,
whether out of regard for his leadership or an instinctive realization
of his pre-raid state of nerves, he did not know. He made her recite
it again, one last time. She spoke in low tones, just above a whisper.
Around them the gathering of dusk had quieted the world. He waited for
it to get a little darker, then he touched her shoulder and clasped it
for a second before beginning his way to the depot.

[Illustration]

He kept close to the bushes as far down as he could and crouched low
over the ground the rest of the way even though he knew it was too
dark for ordinary optics to pick him up. He had an absorber in his
pack that would take care of most of the various radiations and
detectors he would come into contact with, and for the most part,
unless the alarms were being intently watched, he didn't expect to be
noticed on the control board. And you couldn't watch a board like that
day after day with maximum efficiency. Not when the alarms were set
off only by an occasional animal or falling tree limb. Mostly he had
to keep watch for direct contact alarms and traps; he was an
accomplished thief and an experienced burglar. At last he found
himself at the fence surrounding the depot.

In a clump of bushes a few feet from the fence he hid the containers;
it saved him the job of having to bury them, and they would be
deadweight now, anyway. Then he turned his attention on the fence.

He took a small plastic box out of his pack and pressed a panel in its
center with his thumb. Silently, smoothly, two long thin rods shot out
from each end of the box until they were each about a foot long. There
was a groove on the box and Nelson fitted it to the lower strand of
the fence wire. He let go of the gadget and it balanced of its own
accord, its antenna vibrating until they blurred, then ceasing to
vibrate as the gadget balanced. Nelson went down on his back and
pulled on gloves. He grabbed the fence wire and lifted it so that he
could slide under. When he was inside he picked the gadget off the
wire by one antenna and shut it off. The antennae pulled back inside.
Gardner had made this gadget; Gardner had been handy with things like
this. And there would be no other when Nelson lost this. He didn't
want to leave it where it could be found or where he might have to
abandon it to save his neck in an emergency.

He turned to the problem of getting across the open field. He had
little fear of being picked up by radiation detect