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some radical technology and the capital with which to develop it."
    "IF it's ours, Jim," Ian said. "They both really belong to that Kruger woman."
    "Who is irretrievably dead, with no apparent heirs or relatives. I'm sure that she would have wanted someone to carry on her work. Now, the question is, what do we do with our windfall?"
    "Hey, you might call it a windfall, but for Ian and me it was pretty damned expensive. He lost half his foot, and my radiation poisoning cost me every hair on my body. I'll be on chemotherapy for a year, and— "
    "Gentlemen, in our ignorance we have sustained accidents and injuries, but nothing devastating. When you consider that Ian couldn't dance before his accident, and the fact that you weren't beautiful with your hair, you must conclude that your collective losses aren't that severe."
    "Yeah, but I still think you ought to pitch in your part. Like maybe your left testicle. What say, Ian?"
    "I think it's time that you cut your Polish blarney. Nobody made me stick my foot into that hole, and none of us knew about the radiation. If it hadn't been for Jim's quick thinking, we probably wouldn't have either the money or those bits of circuits. The only fair way to handle this is as an even three-way partnership."
    "An excellent suggestion. I second it." Hasenpfeffer smiled.
    "Oh, what the hell. I'll third it."
    "We are agreed, then. The next obvious question is, 'Besides the money, what exactly do we have?' Tom, you've had time to look over that circuit. Could you duplicate it?"
    "Sure. No sweat. It's all standard parts, so I could probably get it together in a week or so. But I couldn't tell you why it did whatever it did. And I'd want to be about four miles away when we turned it on."
    "You feel that we could produce something useful in a relatively short time?"
    "Well, that depends on what you mean by useful. Lookit, a few ounces of electronics stuff did about as much damage as a two-thousand-pound bomb. The Air Farce would call that damn useful."
    "You are suggesting that we develop the military aspects of this?"
    "Hell, no! If uncle found out about this thing, we'd be under tight security for the rest of our lives. Look, do you know what it's like working in a government top-secret area? Showing your badge to armed guards six times a day? Filling out forms in triplicate to get a resistor? Having a TV camera in the john watching you crap?" I shivered.
    "More important," Ian said. "If we develop the military side of this before we have the civilian uses on the market, we might never be allowed to develop the industrial products at all."
    "Then you see commercial uses in this?"
    "Dozens of them, so many that I feel like a phlogiston chemist who just got a good look at the Periodic Table of Elements. Think about mining. Put one of those circuits against the side of a cliff. Turn it on, and before the chips come back, get a conveyor belt in there to haul them out. Then put another circuit against the far wall and repeat the process. I tell you that we could tunnel at a cost of a few dollars a foot, where the competition would have to charge thousands!"
    "I see. And the difference between those two figures is called profit?"
    "Sure. You think I'm a 1930s style socialist? But more important, think about what we could do with cheap tunnels. A lot of mountain ranges—the Rockies and the Andes—are too wet on one side and too dry on the other. Think about big tunnels to carry irrigation water to the deserts. Or, think about an underground highway system. No snow on the roads to cause accidents. No rain to wash out bridges. No bridges at all, for that matter. No fog or other problems with visibility. No dogs or other animals to hit. No children to worry about. Without all the obstructions, it would be easy to automate, so bad drivers wouldn't be a problem, either! I tell you it would save billions of dollars and fifty thousand lives a year!"
    "So you are suggesting that we become involved with the