r nodded.

"Yes. Afterward, get a radiation check on yourself. It is hardly likely
that he was--ah--carrying the stuff with him last night, in Bootstrap.
But if he was--ah--you may need some precautionary treatment--you and
the men who were with you."

Joe realized what that meant. Braun had been given a relatively small
container of the deadliest available radioactive material on Earth.
Milligrams of it, shipped from Oak Ridge for scientific use, were
encased in thick lead chests. He'd carried two hundred and fifty grams
in a container he could put in his pocket. He was not only dead as he
walked, under such circumstances. He was also death to those who walked
near him.

"Somebody else may have been burned in any case," said the Major
detachedly. "I am going to issue a radioactivity alarm and check every
man in Bootstrap for burns. It is--ah--very likely that the man who
delivered it to this man is burned, too. But you will not mention this,
of course."

He waved his hand in dismissal. Joe turned to go. The Major added
grimly: "By the way, there is no doubt about the booby-trapping of
planes. We've found eight, so far, ready to be crashed when a string was
pulled while they were serviced. But the men who did the booby-trapping
have vanished. They disappeared suddenly during last night. They were
warned! Have you talked to anybody?"

"No sir," said Joe.

"I would like to know," said the Major coldly, "how they knew we'd found
out their trick!"

Joe went out. He felt very cold at the pit of his stomach. He was to
identify Braun. Then he was to get a radiation check on himself. In that
order of events. He was to identify Braun first, because if Braun had
carried a half-pound of radioactive cobalt on him in Sid's Steak Joint
the night before, Joe was going to die. And so were Haney and the Chief
and Mike, and anybody else who'd passed near him. So Joe was to do the
identification before he was disturbed by the information that he was
dead.

He made the identification. Braun was very decently laid out in a
lead-lined box, with a lead-glass window over his face. There was no
sign of any injury on him except from his fight with Haney. The
radiation burns were deep, but they'd left no marks of their own. He'd
died before outer symptoms could occur.

Joe signed the identification certificate. He went to be checked for his
own chances of life. It was a peculiar sensation. The most peculiar was
that he wasn't afraid.