“Engineering attitude,” Dave replied. “Scientists worry about how and why things happen. Engineers don’t care. We just want to know what happens. Then we go on from there.”

“I’ve heard engineers at Livermore talk the same way,” Dale said, his voice dry as a martini wished it were.

“I bet you have. You need people like that to keep the theoretical guys from inflating like helium balloons and floating away from reality,” Dave said.

“Play nice, boys.” Jack Porter sounded amused. Then his head swung toward Jerry and Steve. “Okay. You two got in, and—”

“Jerry got us in,” Steve interrupted. “Give him the credit. You’d blame him if we were still stuck outside that door.”

The security director plainly didn’t want to give Jerry any credit. He muttered something that sounded like, “Elvish!” But then he eyed Jerry. “Do you think you can pull your trick twice?”

“I’ll try. That’s as much as I can tell you right now. I’m not the only player in the game, remember. Humpty Dumpty’s playing, too,” Jerry said.

“If you do get in again…” No, Jack didn’t seem happy about dealing in uncertainties. “If you get in, what do you think you should do when you explore more of the interior?”

Slowly, Jerry answered. “Well, that yellow line on the corridor wall is interesting, because we didn’t see anything else like it. Maybe we should follow the yellow brick line?”

“Brick?” Jack didn’t get it. That made Jerry sad. He’d had the Oz books read to him, then read them himself. He’d seen The Wizard of Oz a bunch of times, the first several on a black-and-white TV that muted the difference between Kansas and Technicolor Oz.

Steve understood him. Dale and Dave did, too. Dale said, “I think Jerry has the right idea.”

“I agree,” Steve said. “Something that breaks a pattern needs to be looked at more closely than the elements that make up the pattern.”

“Oz. You were talking about Oz.” Jack sounded accusing. The light had gone on—more slowly than it might have, but it had.

“Who, me?” Jerry’d had a light go on more slowly than it might have, too. He wished he’d BSed about how he’d managed to get the starship to open up for him. Now that the CIA guys knew, too, they could beat the outer door the same way he had. He thought they could, anyhow.

“You’ll carry walkie-talkies. With luck, they’ll let you communicate with us after you get out of sight,” Dave said.

“We’d have to take out our mouthpieces inside Humpty Dumpty to use them,” Jerry pointed out. “Do you want us doing that? I mean, the temperature was okay and all, but we don’t know if that was real air in there, even if it mixed okay with what we brought in when we went inside.”