There were more of the ALL CLASSES CANCELED notices plastered on the corridor walls; Jake wondered who was on campus to put them up.

Rogers’s office was on the top floor and, sure enough, there was a big stainless steel coffeepot perking cheerfully atop the bookcase next to the physicist’s desk. A sleeping bag was half rolled up between the desk and the office’s only window, with a sturdy pair of thick-soled work boots beside it, next to the heating grill on the floor.

But no one was in the office. Jake heard voices coming from the glass-paneled door in the wall to his right. Stepping up to it he saw that somebody had Scotch-taped a sheet of paper marked WORKSHOP—ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

He recognized Rogers’s voice coming from the next room, so he rapped on the flimsy door once and opened it. Rogers and a half-dozen others were bent over a big circular oak table, which took up most of the room’s floor space.

“We’ve got to do better than this,” Rogers was saying, his back to Jake and the door.

Five of the grad students were young men. The sixth was Glynis Colwyn, who smiled as she recognized Jake. She looked freshly scrubbed and perky in a thick woolen turtleneck sweater and form-fitting jeans.

“Hi, Jake,” she said brightly. “Welcome to Rogers’s Rangers!”

“Rogers’s Rangers?” Jake asked.

Bob Rogers turned around with a self-deprecating little smile on his leathery face. “My grad students,” he explained, waving a hand at the five of them. “We’re a sort of think tank these days.”

His grad students showed up this morning, Jake groused to himself. Then he thought, Maybe they all slept here through last night’s snowstorm.

Jake looked questioningly at Glynis. Before he could ask, she said, “No, I haven’t taken up EE. I’m doing liaison for Professor Sinclair.”

“Oh,” said Jake.

“Take your boots off and put them over by the heating grill,” Rogers said. “Dry them out.” Jake noticed that the physicist was in his stocking feet: brightly patterned argyles.

As Rogers introduced his grad students, Jake saw nine tubular objects laid out on the round table. They looked about the same size as a night watchman’s flashlight, but they were blackened on one end; two of them seemed to have been melted almost halfway down their lengths.

Rogers gestured toward them. “That’s our problem,” he said. “This might stop the whole program in its tracks.”

Lightning Rods

LIGHTNING RODS

“What do you mean?” Jake asked, peering at the objects on the table.

“Electrodes,” Rogers said, almost dolefully.

One of the grad students raised his head and sniffed loudly. “I think the coffee’s done,” he said. Jake had already forgotten his name.

“I’ll get it,” said Glynis. With a wry grin, she added, “Woman’s work, you know.” A couple of the male students hooted derisively.