Just in Time.
"Be careful with that." Hugh Jameson was concerned about his colleague, Justin Webb. He had brains, but they were coupled with a maverick streak that made Jameson uneasy. Perhaps he'd have a word with Hamilton tomorrow. It was bad enough working on such a highly sensitive piece of apparatus without a loose cannon like Webb playing about.
It was late. He and Webb were in the basement preparing the accelerator for its test run tomorrow. Their job was made somewhat difficult by Hamilton's refusal to tell them the purpose of the machine. As a particle physicist, Jameson was qualified to maintain and service such a device, and ordinarily he would have had a stab at guessing its function. Yet this machine used a power source that produced more energy than a generator the size of the basement could manage, and the accelerator beam passed through a lens ground from some odd mineral he'd never seen before that resembled emerald or andradite.
Jameson moved round to the front of the machine.
'I'm just checking the focussing coils. Have a look at those filters for me, would you,' he said.
Webb strolled around to the back of the machine out of sight. Jameson heard him fumbling about and flicking switches.
'You OK back there?' Jameson asked.
'Fine,' replied Webb.
Suddenly, the machine started up with a rising whine.
'What are you doing?' Demanded Jameson.
'Sorry,' Webb called out. 'Wait right there. I'll see if I can de-activate it.'
Jameson muttered in annoyance, but remained stooped precariously over the firing end of the machine and continued examining the coils. This turned out to be a mistake, because at that moment the whine picked up and he was hit full in the stomach with the green accelerator beam.
The first thing he noticed upon wakening was his pounding headache. The second thing he noticed was that apparently someone had been very busy. All the diagnostic equipment had been removed from the room, and the machine itself was missing a few components that he and Webb had recently fitted. Webb, in fact, was not in the room.
Jameson had no idea how long he'd been unconscious, but found it hard to believe that someone could have so thoroughly cleaned out the room without waking him. As he staggered to his feet the thought occurred to him that Webb might have turned the beam on him on purpose, knocked him out, and sabotaged the project. To what end he did not know, but he would not find out here in this basement.
He took one last puzzled look around and headed for the lift and the outside world.
* * *
