y take all
day to get the red tape unwound, but I think we can be ready to start by
oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."

* * * * *

By the time Keating had rounded up all the regular Melroy Engineering
Corporation employees and Melroy had talked to Colonel Bradshaw about
security-clearance, it was 1430. A little later, he was called on the
phone by Leighton, the Atomic Power Authority man.

"Melroy, what are you trying to do?" the Power Authority man demanded.
"Get this whole plant struck shut? The I.F.A.W.'s madder than a
shot-stung bobcat. They claim you're going to bring in strike-breakers;
they're talking about picketing the whole reactor area."

"News gets around fast, here, doesn't it?" Melroy commented. He told
Leighton what he had in mind. The Power Authority man was considerably
shaken before he had finished.

"But they'll call a strike on the whole plant! Have you any idea what
that would mean?"

"Certainly I have. They'll either call it in legal form, in which case
the whole thing will go to mediation and get aired, which is what I
want, or they'll pull a Pearl Harbor on you, the way they did on me. And
in that case, the President will have to intervene, and they'll fly in
technicians from some of the Armed Forces plants to keep this place
running. And in that case, things'll get settled that much quicker. This
Crandall thinks these men I fired are martyrs, and he's preaching a
crusade. He ought to carry an _advocatus diaboli_ on his payroll, to
scrutinize the qualifications of his martyrs, before he starts
canonizing them."

A little later, Doris Rives came into the office, her hands full of
papers and cards.

"I have twelve more tests completed," she reported. "Only one washout."

Melroy laughed. "Doctor, they're all washed out," he told her. "It seems
there was an additional test, and they all flunked it. Evinced
willingness to follow unwise leadership and allow themselves to be
talked into improper courses of action. You go on in to New York, and
take all the test-material, including sound records, with you. Stay at
the hotel--your pay will go on--till I need you. There'll be a Federal
Mediation hearing in a day or so."

He had two more telephone calls. The first, at 1530, was from Leighton.
Melroy suspected that the latter had been medicating his morale with a
couple of stiff drinks: his voice was almost jaunty.

"Well, the war's on," he announced. "The I.F.A.W.'s wal