"You're being rather gabby. It isn't like you."
Harding grunted. "I suppose you're right. This thing's been tense
enough. _He_ may have enjoyed it--except naturally at the very
end. Playing cat and mouse with the whole human race! Well, the mice
turned out to be a little too much for him, after all. But of course
nothing was certain until that last moment."
"Because none of you could be sure of anyone else?"
"That was it mainly. This was one operation where actually nobody
_could_ be in charge completely or completely trusted. There were
overlaps for everything, and no one knew what all of them were. When
Weldon came here today, he turned on a pocket transmitter so that
everything that went on while he was being instructed in the use of the
diex projector would be monitored outside.
"Outside was also a globe-scanner which duplicated the activities of
the one attached to the projector. We could tell at any moment to which
section of Earth the projector's diex field had been directed. That was
one of the overlapping precautions. It sounded like a standard check
run. There was a little more conversation between Lowry and Weldon
than was normal when you were the assistant operator, but that could
be expected. There were pauses while the projector was shut down and
preparations for the next experiment were made. Normal again. Then,
during one of the pauses, we got the signal that someone had just
entered Weldon's private nonspace conduit over there from this end.
That was _not_ normal, and the conduit was immediately sealed off
at both exits. One more overlapping precaution, you see ... and that
just happened to be the one that paid off!"