He was in hot water, and he knew it, but he wasn't licked yet. * * * * * If only he hadn't tried to play his part so well! If only he'd gone straight to the control room instead of down below! Nothing to do about it now, he told himself. He couldn't waste time wishing he'd done something else; he had to see what could be done next. Two hours later, the big jet job carrying the special Executive inquiry board landed on the roof of North American Sub-nucleonics. Crayley himself had to do all the honors. As Acting Director, he had to play host to the men who were--although they did not know it yet--investigating the murder of Berin Klythe. That was the way Crayley thought of it. The fact that four other men had died with Klythe was immaterial; it meant nothing in the final analysis. Crayley decided that his best bet was to mislead them. When they saw the extra operation at the end of the tape, he'd do his best to make them think it was a case of sabotage. Someone--probably South Asian Generators, Unltd.--had sent a man in to wreck the unit. Or perhaps bribed one of the technicians. South Asian was perennially trying to get the Space Force contract. They used the model for the investigation run. The technicians tore it down and placed it on the table. Crayley tried to get to the control panel to run the tape through, hoping he could jab the erase button as soon as the tape was through and the model built, but Fenwick Greene was there ahead of him. They switched the secondary control over to the experimental room. Half of the inquiry board went there to watch the process first-hand, while the other half watched it from the screens in the control room. They had cameras watching it from every angle this time; they didn't miss a thing. Greene started the tape and watched closely, his eyes darting from screen to screen as the generator dummy took shape. Greene's eyes missed nothing. There was actually no necessity for the dummy to be there, as far as he was concerned; he could read the motions of a set of secondaries as accurately as an average man could read a page of print. What appeared to be meaningless wavings in empty air were deft, purposeful action to Fenwick Greene. Mentally, he could see every component as the fingers grasped it. But the inquiry board could work better with a model actually on the board. Finally it was over. The secondaries fell to the ready position. Crayley had five minutes to get to that erase button. Fenwick Greene didn't move from the control panel. "Gentlemen," he said, "that was a beautiful job. I don't think that even I could improve on it much. In my opinion, there is no reason why that unit should have blown." He paused, looking at one of the designers. "Unless, of course, there is something amiss in the theory or design. That, naturally, is out of my province." There was discussion back and forth among the men.