recriminations later if Livermore had overstepped himself. She put her massive purse in the bottom drawer of her desk and went to the elevator.

  There was no one in sight on the laboratory floor, nor in the office when she went in. A motion caught her eye, and she turned to look at the door that led into the bottle rooms; it was closed now—yet she had the feeling that it had moved a moment before. Perhaps Livermore had gone through and was waiting for her. As she started forward there was the sharp sound of breaking glass from behind the door, again and again. At the same instant an alarm bell began ringing loudly in the distance. She gasped and stood frozen an instant at the suddenness of it. Someone was in there, breaking the apparatus. The bottles! Running heavily, she threw the door open and rushed inside.

  Glass littered the floor; fluids still dripped from the shattered bottles. There was no one there. She looked about her, stunned by the destruction and the suddenness, shocked by the abrupt termination of these carefully plotted lives. The almost invisible masses of cells that were to be the next generation were dying, even while she stood there gaping. And there was nothing she could do about it. It was horrifying, and she could not move. Shards of glass were at her feet and in the midst of the glass and the widening pool of liquid was a hammer. The killer’s weapon? She bent down and picked the hammer up and when she stood upright again someone spoke behind her.

  “Turn about slowly. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  Catherine Ruffin was out of her depth, floundering. Everything was happening too fast, and she could not grasp the reality of it.

  “What?” she said. “What?” Turning to look at the stranger in the doorway behind her, who held what appeared to be a revolver.

  “Put that hammer down slowly,” he said.

  “Who are you?” The hammer clattered on the floor.

  “I’ll ask the same thing of you. I am Blalock, FBI. My identification is here.” He held out his badge.

  “Catherine Ruffin. I was sent for. By Dr. Livermore. What does this mean?”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Of course. This note, read it for yourself.”

  He pinched it between the tips of his fingers and looked at it briefly before dropping it into an envelope and putting it into his pocket. His gun had vanished.

  “Anyone could have typed that,” he said. “You could have typed it yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was on my desk when I came to work a short while ago. I read it, came here, heard the sound of glass being broken, entered. Saw this hammer and picked it up. Nothing else.”

  Blalock looked at her closely for a long instant, then nodded and waved her after him to the outer office. “Perhaps. We will check that out later. For the moment you will sit here quietly while I make some calls.”

  He had a list of numbers, and the first one he dialed rang a long time before it was answered. Leatha Crabb’s sleep-puffed face finally appeared on the screen.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her eyes widening when she saw who the caller was.

  “Your husband. I wish to talk to him.”

  “He’s—he’s asleep.” She looked about uneasily, and Blalock did not miss the hesitation in her voice.

  “Is he? Then wake him and bring him to the phone.”

  “Why? Just tell me why?”

  “Then I will be there at once. Would that embarrass you, Mrs. Crabb? Will you either wake your husband—or tell me the truth?”

  She lowered her eyes and spoke in a small voice.

  “He’s not here. He hasn’t been here all night.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No. And I don’t care. We had a difference of opinion, and he stamped out. And that is all I wish to tell you.” The screen went dark. Blalock instantly dialed another number. This time there was no answer. He turned to Catherine Ruffin, who sat, still dazed by the rapid passage of events.

  “I want you to take me to Dr. Livermore’s office.”

  Still not sure what had happened, she did exactly as he asked. The door was unlocked. Blalock pushed by her and looked in. The pale early sunlight streamed in through the glass walls. The office was empty. Blalock sniffed at the air, as though searching out a clue, then pointed to the door in the right-hand wall.

  “Where does this lead?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Stay here.”

  Catherine Ruffin disliked his tone, but before she could tell him so, he was across the room and standing to one side as he carefully opened the door. Livermore lay asleep on the couch inside, with a thin blanket pulled over him and clutched to his neck by one hand. Blalock went in silently and took him by the wrist, his forefinger inside below the base of the thumb. Livermore opened his eyes at the touch, blinked, and pulled his hand away.

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Taking your pulse. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I certainly do.” He sat up and threw the blanket aside. “I’m the doctor here, and I do the pulse-taking. I asked you what you meant by breaking in like this?”

  “There has been more sabotage in the bottle room. I had alarms rigged. I found this woman there with a hammer.”

  “Catherine! Why would you do a foolish thing like that?”

  “How dare you! You sent a note, I received it, asking me to go there, to trap me—perhaps you broke those bottles!”

  Livermore yawned and rubbed at his eyes, then bent and groped under the couch for his shoes.

  “That’s what Dick Tracy here thinks.” He grunted as he pulled a shoe on. “Finds me sleeping here, doesn’t believe that, tries to take my pulse and see if I’ve been running around with that hammer, faster pulse than a sleeping pulse. Idiot!” He snapped the last word and rose to his feet.

  “I am in charge of this project, it’s my project. Before you accuse me of sabotaging it, you had better find a better reason than baseless suspicion. Find out who typed that fool note, and maybe you will have a lead.”

  “I fully intend to,” Blalock said, and the phone rang.

