entered the room. Orrin's spirits visibly
dropped. So did mine.

The black cloud over Goil burst. For five minutes without letup he
stormed. When Orrin and I recovered a little from the deluge, Goil was
saying:

"... complete indications of careless management. And management, Mr.
Orrin, starts at the top." He looked hard at Orrin. Then he turned to
me adding, "And goes on down. _How_ can you account for a missing
sub-space energizer, especially one as large and powerful as the ones
we use? And one gravity generator?"

"Huh?" said Orrin, seeming to come out of a daze. "What's missing?"

Goil slowed down a bit. "One gravity generator and one sub-space
energizer, Mr. Orrin. One each of these items is used for each
vaporizing process. And you have one too few vaporizing projects on
record. And one each gravity generator and energizer unsigned for,
completely unaccounted for--so far."

"What do you mean, 'so far'?" I asked. "Have you any idea how we can
account for these two items?"

"I have indeed," said Goil.

"I don't understand," said Orrin in a helpless tone. "How could anyone
lose or misplace anything as big as those? It doesn't make sense."

I was glad Orrin had put the question that way.

"Precisely," said Goil. "I don't believe someone did misplace or lose
those items. I believe someone took them for a purpose."

"That's ridiculous!" snapped Orrin. "Out here in space? For what?"

"Maybe we'll learn soon," said Goil. "One William Maloon should be on
his way here right now to do some explaining."

I turned cold all over. What had Willy done to expose himself so? I
wondered. Aloud I said:

"What has Willy to do with this, Mr. Goil? Willy is one of our best
men, completely trustworthy."

"A hard worker and really ambitious," added Orrin.

"No doubt," Goil said acidly. "Ambitious to his own ends. I've checked
Mr. Maloon's personnel records and I found some interesting things.
Mr. Maloon is not any sort of qualified engineer. Or even an expert
technician. Why, he's not even a good journeyman of any trade. His
only approach to some sort of claim to formal training is a single
correspondence course!"

"He's a good hard-working technician!" defended Orrin.

"Sure," said Goil. "He learned the hard way. Through experience," he
added sarcastically. "Can you tell me, Mr. Orrin, exactly what is Mr.
Maloon's job here?"

"He's an engineer fill-in," said Orrin with a trace of doubt in his
voice. "He's on cal