entatious notes on a pad.

* * * * *

For about an hour, he poked around the newly assembled apparatus,
checking the wiring, and peering into it. When he returned to the
temporary office, the oral testing was still going on; Koffler was still
on duty as watcher for the union, but the sport had evidently palled on
him, for he was now studying a comic book.

Melroy left the reactor area and returned to the office in the converted
area. During the midafternoon, somebody named Leighton called him from
the Atomic Power Authority executive office, wanting to know what was
the trouble between him and the I.F.A.W. and saying that a protest
against his alleged high-handed and arbitrary conduct had been received
from the union.

Melroy explained, at length. He finished: "You people have twenty Stuart
tanks, and a couple of thousand soldiers and cops and undercover-men,
here, guarding against sabotage. Don't you realize that a workman who
makes stupid or careless or impulsive mistakes is just as dangerous to
the plant as any saboteur? If somebody shoots you through the head, it
doesn't matter whether he planned to murder you for a year or just
didn't know the gun was loaded; you're as dead one way as the other. I
should think you'd thank me for trying to eliminate a serious source of
danger."

"Now, don't misunderstand my position, Mr. Melroy," the other man
hastened to say. "I sympathize with your attitude, entirely. But these
people are going to make trouble."

"If they do, it'll be my trouble. I'm under contract to install this
cybernetic system for you; you aren't responsible for my labor policy,"
Melroy replied. "Oh, have you had much to do with this man Crandall,
yourself?"

"Have I had--!" Leighton sputtered for a moment. "I'm in charge of
personnel, here; that makes me his top-priority target, all the time."

"Well, what sort of a character is he, anyhow? When I contracted with
the I.F.A.W., my lawyer and their lawyer handled everything; I never
even met him."

"Well--He has his job to do, the same as I have," Leighton said. "He
does it conscientiously. But it's like this--anything a workman tells
him is the truth, and anything an employer tells him is a dirty lie.
Until proven differently, of course, but that takes a lot of doing. And
he goes off half-cocked a lot of times. He doesn't stop to analyze
situations very closely."

"That's what I was afraid of. Well, you tell him you