Lord Leighton was eighty years old. He'd been born a hunchback, and his legs were twisted from polio as a child. Yet the wrinkled hands and long arms were still surprisingly strong and skilled. He easily unlocked the heavy steel door and started pushing it open. Then Richard Blade stepped forward to help the scientist.

Richard Blade was one of those dark men who look older than they are when they're young and much younger than they are when they get older. He stood an inch over six feet, and his two hundred pounds moved with the ease and grace of a hunting animal in perfect condition. He placed one large hand against the door and with a single smooth motion pushed it open.

Beyond the door was a small low room, with a bare concrete floor and whitewashed stone walls. In one corner a gleaming metal ovoid seven feet high rested in a steel cradle. It might have been a lifeboat for a spaceship. On the wall opposite the door was a rack of electronic testing gear, and on the floor in front of the rack a pile of components. Much of the gear and all the components were smoke-blackened, twisted, or half-melted. The ceiling over the testing rack was also black, and Blade detected a faint smell of burned insulation.

«Good God,» said Blade. He'd seen far worse accidents with electronic gear, but not in this top-secret complex. «Who did what?»

Leighton shoved both hands into the pockets of a filthy laboratory smock and grimaced. «As far as we can tell, some idiot installed Circuit 19 backwards.» He shrugged. «It could have been much worse. The circuit breakers kept the surge out of the capsule itself. The automatic alarms shut the door, the fire extinguishers suffocated the fire-«

«And suffocated the technician?» asked Blade with a perfectly straight face.