hat lets us live a
little decently--and the least _you_ could do is give me warm coffee in
the morning!"

His voice had risen almost to a shout and Sam himself was surprised at
it. Dorothy's eyebrows crept into a bewildered frown, and like one in a
trance she moved to turn on the heat beneath the coffee pot.

Sam's heart was beating swiftly as he sat down. Conditioned responses,
he thought a little wildly. He'd started it off last night by defying
Dorothy--and now, bit by bit, it was becoming easier. All he'd have to
do was keep it up, see that he didn't lapse.

He sipped the coffee slowly, as if tasting his recent triumph in the
black liquid.

"You'd better hurry," Dorothy said, looking at him a little uneasily.

Sam glanced at the wall clock and began gulping the hot liquid. Ten of
eight! He'd have to hurry. He paused suddenly, the cup in mid-air, and
wondered. Hurry to what? To those two wires and the tester and the
endless stream of untested engines flowing toward him?

With an infinite firmness, Sam Meecham placed his cup on the saucer.
"I'm not going in," he said.

Dorothy looked at him as though he were crazy. "What do you mean, you're
not going in?" she demanded. "Just because you've got some mulish notion
in your head, do you think we have to starve? You're going in and liking
it."

"The engine I bought is coming today," he said in a quiet voice. "I want
to install it." In Sam Meecham's eyes there was a deadly fire that even
his wife had not seen before. She gulped and backed away a little.

"But--"

"Call up the foreman," Sam said. "Tell him I'm sick. No, wait." He
paused, smiling coldly. That would leave him an out; he could always go
back to the job if he changed his mind. He said slowly, "Tell him I've
quit."

"_Sam!_"

"Tell him I've quit," Sam insisted. That was the thing. Burn your
bridges behind you so you can't turn back, so the only road is ahead.

Sam Meecham was going to the stars, and he would never return!

The atomic engine came that afternoon, neat and shiny and sleek, with
all the wires in their proper places, checked and double-checked by a
sober human cog in the prison from which Sam Meecham had just escaped.

Sam busied himself in the hangar, lifting out the old engine and
replacing it with the new one. Carefully, he settled it into its housing
and bolted it down. Then he rearranged the wires into the pattern
outlined on the sheet of paper.

Dorothy brought him coffee. T