, and I'll lift it out of your
way."

"With bare hands?" Cutter said.

"With bare hands," Kurt said.

Cutter's laugh boomed, and as he rounded the front of the truck, he
struck the right front fender with his fist. Kurt roared back from the
cab with his own laughter.

He liked joking harshly with Kurt and with the rest of the truck
drivers. They were simple, and they didn't have his mental strength. But
they had another kind of strength. They had muscle and energy, and most
important, they had guts. Twenty years before Cutter had driven a truck
himself. The drivers knew that, and there was a bond between them, the
drivers and himself, that seldom existed between employer and employee.

The guard at the door came to a reflex attention, and Cutter bobbed his
head curtly. Then, instead of taking the stairway that led up the front
to the second floor and his office, he strode down the hallway to the
left, angling through the shop on the first floor. He always walked
through the shop. He liked the heavy driving sound of the machines in
his ears, and the muscled look of the men, in their coarse work shirts
and heavy-soled shoes. Here again was strength, in the machines and in
the men.

[Illustration]

And here again too, the bond between Cutter and his employees was a
thing as real as the whir and grind and thump of the machines, as real
as the spray of metal dust, spitting away from a spinning saw blade. He
was able to drive himself through to them, through the hard wall of
unions and prejudices against business suits and white collars and soft
clean hands, because they knew that at one time he had also been a
machinist and then tool and die operator and then a shop foreman. He got
through to them, and they respected him. They were even inspired by him,
Cutter knew, by his energy and alertness and steel confidence. It was
one good reason why their production continually skimmed along near the
top level of efficiency.

Cutter turned abruptly and started up the metal-lipped concrete steps to
the second floor. He went up quickly, his square, almost chunky figure
moving smoothly, and there was not the faintest shortening in his breath
when he reached the level of his own office.

Coming up the back steps required him to cross the entire administration
office which contained the combined personnel of Production Control,
Procurement, and Purchasing. And here, the sharp edge of elation,
whetted by the walk past the load