There could hardly be extreme danger in attempting to force a visit to their world. Their reluctance to establish contact could surely be overcome.
But there was another factor, one of the main factors, he admitted to himself. His life had been chained to a slide rule and a desk while Kennely had spent his in adventuring around the world. This was the opportunity for adventure that no deskhound, handbook engineer could afford to pass up no matter what the cost.
The cost —
Martha, Kip and Pat. They represented all the real values of his life. There might be a chance of his not coming back —
He had to take that chance, he told himself desperately. Any man in his place would have to take it. Perhaps to Kennely, who had adventured all his life, it didn't seem like much. Perhaps the mere acquisition of the coordinator was enough for him, but to Devon the personal exploration of that future world was even more important than the machine. Besides, what other marvels might be obtained?
His mind was definitely made up. He'd go down to the plant around ten and try to make contact with Tarman and Croul. He'd offer to release the coordinator instantly if they'd take him along. They couldn't refuse a request like that.
When Devon arrived home, Martha had a steaming dinner ready. He thought she had never looked quite so pretty as she did that night in the blue gingham and with her face flushed gently with the effort of getting dinner.
"Kip and Pat are ready, darling," she said. "You're late — as usual. Something important doing tonight?"
He kissed her. "Rather, I've got to go back later. About ten."
"Why so late?"
"Some special stuff that depends on time. I don't know how long I'll be."
He didn't know how long he'd be —
He looked at Martha and the children. He couldn't kid himself out of the knowledge that he was planning to gamble them and everything else he had on this fantastic sweep into the future.
But he had to go. Just had to —
This would give him and Kennely the one break they needed, he thought. With knowledge of the coordinator and other machines like it, they could command the trade of the whole electronic world. They'd be free to develop the research labs they'd always dreamed of.
More than that, it would satisfy the hungry yearning something that Devon had felt when he'd seen Kennely go off to the South Seas during the war to do field engineering in war-contested skies.
It was a sort of desperate need to prove himself. He had to do at least one big thing in his lifetime.
He felt guilty as he sat down to listen to the radio for a while. Martha, sat on the arm of the chair and talked. He ought to tell her, he thought, but she'd tell him how dangerous it was and how much she and the children needed him, and he wouldn't go.
Ten o'clock approached, and he began looking at the clock apprehensively. Martha said, "I'll fix a sandwich and coffee to take with you."
At just five minutes to ten when he was getting his hat on, the phone rang.
"Hello, Chris." said Kennely. "I haven't got much time to tell you this. Maybe only a couple of minutes. I made a deal with Tarman and Croul. I thought I wouldn't call you, but I wanted to say good-by. I left a note in your desk here —"
"Brian! What are you going to do?"
"The only thing possible, Chris. You know what it is. I saw it in your eyes. That's why I couldn't say anything. Read my note. Got to go now. Tarman's —"
The phone went suddenly dead. Devon dropped it and raced for the front door. "That was Brian, Martha. He's at the plant now. Got to run. Don't wait up for me."
He ran down the front walk and jumped into the car. He swung savagely away from the curb and into the stream of traffic.
As he drove, the surging hatred within him boiled like steaming, corrosive add, eating at the structure of the lifelong friendship between him and Kennely.
Kennely had known that Devon planned and wanted to go into the future. That's why he had condemned Devon's plan the previous night. He'd gone on alone, because he couldn't share the adventure and the glory. Devon should have known, instead of being blinded by Kennely's bland insistence upon the danger of the project.
The night lights illuminated the front of the plant in glaring brilliance as he drove through the wide gates. It took him five precious minutes to get the watchman. The latter was disturbed by Devon's agitation.
"Open the model shop," Devon demanded. "I must get in there at once!"
The watchman was a new one and slowly checked Devon's company identification, then turned and led the way with maddening, ponderous omnipotence over engineers who wanted access to the building in the hours when only watchmen reigned.
Sweat was bursting like ripe pods on Devon's face as he surged ahead when the model shop was in sight. It was dark. He pressed his face against the glass and shielded his eyes with his hands. There was no sound or light or sign of human presence.
Devon turned with a start as the sluglike watchman rattled the key. Then he was inside. His finger found the switch, commanded the light that flooded the broad room of the shop.
It was like the agony of waking from the grasping fingers of a dream reluctant to give up its clutch upon his mind. Reality slowly forced back grudging memory and he stood there with a slow sense of devastation swirling about him like a knee-deep flood.
The brake — Mac's six thousand dollar wonder — was there.
Intact.
The machine tools, the floor, the workbenches were just as they had been before the impossible dream out of the future had disturbed Devon's uneventful, handbook life.
It was all as before —
Out of his own disappointments a terrible, corrosive hate distilled through his veins and condensed in the cold chambers of his heart and his brain.
Kennely had been here and made some kind of bargain with Tarman. They had returned the materials slashed from the shop, and Kennely had gone with them. He had gone to steal the show for himself as always, to keep this ultimate of human experiences for himself alone.
Brian Kennely, the cavalier engineer —
Devon's legs began to move against the sluggishness in them. He moved towards the storeroom where every evidence of the mighty engine coordinator had vanished. Then he glanced down and stooped to pick up something from the floor.
The clipped remains of a telephone cord.
So Kennely had been taken just as he was talking with Devon. There was some final, terrible desolation in this. He dropped it quickly and hurried back towards the door where the watchman still slumped against the casing, his eyes squinty with enforced wakefulness and suspicion.
"Open up the developments lab," said Devon. "I'm going to work there the rest of the night."
In the lab, he flooded the place with light and slumped down at his desk. He began rummaging for the note Kennely had said he'd left. Devon finally found it in the middle drawer where Kennely had slipped it through a crack.
For a moment he hated the substance of the note as much as whatever message it might hold, and the man who had written it.
Then he unfolded it and began reading:
O.K., Chris, you're hating my guts right now, but remember what you're always preaching to the dumb junior engineers they hire around here? The right component for the job. Remember? For this job that's me, not you.
You've envied the way I've done things. You've made that plain. But isn't it funny that I've always envied the things you've had, too? Don't you know I'd trade you a thousand times over?
Yeah, Martha and Kip and Pat. Don't you know you can't go barging around acting like a — cavalier — when you've got them?
You wanted that field-engineering assignment on the Navy job and you'd probably have had it, too, and those Jap bullets that came so close to me missed maybe because they had your number on them. Besides, who'd have slugged out that design on the BC-62 command set? Two or three thousand guys, at least, owe their lives to you for that.