"Now maybe the calculation is off, but I don't think so," one was saying,

"We'll find out," someone interjected. All three men laughed.

"The question came up… oh, this has occurred to me many times… What would it take to convert this to a pulse power supply for the main hot cell?"

"Depends on what your pulsing frequency is."

"About ten hertz."

"Whoa."

"Anything that would allow you to modulate a signal away that was being influenced by the juice going through the susceptors. You know, power on for nine-tenths of a second, off for a tenth. Take measurements…"

"Urn-hum. On for a half a second, off for a tenth of a second. You can't really do it easily, can you?"

"The PID controller could send the output that fast. I'm not sure what that would do to the NCRs. To the VRT setup itself, whether that would follow it…"

I tuned them out again. They could have been plot-ting the end of the world for all I knew.

It was another ten minutes before Terry Kohler reap-peared. He was shaking his head in apparent exasperation.

"I don't know what's going on around here," he said. "Lance had to go out on some emergency and Heather's still away from her desk." He held up a key ring. "I'll take you over to the warehouse. Tell Heather I've got these if she shows up."

"I should get my camera," I said. "It's with my handbag."-

He tagged along patiently while I moved back to Lance Wood's office, where I retrieved the camera, tucked my wallet in my tote, and left my handbag where it was.

Together we retraced a path through the reception room and the offices beyond. Nobody actually looked up as we passed, but curious gazes followed us in silence, like those portraits where the eyes seem to move.

The assembly work was done in a large, well-venti-lated area in the back half of the building with walls of corrugated metal and a floor of concrete.

We paused only once while Terry introduced me to a man named John Salkowitz. "John's a chemical engineer and consulting associate," Terry said. "He's been with us since 'sixty-six. You have any questions about high-temper-ature processing, he's the man you want to ask."

Offhand, I couldn't think of one-except maybe about that pulse power supply for the main hot cell. That was a poser.

Terry was moving toward the rear door, and I trotted after him.

To the right, there was a double-wide rolling steel door that could be raised to accommodate incoming ship-ments or to load finished units ready for delivery. We went out into the alleyway, cutting through to the street be-yond.

"Which of the Wood sisters are you married to?" I asked. "I went to high school with Ash."

"Olive," he said with a smile. "What's your name again?"

I told him and we chatted idly for the remainder of the short walk, dropping into silence only when the charred skeleton of the warehouse loomed into view.

3

It took me three hours to examine the fire scene. Terry went through the motions of unlocking the front door, though the gesture seemed ludicrous given the wreckage the fire had left. Most of the outer shell of the building remained upright, but the second story had collapsed into the first, leaving a nearly impenetrable mass of blackened rubble. The glass in the first-floor windows had been blown out by the heat. Metal pipes were exposed, many twisted by the weight of the walls tumbling inward. Whatever recognizable objects remained were reduced to their ab-stract shapes, robbed of color and detail.

When it became apparent that I was going to be there for a while, Terry excused himself and went back to the plant. Wood/Warren was closing early that day as it was Christmas Eve. He said if I was finished soon enough, I was welcome to stop by and have some punch and Christmas cookies. I had already taken out my measuring tape, note-book, sketch pad, and pencils, mentally laying out the or-der in which I intended to proceed. I thanked him, scarcely aware of his departure.

I circled the perimeter of the building, noting the areas of severest burning, checking the window frames on the first floor for signs of forced entry. I wasn't sure how quickly the salvage crew would be coming in, and since there was no apparent evidence of arson, I didn't feel California Fidelity could insist on a delay. Monday morn-ing, I would do a background check on Lance Wood's fi-nancial situation just to make sure there wasn't any hidden profit motive for the fire itself… a mere formality in this case, since the fire chief had already ruled out arson in his report. Since this was probably the only chance we'd have to survey the premises, I photographed everything, taking two rolls of film, twenty-four exposures each.