any uranium at all yet, we'll be thrown out."

"Blast Hurriman!" Doug Norris raged. "The Proxy Project has been your work from the start! You sweated to develop the things. Now because there's a hitch, a bunch of bumbling politicians take it over!"

"It's all in a lifetime," Kincaid shrugged. "Winters, you tell the boys. Have them pull their Proxies back to Base, and go home." He sat down slowly in his chair then, and stared at the wall. "So it's over. Well, right now I'm too tired to care."

Norris felt heartsick. "Isn't there any chance of stalling them long enough to try our idea of rayproofing the Proxies?"

"You know there isn't," said his superior. "It'd take days to do that job. Even if it worked against the Raddies, it'd take weeks more to get out uranium. And Hurriman's bunch won't wait weeks."

He looked at the sick face of the younger man, then opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of Scotch and glasses.

"Here, have a drink," he ordered. "You're a little young yet, and you take these things too seriously."

Norris unhappily drank the Scotch. But his nerves, still shaken by that queer kick-back shock from the beam, didn't relax much.

"Mart, your calmness isn't fooling me," he said. "I know how much the Proxies meant to you, the dreams you had of operating Proxies on every planet man couldn't visit, even on worlds of distant stars."

Kincaid shrugged as he poured himself a drink. "Sure, I wanted all that. But since when have scientists ever been able to buck politicians?"

Darkness pressed the windows as night gathered. They sat silently in the darkening office drinking the Scotch and looking at the tall, lighted stacks of the distant New York Power Station.

Doug Norris found no comfort in the liquor's sting. His sense of injustice deepened. The Proxies were Kincaid's, but just because he couldn't produce uranium fast enough, they would be taken away from him.

He said so, bitterly and at length. Kincaid only shrugged wearily again.

"Forget it, Doug. Have another drink."

Norris discovered with mild surprise that the bottle was empty.

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