O'Leary rolled his eyes to heaven. And this was the warden--couldn't
even understand shoptalk from the mouths of his own inmates!
He translated: "He got orders from the prison underground to
short-circuit the electronic units in the tangler circuit. They
threatened to kill him if he didn't."
The warden drummed with his fingers on the desk.
"The tangler field, eh? My, yes. That is important. You'd better get it
fixed, O'Leary. Right away."
"Fixed? Warden, who's going to fix it? You know as well as I do that
every mechanic in the prison is a con. Even if one of the guards would
do a thing like that--and I'd bust him myself if he did!--he wouldn't
know where to start. That's mechanic work."
The warden swallowed. He had to admit that O'Leary was right. Naturally
nobody but a mechanic--and a specialist electrician from a particular
subgroup of the greaser class at that--could fix something like the
tangler field generators.
He said absently: "Well, that's true enough. After all, 'Specialization
is the goal of civilization,' you know."
O'Leary took a deep breath. He needed it.