Yes, Elaine had been there. Briefly. Sosnowski started to go into a rather ecstatic description of her undeniable charms but since he obviously had no datum to add I cut him off and rang Berkeley, California. The Bevatron had not been activated since the time of the accident at HOAGS; Berkeley had nothing to report. I had George Herrmann bring me the secret files then, and was scanning the list of all synchrotrons in the world, known either through publicity or downright espionage (a few were operating without UN sanction), when the visifone buzzed. It was General Schoener. I briefed him and told him I was about to try visifoning all known AGS installations. "Hold it up," he said. "I want to call the Pentagon. I think I can pull strings and get UNACMEA/WAGS fully activated." "That would do it, General!" I cried. "I didn't think I'd stand a chance if I asked--" "Look, Bob," he cut in. "Elaine's my daughter and I'm not having her flitting around fraternizing with every Tom, Dick and Harry even if they are Ph. D's. She made one mistake and I'm not having her make another." "Mistake?" I asked. "A pilot," he said. "Nice enough guy but it turned out he was already married and intended to remain so. Incidentally, Bob, you resemble him to a considerable degree." "I _do_?" I recalled the data. Elaine had been here for about _three_ minutes but at Phoenix and Hanford only about one minute apiece. Was _I_ a stabilizing influence? No, I reasoned, it couldn't be me. It must be WAGS. It's an odd 40-Bev job. Maybe its magnetic field had a partially polarizing effect upon the anti-nucleonic factor. "Please call the Pentagon, General--and, General, if--I mean _when_--we get Elaine back, would you consider me as a prospective son-in-law?" "You get her back, Bob, and ask her the big question. If she says yes, well, fine! You look okay to me!" "Thanks, General." "Call me Mike," he said. "Out!" * * * * * It's a good thing Mike Schoener's a four-star general; if he'd been a second lieutenant, his daughter would have bounced around the then infinitely sadder earth to the end of her years, pursued by the vagrant day-dreams of a hundred bug-eyed physicists until gobbled benzedrine and tranquilizers took their toll of said dreaming BEP's. As it was, it was afternoon here at Racine when Mike Schoener called back and told me to stand by for the activation of UNACMEA/WAGS. I stood in the console room for half an hour while the monitor screens went on one by one until the five banks of them on the one wall were all aglow. The controller at UNACME in New York gave me the go-sign then and I said shakily, "This is Doctor Robert Mitchell at UNACMEA/WAGS, Wisconsin, U.S.A. A strange phenomenon occurred here at 0822 hours today."