work for a dozen different nations, but the Tonto Basin
Research Establishment of the Philadelphia Project exceeded anything he
had seen before. There were gray-haired veterans of the old Manhattan
Project here, men who had worked with Fermi at Chicago, or with
Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, twenty years before, and they swore in amused
exasperation when they thought of how the relatively mild regulations of
those days had irked them. And yet, the very existence of the Manhattan
Project had been kept a secret from all but those engaged in it, and its
purpose from most of them. Today, in 1965, there might have been a few
wandering tribesmen in Somaliland or the Kirghiz Steppes who had never
heard of the Western Union's Philadelphia Project, or of the Fourth
Komintern's Red Triumph Five-Year Plan, or of the Islamic Kaliphate's
Al-Borak Undertaking, or of the Ibero-American Confederation's Cavor
Project, but every literate person in the world knew that the four great
power-blocs were racing desperately to launch the first spaceship to
reach the Moon and build the Lunar fortress that would insure world
supremacy.

He turned in the nonmagnetic identity disk at the desk on the other side
of the search room, receiving the metal one he wore inside the
reservation, and with it the key to his inside locker. He put on the
clothes he had left behind when he had passed out, and filled his
pockets with the miscellany of small articles he had not been allowed to
carry off the reservation. He knotted the garish necktie affected by the
civilian workers and in particular by members of the MacLeod Research
Team to advertise their nonmilitary status, lit his pipe, and walked out
into the open gallery beyond.

* * * * *

Karen Hilquist was waiting for him there, reclining in one of the metal
chairs. She looked cool in the belted white coveralls, with the white
turban bound around her yellow hair, and very beautiful, and when he saw
her, his heart gave a little bump, like a geiger responding to an
ionizing particle. It always did that, although they had been together
for twelve years, and married for ten. Then she saw him and smiled, and
he came over, fanning himself with his sun helmet, and dropped into a
chair beside her.

"Did you call our center for a jeep?" he asked. When she nodded, he
continued: "I thought you would, so I didn't bother."

For a while, they sat silent, looking with bored distaste at the