GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

DESERT RECLAMATION TEST STATION

Leavitt drove through the gates and parked by the wooden building. He left the keys on the dashboard and got out. Hall followed him.

"Now what?"

"Inside," Leavitt said. They entered the building, coming directly into a small room. A man in a Stetson hat, checked sport shirt, and string tie sat at a rickety desk. He was reading a newspaper and, like the man at the gate, eating his lunch. He looked up and smiled pleasantly.

"Howdy," he said.

"Hello," Leavitt said.

"Help you folks?"

"Just passing through," Leavitt said. "On the way to Rome."

The man nodded. "Have you got the time?"

"My watch stopped yesterday," Leavitt said.

"Durn shame," the man said.

"It's because of the heat."

The ritual completed, the man nodded again. And they walked past him, out of the anteroom and down a corridor. The doors had hand-printed labels: "Seedling Incubation"; "Moisture Control"; "Soil Analysis." A half-dozen people were at work in the building, all of them dressed casually, but all of them apparently busy.

"This is a real agricultural station," Leavitt said. "If necessary, that man at the desk could give you a guided tour, explaining the purpose of the station and the experiments that are going on. Mostly they are attempting to develop a strain of corn that can grow in low-moisture, high-alkalinity soil.

"And the Wildfire installation?"

"Here," Leavitt said. He opened a door marked "Storage" and they found themselves staring at a narrow cubicle lined with rakes and hoes and watering hoses.

"Step in," Leavitt said.

Hall did. Leavitt followed and closed the door behind him. Hall felt the floor sink and they began to descend, rakes and hoses and all.

In a moment, he found himself in a modern, bare room, lighted by banks of cold overhead fluorescent lights. The walls were painted red. The only object in the room was a rectangular, waist-high box that reminded Hall of a podium. It had a glowing green glass top.

"Step up to the analyzer," Leavitt said. "Place your hands flat on the glass, palms down."

Hall did. He felt a faint tingling in his fingers, and then the machine gave a buzz.

"All right. Step back." Leavitt placed his hands on the box, waited for the buzz, and then said, "Now we go over here. You mentioned the security arrangements; I'll show them to you before we enter Wildfire."

He nodded to a door across the room.

"What was that thing?"

"Finger- and palm-print analyzer," Leavitt said. "It is fully automatic. Reads a composite of ten thousand dermatographic lines so it can't make a mistake; in its storage banks it has a record of the prints of everyone cleared to enter Wildfire."

Leavitt pushed through the door.

They were faced with another door, marked SECURITY, which slid back noiselessly. They entered a darkened room in which a single man sat before banks of green dials.

"Hello, John," Leavitt said to the man. "How are you?"