"Sure, why not?" Pringle came his half way also. Then, like he wasn't to be outdone in generosity. "Ants first, then termites later." Solemnly the two shook hands. They went back to their work at the bench, and there was an aura of understanding and accord at that end of the room thick enough to be felt. "I hope you insect lovers will be very happy together," the grid expert mumbled to their backs. The rest of us also settled back into our varied jobs and problems. But we worked as if we momentarily expected an earthquake to rock us. Our hands were not quite steady. Our eyes were not firm and piercing. We almost held our breaths. For a wonder, we agreed with the Chief. Two of 'em now. The days passed and nothing more was said. More than ever now, we enforced the taboo on insects. We didn't mention trees, or wood, or even the conditional subjunctive. Would sounded like wood. Wood might bring up the thought of termites. We could see the Chief was weighing the advantages of keeping them against the risks of upsetting the department constantly. As we expected, greed won. We knew he would not risk giving up the prestige and extra bonuses he got for Kenzie's work. And he knew he had to keep those discoveries coming, because our management has a short memory of what a guy has done in the past. The Chief even let Kenzie have Pringle as his own personal tech. It served two purposes. It isolated them from the rest of us. It made Kenzie happy. I will say for the lads, they spent most of their time on Company problems, at first. But gradually, on one corner of Kenzie's bench, a gadget began to take shape. The two of them worked on it when there were no urgent, frantic, must-be-out-today-without-fail problems to be solved first. None of us could figure out the purpose of the mechanism. We knew if we couldn't figure it, the Chief couldn't. But we could practically see him rub his hands in glee when he thought of the extra bonus he might get for this new gadget. Of course the Chief wasn't a complete slouch as an electronics engineer. But it was a long time since he did his study, and he had grown hazy by spending too many years as an administrator. The word got around that for hours at a time, after we had gone home, the Chief would stand at Kenzie's bench. The way we reasoned it, he figured he ought to know something about the gadget when he took it in to Old Rock Jaw, and palmed it off as his latest discovery. We also reasoned that since we couldn't figure it, the Chief must have been an awfully troubled man. Obviously, it had something to do with microwave transmission and reception. There was the usual high-frequency condensor, the magnatron tubes, the tuning cavities. All company stock, of course. But then none of us ever worried about cost. That was the Chief's problem.