Doug Norris nodded emphatically. "You're dead right, Mart. You're absolutely right." "Now wait, you didn't hear my idea yet," Kincaid protested a little foggily. "It's this--we're losing the Project because we can't furnish enough uranium for power. But suppose they didn't need uranium for power any longer? Then they'd let us keep the Proxy Project!" "Exactly what _I_ say!" Norris declared firmly. "There's just one thing for us to do. That's to find a way to produce atomic power from some commoner substance than uranium. That'd solve our whole problem." "I thought I was the one who said that," Kincaid said, puzzled. "But look--what fairly common metal could be used to replace uranium in the atomic piles?" "Bismuth, of course," Norris replied promptly. "Its atomic number is closest to the radioactive series of elements." "You took the words right out of my mouth!" Kincaid declared. "Bismuth it is. All we have to do is to make bismuth work in an atomic pile, then we can run the Proxy Project without this everlasting nagging about supplying uranium." Doug Norris felt a warm, happy relief. "Why, it's simple! We should have thought of it before! Let's get some bismuth out of the supply room and go over to the Power Station right now!" He leaped to his feet, eagerly, if a trifle unsteadily. "No time to waste, if the Council committee's to be on our necks tomorrow!" Doug Norris felt like singing in his wonderful relief, as he and Kincaid went down through the now deserted Project building to the supply room. In fact, he started to raise his voice in a ribald ballad about a Proxy's adventure with a lady automaton. "You mus' have had a trifle too much Scotch, Doug," Kincaid reproved him, with owlish dignity. "Such levity isn't becoming to two scientists about to make the mos' wonderful invention of the century." They got one of the heavy leaden cylinders used for transport of uranium and filled it carefully with powdered bismuth. Then, in Kincaid's car, they drove happily toward the big Power Station. The guards at the barrier gate knew them both, for it was nothing new for Proxy Project men to bring uranium over to the Station. They let them through, and the car eased along the straight cement road.