“I’ll miss you too, Doc.” She kissed him on the cheek and handed him her lab coat. Then she retrieved her purse and headed for the bus station. Phase One of Operation Free Mary was underway. By tomorrow she’d be hundreds of miles away in a world no doubt very different from anything she’d ever known. She couldn’t wait. Knoxville, here I come.

Nora exited the dorm and headed for the bus depot.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, stranger.” Rosalie came up alongside her. “You must be working hard.”

“I have been.”

“Don’t forget to have fun. We’ve started a bowling league. Why don’t you come play with us?”

“I don’t know how to bowl.”

“Neither do we.” Rosalie laughed easily. “But we throw the ball at the pins anyway. It’s fun.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think that sport is for me.”

“They have tennis courts. Do you play?”

“I haven’t played in years. I was always too busy studying.”

“Ah, a bookworm. Now I’ve got your number. There’s a library.”

“I know. I’ve been there.”

“How about roller skating? Everyone loves to roller skate.”

“I don’t have skates.”

“You can rent them.” They’d reached the bus depot. Rosalie put a hand on Nora’s arm. “Come on, live a little. I’ll get a bunch of the girls together after dinner tonight and we can all go over to the roller rink together. Please, say yes.”

Nora sighed. It wouldn’t kill you to get out for a bit. The bus to Y-12 pulled in. “That’s my lift.”

“Come skating tonight. You won’t regret it.”

She was quite certain she would regret it, but it was hard to say no to Rosalie. “Okay.”

“Yeah? Okay. I’ll pick you up at your room for dinner. Seven o’clock?”

“Sure.”

Nora boarded the bus. Her first stop this morning was Building 9201-1. Alpha-1, as everyone referred to it, was almost complete. The ninety-six “race tracks,” so named for their oval design shape, ran one hundred twenty-two feet long, seventy-seven feet wide, and rose fifteen feet up in the air. She’d been warned that the electromagnets between the collection tanks were so strong that they could ruin the mechanism in a person’s watch simply by standing on the catwalk above the assembly.

She walked the length of the cubicle control room. She would have to get used to the new terminology. Around here, everyone called the calutrons D units, and the girls—her girls—were being told that their job title was cubicle operator.