Dugan resumed his climbing. He was lucky.
About forty feet above the tunnel entrance, he came to a small latticed hut. It was locked with a formidable padlock.
Dugan twisted the flashlight head to its smallest aperture and with the resulting needle beam he looked over the little building. Though small and in the complete shadow of the trees, it was thoroughly camouflaged — brown with olive-drab splotches all over it. The whole roof was hinged, with the padlock on the downward side of the slope. The padlock was supplemented by a wire to which a soft lead seal had been attached. Dugan shrugged and said to himself,
"Okay, okay, if they want to make it hard on that side…"
He tapped the pins out of the hinges on the far side, using the steel rod from his portable telescope for the purpose. It ruined the instrument, but that was a small price. The blows, delivered by the German monkey wrench with his handkerchief wrapped around it, did not make too much noise. The pins came fairly easily. Dugan lifted the roof of the little building.
It was the size of a very small dog-house.
Inside there was the one big valve — something like an oversize faucet. At its base there was a steel arrow and three small wooden plates. Dugan flashed his needle beam on them. The left one said: RIVER OVERFLOW. The middle one said, quite simply: BOTH. The right-hand one said: SEPTIC TANKS ONLY. The needle now pointed straight at RIVER OVERFLOW.
Dugan wondered for a moment. Would it be better to put all the radioactive sewage into the tanks, thus flooding Atomsk with its own waste? Or should he shift the valve over to BOTH, so that the Russians would not discover their predicament until the next routine inspection of the valve?
He had an even better idea.
Using his steel rod, he shifted the big ring-topped valve until the needle pointed to BOTH. Then, holding the ring-handle straight in line with BOTH, he beat the indicator out of line until it pointed back to its original position on RIVER OVERFLOW. He rubbed his hand in the dust, spit in his palm, and used the film of thin mud to smudge over the evidence of the valve's having been touched.
Then he put the roof back on the little dog-house, knocked the pins back into position, stood erect, and surveyed his work with satisfaction. If Irina's father, old Dekanosov, was right, the people of the Atomnii Gorod should have plenty on their minds by summertime. The Atomic City would be busy trying to survive instead of thinking up weapons to drop on a lot of poor harmless Aleuts and Irishmen, not to mention Americans in general.
Time was getting mighty short. What should he do with the tools?
"The model Socialist worker," said Dugan to himself in Russian, "always takes good care of his tools. He realizes that the Supreme Genius, Stalin, expects the monkey wrenches to be kept out of the pigsty and the electric drills to be removed from the latrine."
He climbed back down to the entrance of Number Eighteen. He felt like a bosomy matriarch with the papers inside the shirt, the groceries between shirt and jacket, the pistol in jacket pocket, and the tools in his arms on front of all the rest. But he put the tools back in the locker where they belonged.
He stood in the doorway, wondering where to go next. He was tempted to follow Number Eighteen tunnel as far as it went. Perhaps he could come out on the other side of the mountain — or perhaps he could raise a little Cain. But, more likely, he would run into a control point and be sent back to his Verwendungskammer, 'Utilization Chamber'. The name was a deterrent. He came out of the tunnel and started climbing up the slope.
A voice hailed him from below, "Who goes there? Stop, or I'll shoot!"
And Dugan heard the sound, more expressive than any Esperanto, of a rifle bolt being shot back into position.
XIV. THE REVOLT OF THE MATERIAL
"Sasha, comrade," said Major Dugan, "just Sasha, splicing another damned wire."
"Sasha who?"
"Shestov, good comrade Red Army man! Just hold your little gun until I get this wire spliced."
The man below became impatient. Dugan did not wish to have to go down and fight. It was much too much trouble. If he used the gun he would create a hullabaloo, which he had managed to avoid thus far in his visit to Atomsk; if he killed with his hands, it would use up too much of his strength, overcoming a man with a rifle. Anyhow, he did not want to kill the man: what did he have against that soldier? The fellow's voice sounded reasonable.
Dugan made little rustling sounds. He swept a branch back and forth on the ground.
The soldier was intelligent and skeptical. He called: "You Shestov or whatever you say you are, come right down here and show your identification papers." He added doubtfully, "Or I'll shoot."
"Wait a minute, comrade."
Dugan began creeping away, farther up the hill. The soldier called after him, "Stop creeping off. Come down here!"
"I'm following the wire, comrade, I have to follow the wire. Come along if you wish, but I can't let this wire go, now that I've found it."
The soldier did not seem to want to come. Dugan began to think that the hill must have something pretty interesting on top of it, inside of it, or on the other side, if a soldier sounded so nervous about climbing up the slope. Fishing for information, he called down to the soldier:
"Come on up here, Red Army man. You can lend me a hand."
Sure enough, the soldier refused. "I can't. I'm on duty. You come down here and show your pass. You've got to show your pass when challenged."
"Don't I know it!" laughed Dugan. "I've had more passes in my time than you will ever see, Red Army man. Well, if you can't help me, save me a climb by going around to the other side and meeting me there. Then I'll show you passes that will make your eyes pop out."
"You can't go over there," the soldier yelled.
"Why not?" called Dugan, still climbing farther away.
"You have to have a Series Three Special Pass." The soldier's voice began to sound pretty far away.
Dugan stopped, in order to yell back, "I've got a Series Three Special Pass."
"Do you, really, comrade?" shouted the soldier. "What's the number on it?"
Dugan did not dare improvise a number, so he shouted back the suggestion that the soldier do something highly indelicate with the number. The soldier was enchanted by this rugged humor, and not at all offended by the gross language. But he persisted:
"Give me your name, then, comrade, and I'll write it down. You can't go over the hill to the Materials area without a Series Three pass. It's your tough luck if you haven't got one."
"Why can't I?" shouted Dugan.
"Because the Materials would see you and start a riot."
Hm, thought Dugan to himself. To the soldier he shouted, "I'd come down and show you my papers, comrade Red Army man, but if I put this wire down now, it will be sure to start a big bright forest fire. You wouldn't want to be responsible for that, would you?"
"Your name—!" shouted the soldier.
"Sasha — that's short for Aleksandr — Alesandr Aleksandrovich — my old man had the same name, see?"
"Of course," yelled the soldier, "how else would you get the name?" Several lurid adjectives preceded the noun name.
"Don't abuse my name, comrade," yelled Dugan, "or I'll drop this wire and start a fire and tell everybody you made me do it."
"All right," said the soldier, all tired out, "will your Blue-nosed Lordship please tell me your Blue-nosed Lordship's famous and commendable name?"
They both laughed heartily at this urbane wit and then Dugan carefully spelled the name Shestov, repeating it all very seriously at the end.
"My name," said Major Dugan distinctly, "is Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shestov and I am a Senior Electrician and an Authorized Emergency Lineman, Senior Class. Got it?"