in here."

"I probably will. I've been expecting a surprise," Thorn said.

What he got was a _real_ surprise.

There was a small pressure tank of hydrogen inside--one of the little
ones that are sometimes used to fill toy balloons. There was a small
batch of electronic circuitry that looked as though it might be the
insides of an FM-AM radio.

All of the rest of the space was taken up by batteries.

And every single one of the cells was a familiar little cannister.
They were small, rechargeable nickel-cadmium cells, and every one bore
the trademark of North American Carbide & Metals!

One of the other men in the lab said: "What kind of a joke is this?"

"Do you mean, Mr. Sorensen," Thorn asked with controlled precision,
"that your million-dollar process is merely some kind of gimmickry
with our own batteries?"

"No," said Sorensen. "It's--"

"Wait a minute," said one of the others, "is it some kind of hydrogen
fuel cell?"

"In a way," Sorensen said. "Yes, in a way. It isn't as efficient as
I'd like, but it gets its power by converting hydrogen to helium.
I need those batteries to start the thing. After it gets going, these
leads here from the reactor cell keep the batteries charged. The--"

He was interrupted by five different voices all trying to speak at
once. He could hardly--

* * * * *

"... He could hardly get a word in edgewise at first," said Thorn. He
was enjoying the look of shocked amazement on Colonel Dower's face.
"When Sorensen finally did get it explained, we still didn't know
much. But we built another one, and it worked as well as the one he
had. And the contract didn't specifically call for a battery. He had
us good, he did."

"Now wait--" Colonel Dower said. "You mean to say it wasn't a battery
after all?"

"Of course not."

"Then why all the folderol?"

"Colonel," Thorn said, "Sorensen patented that device nine years ago.
It only has eight years to run. But he couldn't get anyone at all to
believe that it would do what he said it would do. After years of
beating his head against a stone wall, years of trying to convince
people who wouldn't even look twice at his gadget, he decided to get
smart.

"He began to realize that 'everybody knew' that hydrogen fusion wasn't
that simple. It was his _theory_ that no one would listen to. As soon
as he told anyone that he had a hydrogen fusion device that could be
started with a handful of batteries and cou