  “For you,” Livermore said, and passed it to the FBI man, who listened silently, then issued a sharp command.

  “Bring him here.”

  Before she left, Catherine Ruffin made a sworn statement, and it was recorded on Livermore’s office machine. Then Livermore did the same thing. Yes, he had not been in his apartment. He had worked late in his office, and as he did many times, he had slept on the couch in the adjoining room. He had gone to sleep around 0300 hours and had neither seen nor heard anything since that time, not until Blalock had wakened him. Yes, it was possible to get from the bottle room by way of the rear door, and through the business office to this office, but he had not done that. He was just finishing the statement when a stranger, with the same dour expression and conservative cut of clothes as Blalock, brought Gust Crabb in. Blalock dismissed the man and turned the full power of his attention on Gust.

  “You were not in your apartment all night. Where were you?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Your attitude is not appreciated. Your whereabouts are unknown—up to a few minutes ago when you arrived at your office. During the time in question someone broke into the bottle room and sabotaged this project with a hammer. I ask you again. Where were you?”

  Gust, who was a simple man in all except his work, now enacted a pantomime of worry, guilt, and unhappiness complete with averted eyes and a fine beading of sweat on his forehead. Livermore felt sorry for him and turned away and harrumphed and found his tie and busied himself knotting it.

  “Talk,” Blalock said loudly, using all the pressure he could to increase the other’s discomfort.

  “It’s not what you think,” Gust said in a hollow voice.

  “Give me a complete statement or I’ll arrest you now for willful sabotage of a government project.”

  The silence lengthened uncomfortably. It was Livermore who broke it.

  “For God’s sake, Gust, tell him. You couldn’t have done a thing like this. What is it—a girl?” He snorted through his nose at the sudden flushing of Gust’s face. “It is. Spill it out, it won’t go beyond this room. The government doesn’t care about your sex life, and I’m well past the age where these things have much importance.”

  “No one’s business,” Gust muttered.

  “Crime is the government’s business—” Blalock said but was cut off by Livermore.

  “But love affairs aren’t, so will you shut up? Tell him the truth, Gust, tell him or you’ll be in trouble. It was a girl?”

  “Yes,” Gust said most reluctantly, staring down at the floor.

  “Good. You stayed the night with her. A few details would be appreciated, and then you will no longer be a suspect.”

  Under painful prodding Gust managed to mumble these details. The girl was a secretary with the engineering commission; he had known her a long time. She liked him, but he stayed away from her until last night, a fight with Leatha, he had stamped out, found himself at Georgette’s door—you won’t tell anyone?—and she took him in, one thing led to another. There it was.

  “There it is,” Livermore said. “Do your work, Blalock, Gust will be here with me if you want him. Find the girl, get her story, then leave us alone. Investigate the mysterious note, take fingerprints from the hammer, and do whatever you do in this kind of thing. But leave us be. Unless you have some evidence and want to arrest me, get out of my office.”

  When they were alone, Livermore made some coffee in his anteroom and brought a cup to Gust. Who stood looking out at the hillside now shaded by clouds and curtained with rain.

  “You think I’m a fool,” Gust said.

  “Not at all. I think there’s trouble between you and Leatha and that you’re making it worse instead of better.”

  “But what can I do!”

  Livermore ignored the note of pleading in the man’s voice and stirred his coffee to cool it. “You know what to do without bothering me. It’s your problem. You’re an adult. Solve it. With your wife or family counseling or whatever. Right now I have something slightly more important to think about with this sabotage and the FBI and the rest of it.”

  Gust sat up straighter and almost smiled. “You’re right. My problem isn’t that world-shaking and I’ll take care of it. Do you realize that you and I and Leatha seem to be the FBI’s prime suspects? He must have called the apartment if he knew I wasn’t there. And he followed us to the restaurant last night. Why us?”

  “Propinquity, I imagine. We and the technicians are the only ones who go in and out of the bottle rooms at will. And one of the technicians is a plant, he told us that, so they are being watched from their own ranks. Which leaves us.”

  “I don’t understand it at all. Why should anyone want to sabotage the bottles?”

  Livermore nodded slowly.

  “That’s the question that Blalock should be asking. Until he finds out the why of this business he’s never going to find who is doing it.”

  * * *

  Leatha came silently into the office and said nothing as she closed the door behind her. Gust looked up from the papers on his desk, surprised; she had never been in his office before.

  “Why did you do it, why?” she said in a hoarse voice, her face drawn, ugly with the strain of her emotions. He was stunned into silence.

  “Don’t think I don’t know—that Blalock came to see me and told me everything. Where you were last night, about her, so don’t try to deny it. He wasn’t lying, I could tell.”

  Gust was tired and not up to playing a role in a bitter exchange. “Why would he tell you these things?” he asked.

  “Why? That’s fairly obvious. He doesn’t care about you or me, just his job. He suspects me, I could tell that, thinks I could sabotage the bottles. He wanted me to lose my temper, and I did, not that it did any good. Now answer me—pig— why did you do it? That’s all I want to know, why?”

