Joseph winced. "Anybody want to see me this morning?"

"Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to show you."

"Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes up, I want you to leave me alone."

"Yes, sir, certainly." She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile that seemed to want to be something more.

Joseph switched off.

That was a damn funny way of saying it, he thought. "I want you to leave me alone." As if somebody were after me.

He spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in.

"I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob," he grinned. "I've a whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting headache. Nerves, you know."

"Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our progress so far...."

"Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?"

Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph.

It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly satisfactory solution.

But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound waves, leaving behind only heat.

It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make himself get interested in it.

"The 

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