but you'll have to admit that I
never kicked anybody's teeth out unless they tried to kick mine out
first."

* * * * *

Entwhistle Ordnance Plant covered twenty-odd square miles of more or
less level land. Ninety-nine percent of its area was "Inside the fence."
Most of the buildings within that restricted area, while in reality
enormous, were dwarfed by the vast spaces separating them; for
safety-distances are not small when TNT and tetryl by the ton are
involved. Those structures were built of concrete, steel, glass,
transite, and tile.

"Outside the Fence" was different. This was the Administration Area. Its
buildings were tremendous wooden barracks, relatively close together,
packed with the executive, clerical, and professional personnel
appropriate to an organization employing over twenty thousand men and
women.

Well inside the fence, but a safety-distance short of the One Line--Loading
Line Number One--was a long, low building, quite inadequately named the
Chemical Laboratory. "Inadequately" in that the Chief Chemist, a highly
capable--if more than a little cantankerous--Explosives Engineer, had
already gathered into his Chemical Section most of Development, most
of Engineering, and all of Physics, Weights and Measures, and Weather.

One room of the Chemical Laboratory--in the corner most distant from
Administration--was separated from the rest of the building by a
sixteen-inch wall of concrete and steel extending from foundation to
roof without a door, window, or other opening. This was the laboratory
of the Chemical Engineers, the boys who played with explosives high and
low; any explosion occurring therein could not affect the Chemical
Laboratory proper or its personnel.

Entwhistle's main roads were paved; but in February of 1942, such minor
items as sidewalks existed only on the blue-prints. Entwhistle's soil
contained much clay, and at that time the mud was approximately six
inches deep. Hence, since there were neither inside doors nor sidewalks,
it was only natural that the technologists did not visit at all
frequently the polished-tile cleanliness of the Laboratory. It was also
natural enough for the far larger group to refer to the segregated ones
as exiles and outcasts; and that some witty chemist applied to that
isolated place the name "Siberia."

The name stuck. More, the Engineers seized it and acclaimed it. They
were Siberians, and proud of it, and Siberians t