“… none of them wanted to see that a compact, lightweight, disposable fusion generator could work as well as the behemoths they were building,” Duncan droned on. “No one paid us any attention until we caught the ear of Mr. Martin Humphries.”

Dan perked up at the mention of Humphries’s name. “How did you reach him?

He’s pretty high up in the corporate food chain.”

Duncan smiled craftily. “Through a woman, how else? He came to Glasgow to give a speech. The anniversary of his father’s endowment of the new biology building, or something of that sort. He took a fancy to a certain young lady in our student body. She was a biology major and had quite a body of her own.” With a laugh, Dan said, “So she did the Delilah job for you.”

“One of the lads in our project knew her — in the biblical sense. He asked her if she’d help the cause of science.”

“And she agreed.”

“Willingly. ’Tisn’t every day a lass from Birmingham gets to sleep with a billionaire.”

“Oh, she was English?”

“Aye. We couldn’t ask a Scottish lass to do such a thing.”

Both men were still laughing as the car pulled into the test site’s parking lot. It wasn’t much of a site, Dan thought as he got out of the car. Just a flat, open area of bare dirt with a couple of tin sheds to one side and a rickety-looking scaffolding beyond them. Rugged hills rose all around, and in the distance the Sierras shimmered ghostlike in the heat haze. The sun felt hot and good on his shoulders. The sky was a perfect blue, virtually cloudless. Dan inhaled a deep breath of clean mountain air; it was cool and sharp with a tang of pines that even got past his nose plugs.

Dan thought about taking them out; it would be a relief to do without them. But he didn’t remove them.

There were six people in the “office” shed, two of them women, all hut one of them young, wearing shabby sweaters and slacks or jeans that hadn’t known a crease for years. Dan felt overdressed in his tan slacks and suede sports jacket. One of the women was tall, with long, lank blond hair that fell past her broad shoulders. She looked like a California surfer type to Dan. Or maybe a Swede. The other was clearly Japanese or perhaps Korean: short and chunky, but when she smiled it lit up her whole face.

They all looked eager, excited to have Dan Randolph himself here to see their work, yet Dan caught a whiff of fear among them. Suppose it doesn’t work today? Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose Randolph doesn’t understand its value, its importance? Dan had felt that undercurrent in research labs all around the world; even on the Moon.

The one older man looked professorial. He wore baggy tweed trousers and a matching vest, unbuttoned. His long face was framed by a trim salt-and-pepper beard. Duncan introduced him as “Dr. Vertientes.”

“I am delighted to meet you, sir,” Dan said, automatically lapsing into Spanish as he took the man’s hand.

Vertientes’s brows rose with surprise. “You speak Spanish very well, sir.”

“My headquarters is in Venezuela.” Dan almost added that he’d once been married to a Venezuelan, but that had been too brief and too painful to bring into the conversation.

“We are a multinational group here,” Vertientes said, switching to British English, overlaid with a Castilian accent. “We speak English among ourselves.”

“Except when we curse,” said the Japanese woman.

Everyone laughed.

Much to Dan’s surprise, Duncan was the leader of the little group. The tall, distinguished Vertientes turned out to be the group’s plasma physicist. Duncan was the propulsion engineer and the driving force among them. “You know the principle of nuclear fusion,” the Scotsman said as he led the entire group out of the office shack and toward the slightly larger shed that served as their laboratory.

Nodding, Dan said, “Four hydrogen atoms come together to form a helium atom and release energy.”

“Nuclei,” Duncan corrected. “Not atoms, their nuclei. The plasma is completely ionized.”

“Yep. Right.”

“Seven-tenths of one percent of the mass of the four original protons is converted into energy. The Sun and all the stars have been running for billions of years on that seven-tenths of one percent.”

“As long as they’re fusing hydrogen into helium,” Dan said. To show that he wasn’t entirely unlettered, he added, “Later on they start fusing helium into heavier elements.”

Duncan gave him a sidelong glance from beneath his deep black brows, then said, “Aye, but it’s only hydrogen fusion that we’re interested in.”

“Aye,” Dan murmured.

The laboratory shed wasn’t large, but the equipment in it seemed up-to-date. It looked more like a monitoring station to Dan’s practiced eye than a research laboratory. Beyond it was a bigger building that couldn’t be seen from the parking lot. The group trooped through the lab with only a perfunctory glance at its equipment, then went on to the other building.

“This is where the dirty work gets done,” Duncan said, with his devilish grin. Dan nodded as he looked around. It was a construction shack, all right. Machine tools and an overhead crane running on heavy steel tracks. The sharp tang of machine oil in the air, bits of wire and metal shavings littering the floor. Yes, they worked in here.

“And out there,” Duncan said, pointing to a dust-caked window, “is the result.” It didn’t look terribly impressive. Even when they stepped outside and walked up to the scaffolding, all Dan could see was a two-meter-wide metal sphere with a spaghetti factory of hoses and wires leading into it. The metal looked clean and shiny, though.

Dan rapped on it with his knuckles. “Stainless steel?”

Nodding, Duncan said, “For the outside pressure vessel. The containment sphere is a beryllium alloy.”

“Beryllium?”

“The alloy is proprietary. We’ve applied for an international patent, but you know how long that takes.”

Dan agreed glumly, then asked, “Is this all there is to it?”

With a fierce grin, Duncan said, “The best things come in the smallest packages.” They went back to the lab and, without a word, the six men and women took their stations along the bank of consoles that lined two walls of the shed. There was an assortment of chairs and stools, no two of them alike, but no one sat down. Dan saw that they were nervous, intense. All except Duncan, who looked calmly confident. He cocked a brow at Dan, like a gambler about to shuffle cards from the bottom of the deck.

“Are you ready to see wee beastie in action?” Duncan asked. Tired from traveling, Dan pulled a little wheeled typist’s chair to the middle of the floor and sat on it. Folding his arms across his chest, he nodded and said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.”

The others looked slightly puzzled, wondering who Gridley might be and what his significance was. Duncan, though, bobbed his head and grinned as though he understood everything.

He turned to Vertientes and said softly, “Start it up, then.” Dan heard a pump begin to chug and saw the readout numbers on Vertientes’s console start to climb. The other consoles came to life, display screens flickering on to show multi-colored graphs or digital readouts.

“Pressured approaching optimum,” sang out the blonde. “Density on the curve.”

“Fuel cells on line.”

“Capacitor bank ready.”

Duncan stood beside Dan, sweeping all the consoles with his eyes.

“Approaching ignition point,” said Vertientes.

Leaning slightly toward Dan, Duncan said, “It’s set to ignite automatically, although we have the manual backup ready.”

Dan got to his feet and stared out the window at the stainless steel sphere out in the scaffold. There was a crackling air of tension in the lab now; he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

“Ignition!” Vertientes called.

Dan saw nothing. The metal sphere outside didn’t move. There was no roar or cloud of smoke, not even a vibration. He looked at Duncan, then over to the six others, all of them standing rigidly intent at their consoles. Numbers flickered across screens, curves crawled along graphs, but as far as Dan could see or feel nothing was actually happening.