The machine was still around, though, and on the spot, because that was Major Commaigne’s plan. He waved it on, into the breach in the armour-plating of the tunnel that his demolition crew had made. It was set for lateral tunnelling. They gave it its head and followed it into a brand-new and therefore (presumably) unguarded tunnel that would parallel the ramp they were in, clear down to the factory itself.
Bill Cossett got up and ran after Major Commaigne, and the others, unbelieving. It was all too easy! Behind them, the clatter of gunfire dwindled. There were no guns here - how could there be? They were safe.
Then-
‘Ouch!’ yelped Major Commaigne, inadvertently touching the wall, for it was hot. Then he grinned at Cossett, his face shadowed in the light from their helmet lamps and the tunneller. ‘Scared me for a minute,’ he said. ‘But it’s all right. It must be fused - from the digging, you know. But -’
He stopped, thinking.
And it was only right that he should think, because he was wrong. It couldn’t be atomic fusion that heated that wall. Why, Churchill didn’t have atomic fusion to play with back in 1940, when Winnie’s Pet was built!
‘Run!’ shouted Major Commaigne. ‘You, there! Get out of that thing!’
The crew hesitated, then spilled out of the digger, and again just in time.
Because the heat had been atomic, all right, but the atoms were bursting at the command of the computer that ran the factory. Seismographs had detected the vibration of their tunnelling; metal subterrene moles with warheads had been sent after them; as they raced out of the new tunnel at one end, the moles burst through at the other, struck the digger and exploded.
They made it up the ramp and to their waiting half-tracks, but just barely.
And that was the end of Round One. If any referee in the world had been watching, I don’t care who or how biased in favour of the human race, he would have given that round to the machines. It was an easy win, no contest; and the detachment brooded about it all the way back to the Pentagon.
4
Well, they didn’t call him Unlickable Jack Tighe for nothing. In fact, they didn’t call him Unlickable Jack at all then. That didn’t come until later, and that’s another story. But already Tighe was demonstrating the qualities which made him great.
‘There’s got to be a way,’ he declared, and pounded the table. ‘There’s got to.’
The Committee of Activity silently licked its wounds, staring at him.
‘Look, fellows,’ Tighe said reasonably, ‘men built these machines. Men can make them stop!’
Bill Cossett waited for somebody else to speak. Nobody did.
‘How, Mr. Tighe?’ he asked, wishing he didn’t have to be the one to put the question.
Tighe stared fretfully - and unansweringly - out of the Pentagon window.
‘You just tell us how,’ Cossett went on, ‘because we don’t know. We can’t get in - we’ve tried that. We can’t blow up the goods as they come out - we’ve tried that too. We can’t cut off the power, because it’s completely self-contained. What does that leave? The computer has more resources than we have, that’s all.’
‘There’s always a way,’ said obstinate Jack Tighe, and shifted restlessly in his leather chair. It was not that he wasn’t used to positions of responsibility, for hadn’t he been on the Plans Board of Yust & Ruminant? But running a whole country was another matter.
Marlene Groshawk coughed apologetically.
‘Mr. Tighe, sir,’ she said. (You know who Marlene Groshawk is. Everybody does.)
Tighe said irritably: ‘Later, Marlene. Can’t you see this thing’s got me worried?’
‘But that’s what it’s about, Mr. Tighe,’ she said, ‘sir. I mean It’s about this thing.’
She put her glasses on her pretty nose and looked at her notes. She, too, had come a long way from her public-stenographer days at Pung’s Corners, and it wasn’t entirely an upward path. Though no doubt there was honour to being the private secretary of old Jack Tighe.
She said: ‘I’ve got it all down here, Mr. Tighe, sir. You’ve tried brute force and you’ve tried subtlety. Well, what I ask myself is this: What would that wonderful, cute old TV detective Sherlock Holmes do?’
She removed her glasses and stared thoughtfully around the room.
Major Commaigne burst out: ‘We could’ve been killed. But I don’t mind that, Mr. Tighe. What hurts is that we failed.’
Marlene said: ‘So what I would suggest is -’
‘I can’t go home and face my wife,’ Bill Cossett interrupted miserably. ‘Or all those Buicks.’
‘What Sher-’
Jack Tighe growled: “We’ll lick it! Trust me, men. And now, unless somebody else has a suggestion, I suppose we can adjourn this meeting. God knows we’ve accomplished nothing. But maybe sleeping on it will help. Any objections?’
Marlene Groshawk stuck up her hand. ‘Mr. Tighe, sir?’
‘Eh? Marlene? Well, what is it?’
She removed her glasses and looked at him piercingly. ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He would have got in, because he would have disguised himself. There! Clear as the nose on your face, when you think of it, isn’t it?’
Tighe took a deep breath. He shook his head and said, with more than ordinary patience: ‘Marlene, please stick to taking your shorthand. Leave the rest to us.’
‘But really, Mr. Tighe! Sir. I mean raw materials do get in, don’t they?’
‘Well?’
‘So suppose -’ she said, cocking her head prettily, tapping her small white teeth with a pencil in a judgmatical way - ‘suppose you fellows disguised yourselves. As raw materials. And didn’t sneak in, but let the factory come and get you, so to speak. How about that?’
Jack Tighe was a great and wise man, but he had a lot on his mind. He yelled: ‘Marlene, what’s the matter with you? That’s the craziest -’ he hesitated - ‘the craziest thing I ever -’ he coughed - ‘it’s the craziest ... What do you mean, disguise themselves?’
‘I mean disguise themselves,’ Marlene explained earnestly. ‘Like disguise. As raw materials.’
Jack Tighe was silent for a second.
Then he pounded his desk. ‘Love of heaven,’ he cried, ‘I think she’s got it! Captain Margate! Where’s Captain Margate? You, Commaigne! Get out of here on the double and get me Captain Margate!’
Bill Cossett slipped quarters into the slot and waited for his wife in Rantoul to answer her phone.
Her image took form in the screen, hair curlers and the baggy quilted robe she liked to slop around in. But she was still an attractive woman. ‘Bill? That you? But the operator said Farmingdale.’
‘That’s where I am, Essie. We, uh, we’re going to try something.’ How did you say a thing like this without sounding heroic? It was hard, a fine line of distinction, for what he wanted was for his wife to think he was a hero, but not to think that he thought so too. ‘We’re going to, well, sneak into the cavern here.’
‘Sneak in?’ Her voice became piercing. ‘Bill Cossett! Those factories are dangerous. You promised me you wouldn’t get in any trouble when I let you go east!’
‘Now, Essie,’ he soothed. ‘Please, Essie. If s going to be all right. I think.’
‘You think? Bill, tell me exactly what you’re up to!’