Production Test

A carrier — and a modulation. The one point of contact between the inside and outside of the suit was the manipulators. Though they had an intermediate section of heat inert plastic, they were rigid. They would carry the supersonic vibrations from the valve to the wall. His voice alone would never pass through the manipulators in force sufficient to reach the mike. As he called, the vibrations of his voice produced pressure changes within the suit and the valve responded at like frequency, modulating the high-pitched sound it generated. And those narrow fingers might be able to carry that spear of inaudible sound with his voice riding its back out to the wall.

He pictured the rest of the pathway — up the metal wall to the mike chamber where the supersonic component would be lost on the condenser element. Would his voice component be strong enough to activate it?

He couldn't know. He could only try. And the still active Kimberly Joints would not remain intact indefinitely. Already they were moving on borrowed time.

He remembered that George, the watchman passed the assembly line on his hourly rounds at about ten minutes after the hour. He'd seen him only a couple of nights ago checking the watch station near the icebox.

He adjusted his calls to half minute intervals except for six or seven minutes before and after that critical time when George ought to be in the vicinity.

The hours stretched past dawn and rawness grew in his throat. The deafening, insistent roar of his own voice echoed in his head. And no response had come. He felt that there had been moments of unconsciousness during the night, and he dreaded that he might have missed a single chance for rescue. He glanced at the clock face. George was gone by now. Kimberly wasn't sure how the day watch was handled on week ends. He gave up the continuous calling and maintained the intermittent schedule as nearly as he could.

How could it be such torture to simply lie still? A beating with a club would not have made his body ache more. He tried to cut his mind off from the sensations of pain and concentrate on the mechanical routine of his calling. He found that too easy to do. His mind wanted to slip completely into forgetfulness under the burden of pain, fatigue and monotony.

He dared not go to sleep. He fussed with the pressure and heat controls. Perhaps a little more cold would keep him awake -

George was not a very bright boy. He heard Kimberly's voice on three successive rounds before it made an impression. He didn't know much about the equipment he was supposed to watch. It didn't seem quite plausible that he should hear the top boss' voice in the silence of the assembly floor and he didn't know anything about the communication panel for the icebox. So he put the whole thing down as imagination.

Twice, anyway. The third time he gave in and called Kimberly's house.

It was long after midnight Saturday when they found him. The Kimberly Joints had given way hours before and he lay inert and unconscious. He had turned the heat much too low in an effort to keep awake and his body was chilled. But he was still very much alive. Revival was accomplished with little difficulty.

On Monday morning an uneasy dozen engineers sat in the small conference room off Bryan Kimberly's office. They had heard rumors, vague and terrifying rumors that the boss had got into some jam that was their fault. They had heard rumors of a rage that was unmatched since the days of Kimberly, Senior, who used to turn over his whole engineering department before lunch about once a week. They wondered where they would be working by the end of the week — if they were working at all.

They didn't look much at each other, and they didn't talk at all. There was Conners, the metallurgist; Jenkins, the plastics man; Randolph, the mechanical engineer; and Brown, who had been chiefly responsible for the final design of the new suit. Burton, the joint designer was also there as was Lane, head of Test Engineering.

They stared mutely at the gadget Kimberly had rigged up in the center of the conference table.

"Wonder what —" Lane finally began.

"New model of an improved guillotine," suggested Jenkins.

"Shut up! Here comes the boss," Brown hissed.

They hunched down, looked towards the door expectantly.

Bryan Kimberly entered and closed the door softly. He looked the same as far as they could tell. They wondered just what had happened to him.

"Gentlemen," said Kimberly. They sank still lower. This was going to be worse than they had thought.

"Gentlemen," he repeated. "I don't know much about what they teach in college these days, but when I was a kid they required all engineers to have G.S. 1, fundamentals of general semantics. In that course I remember learning one great lesson: The whole is not the sum of its parts. Ever hear of that, gentlemen?"

The circle of glum engineers nodded, and they wondered where the devil he was heading for.