_This crystal is the one the enemy was bringing to Merion Laboratory
to replace the one they blew up in the safety-dump yesterday_, he wrote.
"Where are you?"
_I am in some sort of interspace between time quanta. Your guess is
better than mine._
"Who is the enemy?"
Dave wrote it out, and then added the rest of the details.
"What shall I do?"
_Stop them--somehow._
"How can I stop them?" wailed Jane.
_Call President Morgan._ You can do that, he wrote. _Let the President
put a stop to it!_
Jane nodded and went to the telephone. Dave followed. _I'm putting this
crystal in Merion_, he said. _I've been away too long--they will be
getting suspicious._
"Dave," cried Jane, helplessly looking for him. It was hard on Dave,
for he knew what she wanted and was unable to stand where her eyes were
trying to focus. He gave up and watched her eyes look aside and through
him, unable to help her see him as he could see her. "Dave," she cried
plaintively, "come back to me!"
_When I can_, he promised.
Jane waved the pad. "I have that in writing," she said. Her face showed
it to be a hard try at humor.
Dave tapped her gently on the forehead with the crystal, and then it
took off in a long swoop towards the window as he left. He did not
know, but he assumed that a certain amount of time must be permitted
the placers of those crystals since the operator could not open a
door, nor must he permit the crystal to be seen floating through a
busy corridor. How much of this grace period he had left he did not
know, but he wanted the crystal placed under the eye of the television
cameras of the enemy before they became suspicious.
The crystal was a deadly thing under any circumstances, but now it was
like a gallon tin of nitroglycerine; Jane, knowing the facts, would
keep people out of its sphere of death.
Meanwhile, as Dave drove the helicopter towards Merion, the avalanche
of action that he had initiated was rolling higher and higher.
A common, garden-variety citizen of no especial degree of public
acclaim is normally supposed to be able to shake the President by
the hand and/or complain about the weather or the administration,
or taxes, or anything. It has never been determined just what might
happen if Peter Doakes, of South Burlap, Idaho, became possessed of
vital information that must be handed to the President within the
hour. Without a doubt the country would be blown sky-high by the time
Mr. Doakes succeeded in proving to ninety-odd undersecretaries that
he had something truly important and was not a crank or a crackpot.
But Dr. Jane Nolan of Merion Atomic Laboratory had both a name and a
reputation, and when she placed her call to the White House, it took
her exactly twelve minutes to convince the powers that be that she had
something vital to discuss with President Morgan. Four minutes later,
the President had been awakened and was on the telephone. It took
another fifteen minutes for Jane to tell her story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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