drey before him. He
hoped, wherever she was, she would know that he was all right.

As soon as he had changed he called the hospital. The message came back
promptly and clearly.

"We have a woman named Gould here. She is not badly hurt, but she is
hysterical. She wants to see you, but if you can't come at once I am to
give you a message. Wait a moment. She has written it, but it's hardly
legible."

Clayton waited.

"It's about somebody you know, who had gone on night turn recently at
your plant. I can't read the name. It looks like Ballantine."

"It isn't Valentine, is it?"

"Perhaps it is. It's just a scrawl. But the first name is clear
enough--Audrey."

Afterward he did not remember hanging up the receiver, or getting out of
the house. He seemed to come to himself somewhat at the hospital, and
at the door to Clare's ward his brain suddenly cleared. He did not need
Clare's story. It seemed that he knew it all, had known it long ages
before. Her very words sounded like infinite repetitions of something he
had heard, over and over.

"She was right beside me, and I was showing her about the lathe. They'd
told me I could teach her. She was picking it up fast, too. And she
liked it. She liked it--"

The fact that Audrey had liked it broke down his scanty reserve of
restraint. Clayton found himself looking down at her from a great
distance. She was very remote. Clare pulled herself together.

"When the first explosion came it didn't touch us. But I guess she knew
it meant more. She said something about the telephone and getting
help and there'd be more, and she started to run. I just stood there,
watching her run, and waiting. And then the second one came, and--"

Suddenly Clare seemed to disappear altogether. He felt something catch
his arm, and the nurse's voice, very calm and quiet:

"Sit down. I'll get you something."

Then he was swallowing a fluid that burned his throat, and Clare was
crying with the sheet drawn to her mouth, and somewhere Audrey--

He got up, and the nurse followed him out.

"You might look for the person here," she suggested. "We have had
several brought in."

He was still dazed, but he followed her docilely. Audrey was not there.
He seemed to have known that, too. That there would be a long search,
and hours of agony, and at the end--the one thing he did not know was
what was to be at the end.

All that afternoon he searched, going from hospital to hospital. And at
each one, a