s
supplied by Francisco, New York's former Water Commissioner. Why were
they being kept prisoners in the city? There must be more reason for
holding them there than the fear that information would be carried out,
for none of the three engineers knew anything about the Science
Community that could be of any possible consequence to outsiders. They
had all stuck rigidly to their own jobs.

They met Francisco, very blue and dejected, walking in the park a couple
of months later. They had been having weekly meetings, feeling that more
frequent rendezvous might excite suspicion. Francisco was overjoyed to
see them.

"Been trying to figure out why they want us," he said. "There is
something deeper than the excuse they have made; that rot about a
perfect system and no breaking of rules may be true, but it has nothing
to do with us. Now, here are three of us, widely admitted as having good
heads on us. We've got to solve this."

"The first fact to work on," he continued, "is that there is no real job
for me here. This city has no water problem that cannot be worked out by
an engineer's office clerk. Why are they holding me here, paying me a
profligate salary, for a job that is a joke for a grown-up man? There's
something behind it that is not apparent on the surface."

The weekly meetings of the three engineers became an established
institution. Mindful that their conversation was doubtless the object of
attention on the part of the ruling powers of the city through spies
and concealed microphones, they were careful to discuss trivial matters
most of the time, and mentioned their problem only when alone in the
open spaces of the park.

* * * * *

After weeks of effort had produced no results, they arrived at the
conclusion that they would have to do some spying themselves. The great
temple, shaped like a dynamo-generator attracted their attention as the
first possibility for obtaining information. Benda, during his work with
telephone and television installation, found that the office of some
sort of ruling council or board of directors were located there. Later
he found that it was called the Science Staff. He managed to slip in
several concealed microphone detectors and wire them to a private
receiver on his desk, doing all the work with his own hands under the
pretense of hunting for a cleverly contrived short-circuit that his
subordinates had failed to find.

"They open their meeting,"