Kennely nodded, "It'd take us months to plow through this and attempt to figure out the references. With Tarman biting chunks out of the plant we can't fool around about it."
They looked back towards the image of the time-distant control room of American Carriers. Tarman and Croul were busy over a computing desk, but they looked up as the men approached the projection.
"Are you ready to give up our cargo?" said Tarman. "We don't want this junk we're picking up from you, but I don't imagine it improves your surroundings to be cut up this way."
"We'll make a deal," said Kennely. "Let us have access to the coordinator long enough to copy it and we'll let you have it back."
"We must have it at once. Our charter would be cancelled if this became known."
"Give us twenty-four hours then, and we'll promise to release it."
"Intact?" Tarman's face set suspiciously.
"Intact."
"What will you do during those hours?"
"Try to make what analysis that we can."
"All right," the transportation chief sighed wearily. "I guess another day at this rate of indemnity won't completely ruin us."
"One other thing." said Kennely. "You must promise not to make yourselves apparent until we are alone here again."
"All right. Anything — as long as you promise to return our cargo within that time limit. Good-by."
For a moment the two strangers out of another age glared balefully at the engineers. Then, abruptly, they vanished.
Devon passed his hand over his moist brow and looked around at the shambles in the model shop.
"I suppose it all happened. There'll be proof enough when we hear from Mac and Webber about this —"
"Yeah, it creates something of a problem, all right." Kennely walked over and stared into the depths of the hole where water was slowly accumulating.
"We'll come in in the morning and be surprised as anybody over the wreckage here. Then I'll tell Mac the gadget is equipment I've been looking for on my indicator project. I'll explain it got missent to the model shop and I didn't bother to investigate until I needed it. That ought to hold water."
"What did you mean when you told Tarman you'd return the machine in twenty-four hours? Yon know we can't do anything in that time."
"We can't — unless we think of some kind of a deal to make with him. They must want something we've got. Anyway, it gives us that much delay and keeps them from biting the whole plant in little pieces."
"O.K. Let's call it a day and clear out of here. We can't do anything tonight. We'll sleep on it and talk it over in the morning.
Devon's sleep during the remaining few hours of the night was anything but restful. His nightmares were filled with enormous termites that were chewing up the house a cubic yard at a time, and he ended up in a cold sweat at five thirty, looking and feeling as if he'd been on an all-night binge.
He dreaded the idea of going to the plant. Kennely could carry off a thing like this without a flick of an eyelid, but Devon could hardly get away with it. He couldn't josh Mac for getting plastered and tearing the shop apart and become just the right shade haughty at the slightest suggestion that he knew something about the business because he was there last night.
He found what he expected as he walked down the hall towards the model shop on the way to the lab. The entrance was completely blocked by a mob of other engineers and assembly-line workers trying to get a glimpse of the mysterious holes in the floor, and the machinery that had been sliced.
As Devon struggled to ease past the mob, he saw Kennely in the center of things up front, being properly amazed and speculating aloud as to the possible causes. He spotted Devon.
"Chris! Come and see what Mac's been doing!"
The mob parted its ranks to let Devon through. He pushed his way in and stood face to face with the disaster. Webber was there, bleak with mystification and anger looking for a place to strike.
"The watchman says you and Kennely left around midnight. Kennely says you didn't hear a thing or see any signs of this, then."
"No. Not a thing," said Devon. Somehow the daylight and the mob lent an aspect of magnitude to the disaster that dwarfed his feelings of the night before.
"As I told you," Kennely broke in, "we just unpacked the case to see if it was my missing equipment —"
Webber glowered down into the hole another thirty seconds, then turned to Mac. "Get maintenance to clean this mess up as soon as possible. Reorder the machine tools you need. I'll push the papers through. We can't get much farther behind on the model work. We'll be making last year's equipment next year at this rate!"
Back in their own lab, Kennely and Devon sat down at their desks. "Figure out anything?" asked Kennely.
"Nothing but nightmares all night."
"Me, too. An engineer is no good in a situation like this. An average smart business man would be able to think up a deal that would bring Tarman across pronto. But here we are, can't think of a thing."
"Well, let's get to work. Let's analyse that prognosticator panel and maybe we'll think of something as we go along."
They spent the remainder of the day delving into the complex circuits of the weather forecaster. The components were there; their circuit connections became apparent as the engineers proceeded, but the actual principle of operation was still elusive.
When the entire circuit was finally traced and sketched in their log books, they still had no conception of the means by which these elements could forecast weather factors. They could trace the paths by which voltage was applied to the aneroid barometer action to register the future instead of the present air pressure. They could observe the control tube action which governed that voltage, and traced it back in a complete circle to the aneroid itself, which seemed to provide the controlling impulses.
It was a maddening circle in which something appeared that did not seem at all related to that which was fed in.
As the afternoon waned and the other engineers prepared to go home, Kennely and Devon began building up the circuit again for dynamic tests to try to find the missing factors.
"I've been thinking." said Kennely. "I believe I've got a little deal that Tarman will fall for. Let's knock off now. I'll tell you about it tonight. Let me call for you at your place about midnight. By that time we can be sure that all the apple polishers around here will have gone home."
"Tell me what you've planned."
"I'd rather show you. There'll be plenty of time, and I've got to do a little more thinking on it."
Devon saw no reason for Kennely's reticence, but he didn't feel like arguing the matter.
"O.K." he said. "I'll wait for you. I hope you've got something good because Tarman will start chewing up the rest of the plant if we don't let the coordinator go back."
"I don't think we're going to have to worry about that, and I think we're going to have our consulting office, too. See you tonight."
Devon drove slowly on the way home. Throughout the day his mind had been furiously active on his own plans — the same plan he had proposed to Kennely the night before.
The appearance of Tarman and Croul, and the revelation of the great science of the world of the future seemed an opportunity that would be criminal to reject. He could not understand Kennely's refusal to attempt to go there because of the supposed danger.
These men of the future seemed civilized. An idea of their morality was indicated by their reaction to the engineers' withholding the coordinator. They obviously viewed that as the mark of an inferior culture.