  Gust looked at his fists clenched on the desk before him. “I wanted to, I suppose.”

  “You wanted to!” Leatha shrieked the words. “That’s the kind of man you are, you wanted to, so you just went there. I suppose I don’t have to bother asking you what happened— my imagination is good enough for that.”

  “Lea, this isn’t the time or place to talk about this—”

  “Oh, isn’t it? It doesn’t take any special place for me to tell you what I think of you, you … traitor!”

  His fixed and silent face only angered her more, beyond words. On the table close by was a cutaway model of New Town, prepared when it was still in the design stage. She seized it in both hands, raised it over her head, and hurled it at him. But it was too light, and it spun end over end in the air, striking him harmlessly on the arm and falling to the floor where it broke, shedding small chunks of plastic.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Gust said, bending to retrieve the model. “Here you’ve broken it and it costs money. I’m responsible for it.”

  The only response was a slam, and he looked up to see that Leatha was gone.

  Anger filled her, stronger than anything she had ever experienced before in her life. Her chest hurt and she had trouble breathing. How could he have done this to her? She walked fast, until she had to gasp for breath, through the corridors of New Town. Aimlessly, she thought, until she looked at the entrance to the nearby offices and realized that she had had a goal all the time. centengcom, the sign read, an unattractive acronym for the Central Engineering Commission. Could she enter here, and if she did, what could she say? A man came out and held the door for her; she couldn’t begin to explain why she was standing there so she went in. There was a floor plan on the facing wall, and she pressed the button labeled secretarial pool, then turned in the indicated direction.

  It really proved quite easy to do. A number of girls worked in the large room surrounded by the hum of office machines and typers. People were going in and out, and she stood for a minute until a young man carrying a sheaf of papers emerged. He stopped when she spoke to him.

  “Could you help me? I’m looking for a … Miss Georgette Booker. I understand she works here.”

  “Georgy, sure. Over there at that desk against the far wall, wearing the white shirt or whatever you call it. Want me to tell her you’re here?”

  “No, that’s fine, thank you very much. I’ll talk to her myself.”

  Leatha waited until he had gone, then looked over the bent heads to the desk against the far wall and gasped. Yes, it had to be that girl, white blouse and dark hair, rich chocolate-colored skin. Leatha pushed on into the office and took a roundabout path through the aisles between the desks that

  would enable her to pass by the girl, slowing as she came close. She was pretty, no denying that, she was pretty. A nicely sculptured face, thin-bridged nose, but too heavily made up with the purple lipstick that was in now. And tiny silver stars dusted across one cheek and onto her chest. There was enough of that, and most of it showing too in the new peekie-look thin fabric, almost completely transparent. The large breasts rose halfway out of the blouse, and through it the black circles of her nipples could be seen. Feeling the eyes on her, Georgette looked up and smiled warmly at Leatha, who turned away and walked past her, faster and faster.

  By the middle of the afternoon Dr. Livermore was very tired. He had had little sleep the previous night, and the FBI man’s visit had disturbed him. Then he had to put the technicians to work clearing up the mess in the bottle room, and while they could be trusted to do a good job, he nevertheless wanted to check it out for himself when they were done. He would do that and then perhaps take a nap. He pushed the elaborate scrawled codes of the gene charts away from him and rose stiffly. He was beginning to feel his years. Perhaps it was time to consider joining his patients in the warm comfort of the geriatric levels. He smiled at the thought and started for the labs.

  There was little formality among his staff, and he never thought to knock on the door of Leatha’s private office when he found it closed. His thoughts were on the bottles. He pushed the door open and found her bent over the desk, her face in her hands, crying.

  “What is wrong?” he called out before he realized that it might have been wiser to leave quietly. He had a sudden insight as to what the trouble might be.

  She raised a tear-dampened and reddened face, and he closed the door behind him.

  “I’m sorry to walk in like this. I should have knocked.”

  “No, Dr. Livermore, that’s all right.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”

  “Perfectly normal. I think I understand.”

  “No, it has nothing to do with bottles.”

  “I know. It’s that girl, isn’t it? I had hoped you wouldn’t find out.”

  Leatha was too distraught to ask him how he knew but began sobbing again at this reminder. Livermore wanted to leave but could think of no way to do it gracefully. At the present moment he just could not be interested in this domestic tragedy.

  “I saw her,” Leatha said. “I went there, God knows why, driven, I suppose. To see just what he preferred to me was so humiliating. A blowsy thing, vulgar, the obvious kind of thing a man might like. And she’s colored. How could he have done this…..”

  The sobbing began again and Livermore stopped, his hand on the knob. He had wanted to leave before he became involved himself. Now he was involved.

  “I remember your talking to me about it once,” he said. “Where you come from. Somewhere in the South, isn’t it?”

  The complete irrelevancy of the question stopped Leatha, even slowed her tears. “Yes, Mississippi. A little fishing town near Biloxi.”

  “I thought so. And you grew up with a good jolt of racial bias. The worst thing you have against this girl is the fact that she is black.”

  “I never said that. But there are things …”