botage to your plane came through. We
started for Bootstrap. We were on the way when we saw the first
explosion. I--thought it was your ship." She winced a little at the
memory. "I knew you were on board. It was--not nice, Joe."

She'd been badly scared. Joe wanted to thump her encouragingly on the
back, but he suddenly realized that that would no longer be appropriate.
So he said gruffly: "I'm all right."

He followed the uniformed man. He began to get out of his scorched and
tattered garments. The sergeant brought him more clothes, and he put
them on. He was just changing his personal possessions to the new
pockets when the sergeant came back again.

"Kenmore plant on the line, sir."

Joe went to the phone. On the way he discovered that the banging around
he'd had when the plane landed had made a number of places on his body
hurt.

He talked to his father.

Afterward, he realized that it was a queer conversation. He felt guilty
because something had happened to a job that had taken eight months to
do and that he alone was escorting to its destination. He told his
father about that. But his father didn't seem concerned. Not nearly so
much concerned as he should have been. He asked urgent questions about
Joe himself. If he was hurt. How much? Where? Joe was astonished that
his father seemed to think such matters more important than the pilot
gyros. But he answered the questions and explained the exact situation
and also a certain desperate hope he was trying to cherish that the
gyros might still be repairable. His father gave him advice.

Sally was waiting again when he came out. She took him into her father's
office, and introduced him to her father's secretary. Compared to Sally
she was an extraordinarily plain woman. She wore a sorrowful expression.
But she looked very efficient.

Joe explained carefully that his father said for him to hunt up Chief
Bender--working on the job out here--because he was one of the few men
who'd left the Kenmore plant to work elsewhere, and he was good. He and
the Chief, between them, would estimate the damage and the possibility
of repair.

Major Holt listened. He was military and official and harassed and curt
and tired. Joe'd known Sally and therefore her father all his life, but
the Major wasn't an easy man to be relaxed with. He spoke into thin air,
and immediately his sad-seeming secretary wrote out a pass for Joe. Then
Major Holt gave crisp orders on a telephone and ask