fellow like you
must cost 'em twice as much to outfit for this job."

Sokolski grunted and struggled into the thick, radiation-resistant
suit. "Think how lucky _you_ are, runt," he responded as he wriggled
his right arm down the sleeve, "that they've got those little
servomechs in there to do the real dirty work. If it weren't for them,
they'd have all the shrimps like you crawling down pipes and around
dampers and generally playing filing cabinet for loose neutrons." He
shook himself. "Thanks, Joe," he growled as Gaines helped him with a
reluctant zipper.

Gaines checked the big man's oxygen equipment and turned his back so
that Sokolski could okay his own. "You're set," said Sokolski, and
they snapped on their helmets, big inverted lead buckets with narrow
strips of shielded glass providing strictly minimal fields of view.
Gaines plugged one end of the thickly insulated intercom cable into
the socket beneath his armpit, then handed the other end to Sokolski,
who followed suit.

Sokolski checked out the master controls on the data board and nodded.
He clicked on the talkie. "Let's go," he said, his voice, echoing
inside the helmet before being transmitted, sounding distant and
hollow.

Gaines leading, the cable sliding and coiling snakelike between them,
they passed through the doorway, over which huge red letters shouted
ANYONE WHO WALKS THROUGH THIS DOOR UNPROTECTED WILL DIE, and clomped
down the zigzagging corridor toward the uranium pile that crouched
within the heart of the plant.

Gaines moaned, "It gets damned hot inside these suits."

They had reached the end of the trap, and Sokolski folded a thick
mittened hand around one handle on the door to the Hot Room. "Not half
so hot as it gets outside it, sweetheart, where we're going." He
jerked on the handle and Gaines seized the second handle and added his
own strength. The huge door slid unwillingly back.

The silent sound of the Hot Room surged out over them--the breathless
whisper of chained power struggling to burst its chains. Sokolski
checked his neutron tab and his gamma reader and they stepped over the
threshold. They leaned into the door until it had slid shut again.

"I'll take the servomechs, Bert," piped Gaines, tramping clumsily
toward the nearest of the gyro-balanced single-wheeled robots.

"You always do, it being the easiest job. Okay, I'll work the board."

Gaines nodded, a gesture invisible to his partner. He reached the
first servo,