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urs of driving, and Rawson walked into the office of Erickson, Incorporated, with a steady step. Another hour, and his tanned face had gone a trifle pale; his lips were set grimly in a straight line that would not relax under the verdict he felt certain he was about to hear. For an hour he had faced the steely-eyed man across the long table in the Directors Room--faced him and replied to questions from this man and the half-dozen others seated there. Skeptical questions, tricky questions; and now the man was speaking: "Rawson, six months ago you laid your Tonah Basin plans before us--plans to get power from the center of the Earth, to utilize that energy, and to control the power situation in this whole Southwest. It looked like a wild gamble then, but we investigated. It still looks like a gamble." "Yes," said Rawson, "it is a gamble. Did I ever call it anything else?" "The Ehrmann oscillator," the man continued imperturbably, "invented in 1940, two years ago, solves the wireless transmission problem, but the success of your plan depends upon your own invention--upon your straight-line drills that you say will not wander off at a tangent when they get down a few miles. And more than that, it depends upon you. "Even that does not damn the scheme; but, Rawson, there's only one factor we gamble on. No wild plans, no matter how many hundreds of millions they promise: no machines, no matter what they are designed to do, get a dollar of our backing. It's men we back with our money!" Rawson's face was set to show no emotion, but within his mind were insistent, clamoring thoughts: "Why can't he say it and get it over with? I've lost--what a hard-boiled bunch they are!--but he doesn't need to drag out the agony." But--but what was the man saying? "Men, Rawson!" the emotionless voice continued. "And we've checked up on you from the time you took your nourishment out of a bottle; it's you we're backing. That's why we have organized the little company of Thermal Explorations, Limited. That's why we've put a million of hard coin into it. That's why we've put you in charge of operations." He was extending a hand that Dean Rawson had to reach for blindly. "I'd drill through to hell," Dean said and fought to keep his voice steady, "with backing like that!" He allowed his emotion to express itself in a shaky laugh. "Perhaps I will at that," he added: "I'll certainly be heading in the right direction."
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