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want you to wipe off your muddy foot before you go inside.’
    What kind of place was this? No one surprised by someone coming to work in bare feet? This really was a hillbilly town. Even at the farm in Virginia, I was expected to exhibit more decorum unless I was mucking the stables or shoveling the chicken coop.
    Not knowing what else to do, I limped into the laboratory area feeling mortified – one shoe off, one shoe on. How was I going to explain this to Charlie Morton? To my surprise, he looked down at my feet and grinned. ‘I see you’ve gotten your official welcome to Clinton Engineer Works. Everybody loses shoes in the mud. We’re building changing houses attached to the buildings with lockers and sinks for cleaning up, but they’re not finished yet. And soon the boardwalks will connect just about every place here so you’ll be able to walk on them instead of slogging in the mud. In the meantime, did you pack a pair of galoshes?’
    Was he really undisturbed by my dishevelment? Or was he just humoring me? ‘No. I didn’t. I didn’t know where I was going until I got here,’ I said.
    ‘Right. Well, you can’t buy any now with the rubber shortage going on – and it probably won’t ease up till the war is over. Do you have a pair at home that somebody could ship down to you?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘Write a letter back home tonight and get them to do that. Just remember, all your mail goes through censors so don’t say anything about this place or where it is located. You can mention the abundance of mud – but no other details. You’ll have your official orientation tomorrow and they’ll fill you in on all the rules. A lot of what you hear won’t be applicable to you because you have clearance for more information. Still, it will be useful.’
    ‘If I can’t tell my Aunt Dorothy where I am, how can she ship anything to me?’
    ‘Everything goes to a drop box. I’ll jot the address down for you so you have it. Now, let’s give you a tour and you can get a general idea of what is going on here. In your position, you will know more than most of the other chemists. Remember not to volunteer information to anyone – or answer any questions. If they don’t know, they probably don’t need to know.
    ‘As you see, our laboratory is in the beta chemistry building, the second section of this structure.’ A sparkling room of long black tables and fume hoods looked capable of housing dozens of scientists. ‘You and I will have to figure out what we will need and order the supplies and instrumentation so it’s all ready by the time the others arrive.’
    I struggled to forget about the condition of my feet and focus on what Charlie was saying but every uneven step refreshed my memory of my encounter with the mud.
    ‘Follow me to the first section,’ he said walking up the corridor. ‘This is the alpha chemistry building, for bulk treatment. They’ll be purifying the tube alloy and turning it into tube alloy tetrachloride.’
    The long lab counters were all framed but only one section of stations was completed with fume hoods in place.
    ‘They’ll be stocking their own lab when they arrive so we don’t have to worry about them. Our lab will be testing their results, looking for ways to improve methodology and tracking the efficiency of the process. Are you wearing a watch?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, holding up my wrist.
    ‘Take it off and leave it in here,’ he said as he unbuckled his watch band and laid it on the small counter.
    How odd? Shoes are optional and watches forbidden? I complied and I also discarded my only shoe since the sound of my uneven walk was nerve-wracking. My thoughts must have been clearly etched on my face because when Charlie looked at me, he laughed again.
    ‘You’ll see why in a minute,’ he said. ‘We’ll also handle any problems connected to chemistry in the third section where the Calutron is housed.’
    ‘Calutron?’
    ‘You’ve heard of the cyclotron out at the