They worked for hours, clearing away soot and charred material. Joe's list of small parts to be replaced from the home plant was as long as his arm. The motors, of course, had to be scrapped and new ones substituted. Considering their speed--the field strength at operating rate was almost imperceptible--they had to be built new, which would mean round-the-clock work at Kenmore. A messenger came for Joe. The security office wanted him. Major Holt's gloomy secretary did not even glance up as he entered. Major Holt himself looked tired. "There was a man out there," he said curtly. "I think it is your friend Braun. I'll get you to look and identify." Joe had suspected as much. He waited. "He'd opened a container of cobalt powder. It was in a beryllium case. There was half a pound of it. It killed him." "Radioactive cobalt," said Joe. "Definitely," said the Major grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off the radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump the powder into the air. It would diffuse--scatter as it sifted down. It would have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years--let alone killing everybody in it." Joe swallowed. "He was burned, then." "He had the equivalent of two hundred and fifty pounds of radium within inches of his body," the Major said unbendingly, "and naturally it was not healthy. For that matter, the container itself was not adequate protection for him. Once he'd carried it in his pocket for a very few minutes, he was a dead man, even though he was not conscious of the fact." Joe knew what was wanted of him. "You want me to look at him," he said. The Major nodded. "Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likely that he was--ah--carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap. But if he was--ah--you may need some precautionary treatment--you and the men who were with you." Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively small container of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth. Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, were encased in thick lead chests. He'd carried two hundred and fifty grams in a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as he walked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walked near him. "Somebody else may have been burned in any case," said the Major detachedly. "I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check every man in Bootstrap for burns. It is--ah--very likely that the man who delivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this, of course."