ne was yell for someone to come and
do his thinking and acting for him. He had called Base; he had called de
Hooch; he had called Quillan and Laynard. But he hadn't done anything
else.

Now he had to be handled with kid gloves. If de Hooch didn't act calm,
if he didn't go about things just right, Willows might very likely go
over the line into total panic. As long as he had someone to depend on,
he'd be all right, and de Hooch didn't want to lose the only help he had
right now.

"Fermium 256," said Willows in a tight, flat voice.

"What?" de Hooch asked calmly.

"Fermium 256," Willows repeated. "That's what the stuff is going to
start building towards. Spontaneous fission. Half-life of three hours."
He took a deep breath. "The reactor won't be able to contain it. We
haven't got that kind of bleed-off control."

"No," de Hooch agreed. "I suggest we stop it."

"The freezer control isn't functioning," Willows said. "I guess that's
what they went in there to correct."

"I doubt it," de Hooch said carefully. "They wouldn't have needed suits
for that. They must have had something else bothering them. I'd be
willing to bet they went in to pull a sample and something went wrong."

"Why? What makes you think so?"

"If there'd been trouble, they'd have called for someone to stay here
at the console. Both of them wouldn't have gone in if there was any
trouble."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right." He looked visibly relieved. "What do
you suppose went wrong?"

"Look at your meters. Four of 'em aren't registering."

Willows looked. "I hadn't noticed. I thought they were just registering
low. You're right, though. Yeah. You're right. The surface bleed-off.
Hydrogen loss. Blew a valve, is all. Yeah." He grinned a little.
"Must've been quite a volcano for a second or two."

De Hooch grinned back at him. "Yeah. Must've. Give me a hand with these
clamps."

Willows began fastening the clamps on the heavy suit. "D'you think
Ferguson and Metty are O.K., Guz?" he asked.

De Hooch noticed it was the first time he had used the names of the two
men. Now that there was a chance that they were alive, at least in his
own mind, he was willing to admit that they were men he knew. Willows
didn't want to think that anyone he knew had done such a terrible thing
as die. It hit too close to home.

The man wasn't thinking. He was willing to grasp at anything that
offered him a chance--dream straws. The idea was to keep him busy, keep