Nora pinched the bridge of her nose, where yet another tension headache was taking up residence. She held the phone to her ear with the other hand. “We cannot continue on this way. Every day at Alpha-1, on multiple shifts, we’ve got equipment failures. The machines are shorting out and shutting down; the needles are going haywire… Respectfully, sir, it’s not my girls that are the weak link. I’ve sat down at the cubicle and gotten the same results. There’s something wrong in the design. It’s not my job to figure out what that is, but if someone doesn’t figure it out soon, we’ll all be wasting our time here.”

“I understand your frustration. Do the best you can. Try to keep morale up. We’re working on solutions over here. I’m sending a couple of my assistants back to help you. General Groves and I are in close contact about the situation.”

“Thank you, Dr. Lawrence. I appreciate your assistance with this.”

“And I appreciate your honesty and your discretion. It’s the reason I made sure your clearance was at the highest level. I’ll be in touch.”

Nora hung up the phone. Dr. Lawrence had thanked her for her discretion. Presumably, even though she hadn’t said as much, he surmised that she’d examined the entire process. He would have been right.

After Nora determined that the malfunctions weren’t due to operator error, she met with the supervisors who were in charge of each of the other aspects of the process. Whatever the flaw was, neither Nora nor the other supervisors had been able to identify or correct it.

She buried her head in her hands. Failure was not an option, and with the Alpha-2 and 3 and Beta-2 plants about to come on line, whatever the problem with the calutrons was, it needed to be rectified quickly.

In the meantime, she would keep her girls working, oversee the training of new hires, and try to keep up morale. It was all she could do.

Mary hung up the last dress and arranged her shoes in the bottom of the closet. A knock on the door startled her. “Who is it?”

“It’s Peggy from next door.”

She opened the door. “I’m Mary. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. Like I said, I’m Peggy. I thought I’d stop by and welcome you. The girl who had this room before you didn’t last very long and I was sorry I never got the chance to meet her.”