When it was finished, he said, "Strangest damned thing I ever heard," and played it over again. While he did so, he carefully filled his pipe with tobacco, lit it, and tamped it down.

Arthur Manchek was an engineer, a quiet heavyset man plagued by labile hypertension, which threatened to end further promotions as an Army officer. He had been advised on many occasions to lose weight, but had been unable to do so. He was therefore considering abandoning the Army for a career as a scientist in private industry, where people did not care what your weight or blood pressure was.

Manchek had come to Vandenberg from Wright Patterson in Ohio, where he had been in charge of experiments- in spacecraft landing methods. His job had been to develop a capsule shape that could touch down with equal safety on either land or sea. Manchek had succeeded in developing three new shapes that were promising; his success led to a promotion and transfer to Vandenberg.

Here he did administrative work, and hated it. People bored Manchek; the mechanics of manipulation and the vagaries of subordinate personality held no fascination for him. He often wished he were back at the wind tunnels of Wright Patterson.

Particularly on nights when he was called out of bed by some damn fool problem.

Tonight he felt irritable, and under stress. His reaction to this was characteristic: he became slow. He moved slowly, he thought slowly, he proceeded with a dull and plodding deliberation. It was the secret of his success. Whenever people around him became excited, Manchek seemed to grow more disinterested, until he appeared about to fall asleep. It was a trick he had for remaining totally objective and clearheaded.

Now he sighed and puffed on his pipe as the tape spun out for the second time.

"No communications breakdown, I take it?"

Comroe shook his head. "We checked all systems at this end. We are still monitoring the frequency." He turned on the radio, and hissing static filled the room. "You know about the audio screen?"