"Well — mind if we walk around some more?"
"You can't make much more trouble than I've already got, I guess."
The two engineers moved into the shop. On their left was Mac's pride, the powerful, new, six thousand dollar brake. A small turret lathe was located farther along, and beside it, a heavy drill press. Other, smaller machine tools were lined up along the wall farther to the left. On the right was the assembly division where rows of girls wired the jobs.
Straight ahead was a materials receiving room. A huge packing crate which formed a cube nearly ten feet on a side dwarfed everything else on the floor of the room.
"Wonder what that gadget is," said Kennely. "Another monster like this brake that gets used about once a week?"
"Mac ought to clean the place up," said Devon. "It looks like bug tracks all over."
"Where? What are you talking about?"
Devon picked up a soldering iron that was plugged in, but lying unused in its holder. "This." His finger pointed to a delicate, silver line that traced its way along the entire length of the cord.
"I never saw any bug tracks like that before," said Kennely. "Look, here's more of the stuff." Kennely pointed to an almost invisible line of it on a small electric wrench.
Devon traced it along the cord into the conduit. They moved back to the section occupied by the machine tools. On each, they found thin silver lines running to the various elements. When they looked closely, the entire floor seemed crosscrossed with the threads. They went out to the materials storeroom and found the stuff swarming over the floor and up on the sides of the huge packing case that housed the unknown machine monster.
Mac came up as they looked over the maze of threads.
"Find anything?"
Devon shook his head. "You ought to spray the place with DDT. It looks like bugs are swarming all over you, leaving these trails."
Mac took a chisel and scraped at some of the stuff. "That's only a minor difficulty. We've been swearing at it for a week now. It won't come off anything, and no one can find out where it comes from. Why don't you make a project out of it? It would be about as useful as some of the dingbats you design."
"What's in the big box?" said Devon.
"Heaven only knows. I haven't had time to look. It came in with an order of materials several days ago. An engineer's gadget for his project, I guess, but nobody's claimed it yet. If they don't pretty soon, I'm going to ship it back where it came from."
The engineers left without coming to any conclusion. As three o'clock approached, they watched the sky expectantly. At twenty minutes before three it began to sprinkle and exactly on the hour the maximum precipitation was falling."
Kennely pulled his chair over by Devon's desk. "How many millions do you think it will be worth to good old North State?"
"Have you talked to Jackson about his gadget?"
"No. He saw that it wasn't as he'd had it drawn so he just sent it back for changes. So I don't know what it did — special, I mean."
"I'm getting worried about this business. It can't be supernatural."
"Let's come back tonight and take a private tour through the model shop."
"You think somebody might be working here at night? Why?"
"We haven't found anything in the daytime. It's a thought."
Devon was ready to try anything. He called Martha and told her he'd be working late. At five o'clock he and Kennely went out for a snack. When they returned, the assembly lines were dark and the labs were empty with the exception of two or three engineers working on their own time — apple polishers, Kennely called them.
The model shop was dark and deserted. The watchman opened it, and, as the door swung open, they saw dimly in the darkness the giant brake slowly closing on a sheet of chassis metal. The clank of its reciprocating gears echoed ghostily in the darkened shop.
The watchman flashed a beam of light. "Who's in there?"
He switched on the lights. The brake was motionless.
"I'd have sworn that thing was working," said the watchman.
Kennely shrugged. "Nobody's here. It couldn't have been working."
The watchman left hesitantly with a final backward glance at the inert, giant brake.
"Brian, that thing was going!" Devon said when they were alone.
"I know. But I wouldn't want that watchman spreading word that the model shop is haunted."
"Haunted! Good grief!"
They moved slowly about the shop. On all the machine tools were partly worked pieces of stock, as if the equipment had suddenly ceased operation in the midst of heated activity. The engineers knew that Mac didn't allow his men to leave their machines in that condition. Kennely placed his hand on the motors and on the cutting tools. They were hot.
The suggestion of an intangible presence that had suddenly turned off all the machines the moment the door opened was oppressive. Certainly, the engineers knew that such a thing was ridiculous and impossible, yet the impression was there, nevertheless.
"Maybe this is like the old fairy tale," said Devon, "The one about the little shoemaker who went to bed and found the good little gnome had done his work when he woke up."
Kennely strolled towards the opposite side of the room, glancing down at the silver threads criss crossing the floor. He stopped and pointed.
"Look, Chris. Maybe these bugs came in with some shipments. Look how these threads all seem to converge on this big box."
"Yeah, that's right. I'd never noticed it before. Wonder what's in the darned thing? Let's have a look."
He took up a hammer from a bench and began ripping at one of the boards, pounding and prying.
Abruptly, a heavy voice said, "Thanks, fellow. — That was just enough to unbalance the blanking matrix. Now we know where the thing is, — we can work on salvage."
The engineers felt the short hairs prickle on the backs of their necks.
"Kennely — was that you talking?"
"No — look! Those two guys — who are they?"
Beside the large box, two strangers were staring at the engineers. The two were not more than five feet tall. Their dress was not wholly alien, but the cut of the overall type garments was distinctly unfamiliar.
"Who are you?" Kennely demanded.
"I am Tarman, Chief Transport Agent, American Carriers, and this is our technician, Croul. We lost our valuable cargo and were about ready to pay the three quarters million that it would have cost us. We are certainly grateful to you for unjamming the matrix and helping us locate it. We are not able, however, to spot it exactly with our equipment until you turn off your local radiation. If you would be so kind as to do that, we will move the shipment from your premises."
Kennely and Devon continued to stare while the strangers spoke. It must have been a considerable number of seconds after he was finished that Kennely finally opened his mouth.
"We don't understand all that," he said, "We never heard of American Carriers, much less a system of transport that could lose a cargo such as this inside a building. We thought this box belonged here. Explain yourself."
Tarman paled slightly and turned to Croul, who nodded. "I told you we were in the antique era. We shot clear beyond the delivery date. We'll lose our charter if this gets out. It's happened too often."
Tarman nodded and faced the engineers again. "This must seem all quite strange to you. We operate a transportation system through time, a temporal exchange agency. You know nothing of this, of course, because we have not touched your era before. It is not judged prudent that we do so by the Charter Council.
"The appearance of our cargo here was caused by some malfunction of our equipment, and our present inability to salvage it is caused by the radiation with which you have surrounded it. I trust that you will release it so that we may remove the cargo."