Selected Stories Read Free

accompanied by a blaze of light.
    The room was small and windowless. It contained machinery—a “trickle” charger, a bank of storage batteries, an electric-powered dynamo, two small self-starting gas-driven light plants and a Diesel complete with sealed compressed-air starting cylinders. In the corner was a relay rack with its panel-bolts spot-welded. Protruding from it was a red-top lever. Nothing was labeled.
    They looked at the equipment wordlessly for a time and then Sonny said, “Somebody wanted to make awful sure he had power for something.”
    “Now, I wonder what—” Pete walked over to the relay rack. He looked at the lever without touching it. It was wired up; behind the handle, on the wire, was a folded tag. He opened it cautiously. “To be used only on specific orders of the Commanding Officer.”
    “Give it a yank and see what happens.”
    Something clicked behind them. They whirled. “What was that?”
    “Seemed to come from that rig by the door.”
    They approached it cautiously. There was a spring-loaded solenoid attached to a bar which was hinged to drop across the inside of the secret door, where it would fit into steel gudgeons on the panel.
    It clicked again. “A Geiger,” said Pete disgustedly.
    “Now why,” mused Sonny, “would they design a door to stay locked unless the general radioactivity went beyond a certain point? That’s what it is. See the relays? And the overload switch there? And this?”
    “It has a manual lock, too,” Pete pointed out. The counter clicked again. “Let’s get out of here. I got one of those things built into my head these days.”
    The door opened easily. They went out, closing it behind them. The keyhole was cleverly concealed in the crack between two boards.
    They were silent as they made their way back to the QM labs. The small thrill of violation was gone and, for Pete Mawser at least, the hate was back, that and the shame. A few short weeks before, this base had been a part of the finest country on earth. There was a lot of work here that was secret, and a lot that was such purely progressive and unapplied research that it would be in the way anywhere else but in this quiet wilderness.
    Sweat stood out on his forehead. They hadn’t struck back at their murderers! It was quite well known that there were launching sites all over the country, in secret caches far from any base or murdered city. Why must they sit here waiting to die, only to let the enemy—“enemies” was more like it—take over the continent when it was safe again?
    He smiled grimly. One small consolation. They’d hit too hard: that was a certainty. Probably each of the attackers underestimated what the other would throw. The result—a spreading transmutation of nitrogen into deadly Carbon Fourteen. The effects would not be limited to the continent. What ghastly long-range effect the muted radioactivity would have on the overseas enemies was something that no one alive today could know.
    Back at the furnace, Pete glanced at the temperature dial, then kicked at the latch control. The pilot winked out and then the door swung open. They blinked and started back from the raging heat within, then bent and peered. The razor was gone. A pool of brilliance lay on the floor of the compartment.
    “Ain’t much left. Most of it oxidized away,” Pete grunted.
    They stood together for a time with their faces lit by that small shimmering ruin. Later, as they walked back to the barracks, Sonny broke his long silence with a sigh. “I’m glad we did that, Pete. I’m awful glad we did that.”
    At a quarter to eight they were waiting before the combination console in the barracks. All hands except Pete and Sonny and a wiry-haired, thick-set corporal named Bonze had elected to see the show on the big screen in the mess hall. The reception was better there, of course, but, as Bonze put it, “you don’t get close enough in a big place like that.”
    “I hope she’s the same,” said Sonny,