"Oh, her." Alice touched the tip of the iron to the solder filled pin, worked the wire down into position. "What can she do? Pete doesn't give a damn about her." "He's still living with her, isn't he?" Lois said. Alice shrugged.... _What a mealy-mouthed little snip Lois could be, sometimes. You'd think to hear her that she was better than any of them, and luckier too, with her Joe and the kids. What a laugh! Joe was probably the only guy who'd ever looked at her, and she'd hooked him right out of school, and now with three kids in five years and her working nights...._ Alice finished soldering the first row of wires in the plug and started in on the second. So old Liverlips thought she wasted time, did he? Well, she'd show him. She'd get out her sixteen plugs tonight. "Junior kept me up all night last night," Lois said. "He's cutting a tooth." "Yeah," Coralie said, "It's pretty rough at that age. I remember right after Mike was born...." Don't they ever think of anything but their kids? Alice thought. She stopped listening to them. She heard Pete's voice again, husky and sending little chills all through her, and his face came between her and the plug and the white green wire she was soldering. His face, with those blue eyes that went right through a girl and that little scar that quirked up the corner of his mouth.... "Oh, oh," Alice said suddenly. "I've got solder on the outside of the pin." She looked around for the alcohol. Riuku probed. Her thoughts were easy enough to read, but just try to translate them into anything useful.... He probed deeper. The plugs she was soldering. He could get a good picture of them, of the wires, of the harness lacing that Coralie was doing. But it meant nothing. They could be making anything. Radios, monitor units, sound equipment. Only they weren't. They were making a weapon, and this bit of electronic equipment was part of that weapon. What part? What did the 731 plug do? Alice Hendricks didn't know. Alice Hendricks didn't care. The first break. Ten minutes away from work. Alice was walking back along the aisle that separated Assembly from the men's Machine Shop. A chance, perhaps. She was looking at the machines, or rather past them, at the men. "Hello, Tommy. How's the love life?" He's not bad at all. Real cute. Though not like Pete, oh no. The machines. Riuku prodded at her thoughts, wishing he could influence them, wishing that just for a moment he could see, hear, feel, _think_ as she would never think. The machines were--machines. That big funny one where Ned works, and Tommy's spot welder, and over in the corner where the superintendent is--he's a snappy dresser, tie and everything. The corner. Restricted area. Can't go over. High voltage or something.... Her thoughts slid away from the restricted area. Should she go out for lunch or eat off the sandwich machine? And Riuku curled inside her mind and cursed her with his rapidly growing Earthwoman's vocabulary.