style="font-size:15px;"> Arnold hung up and leaned back carefully, still dubious about the folding chair. The floor-pacer had slumped onto a chair in the far corner. He sat looking at the floor.
“We’ll know pretty soon, now,” Arnold said.
The face jerked upwards and stared at him, haggard, almost spectral-looking. Arnold felt a flash of sympathy for Thomas J. Watkins III. As chief engineer of the Universal Transmitting Company, Arnold had nothing more at stake than his pride and his job. His pride had been deflated so often it was immune to punctures, and his job could be replaced in no more time than it would take him to make a phone call.
But Watkins had invested every penny of his own money in Universal Trans, not to mention sizable amounts that were not his own money. He was on the verge of ruin, and he knew it. He looked decades older than his sixty-four years. A younger man would have been able to bounce back, Arnold thought, but let an elderly financier lose his money and he was out of work permanently.
“We’re finished, aren’t we?” Watkins asked.
“Just getting started,” Arnold told him. “That was an X-7-R that blew. The old model. The one in Baltimore blew, and Philadelphia—this should be Philadelphia.”
He answered the telephone, listened briefly, and got the Philadelphia engineer’s watch synchronized with his.
“That makes it unanimous,” he said as he hung up. “Those were our controls. Three X-7-Rs. Now we try the X-8-Rs.”
“Then—there’s still a chance?”
Arnold said gravely, “I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance.”
Watkins smiled. “I’ve gambled on worse odds than that, and won,” he said wistfully. “But right now—this thing—”
Arnold silenced him with a wave of his hand. He was on the white telephone, and getting no answer. He reached the door in one leap, and flung it open.
Perrin called to him, “Sorry. Meyers and I are patching each other up.”
“I thought you said—”
“Just a few cuts. Meyers got a nasty one on the cheek, but he’ll be all right. Maybe he could use some stitches later. We’ll keep on schedule.”
Arnold walked down to look at Meyers. The scrappy little engineer was grinning as Perrin applied adhesive tape.
“If it’s as bad as that,” Arnold said, “we’ll use someone else.”
“Nuts,” Meyers said. “I’ve been dodging flying glass for weeks. You think I’m going to quit now? One trip without being blown out of the place when I get there—that’s all I ask.”
“I hope you’ll get what you ask,” Arnold said. He looked at his watch. “I have two forty-seven—right—now.”
“Check,” Perrin said. “Three minutes. We’ll be ready.”
Arnold returned to the office. Marrow seemed to have got a grip on himself. He had moved his chair over by the table, and Arnold considered finding something for him to do and decided there wasn’t anything that needed doing. Watkins had resumed his floor pacing. Arnold sat down, got the Newark station on one telephone and Perrin on another, and waited, wondering if he had been ridiculously optimistic in rating their chances at fifty-fifty.
“Meyers is ready,” Perrin announced.
“All right, Newark,” Arnold said. “Get ready.”
Newark informed him that it had been ready for five minutes, and where the hell was Meyers?
“Look at your watch,” Arnold snapped. “Now, Perrin.”
“He’s through,” Perrin said.
“He’s through,” Newark echoed.
Arnold clapped the Newark phone to his ear, and waited. He laid down the white telephone, and it was seconds before he realized that Perrin was noisily demanding what had happened.
“Nothing happened,” Arnold told him.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Newark said. “Shall we send him back?”
“Right. Reverse it, Perrin. He’s coming back.”
Silence followed. Then, from Perrin: “He’s back. Everything is all right.”
“Right. Keep it moving. Reverse it, Newark.”
“We have,” Newark said. “He’s through again.”
“Keep it moving.”
Arnold hung up both telephones. Philadelphia called, and then Baltimore. Arnold listened, and told them to keep it moving. He leaned back to look at Watkins. Suddenly he felt very tired. It had taken three years, and he had won—perhaps—and it all seemed anticlimactic.
“I guess that does it,” he said. “The X-8-R. We’re in.”
“It works?” Watkins demanded.
Arnold nodded.
“Then we can go ahead. Then—” Watkins leaped to his feet. “Then we can start operating,” he said excitedly. “We’ll get some money coming in, and we’ll be all right.”
“At the last minute of the last hour,” Arnold murmured. “How’d you like to take a quick trip to Newark?”
“Now?” Watkins said, eyes sparkling. “Do you mean it?”
Arnold led him down to the far end of the warehouse, where a grinning Perrin was presiding at the instrument board. Meyers, in the middle of perhaps his tenth round trip between Newark and Manhattan, darted forward to grab Arnold’s hand.
“We did it, Skipper!” he shouted.
Arnold pointed at a metal frame. “Just walk through there,” he told Watkins.
Without the slightest hesitation Watkins stepped forward and disappeared. Meyers leaped after him.
Perrin scowled. “Meyers will be breaking his neck, the way he jumps through. Know what that idiot wants to do? Perform a high dive over a concrete floor, pass through a transmitter, and come out over a swimming pool in Miami.”
“Sounds like a good stunt,” Arnold said. “We may need ideas like that, for publicity.”
Perrin glanced at his board, and threw a switch. Nothing happened for so long that Arnold became uneasy, and then Meyers reappeared.
“The Old Man wouldn’t believe he was in Newark,” Meyers said. “He had to go look out a window.”
Arnold sniffed his breath. “You’re tight!”
“Well—the Newark boys have a little celebration going. They give me a couple of shots every time I touch
