"
Fields turned on him angrily. "Which side are you supposed to be on,
anyhow?" he demanded.
"You're probably a lawyer," Melroy said. "But I'll bet Mr. Cronnin's an
old reaction-plant man." Cronnin nodded unthinkingly in confirmation.
"All right, then. Ask him what those Doernberg-Giardanos are like. And
then let me ask you: Suppose some moron fixed up something that would go
wrong, or made the wrong kind of a mistake himself, around one of those
reactors?"
It was purely a rhetorical question, but, much later, when he would have
time to think about it, Scott Melroy was to wonder if ever in history
such a question had been answered so promptly and with such dramatic
calamitousness.
Three seconds after he stopped speaking, the lights went out.
* * * * *
For a moment, they were silent and motionless. Then somebody across the
table from Melroy began to say, "What the devil--?" Doris Rives, beside
him, clutched his arm. At the head of the table, Lyons was fuming
impatiently, and Kenneth Leighton snapped a pocket-lighter and held it
up.
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