Dr. O by Robert W. Walker Page A

to one knee. Early rushed to what he thought was a woman in distress when a screwdriver-sized hypodermic was suddenly twisting in his stomach. Snatched out, with Early staring at his attacker, the bloody tool suddenly bored into the electrical engineer's throat, cutting off his scream, toppling him over a catwalk. His body plummeted to the ground floor and was hidden among boilers that sent up a terrible racket.
    Ovierto was pleased. He'd have the uniform, badge, and keys without getting the clothing sullied. He climbed down the metal stairs toward the dead man, who had ingested enough poison to kill ten men. He tossed away his wig as he climbed down and tore at a handkerchief to wipe away his eye shadow, rouge and lipstick. This done, he bent over Early and began to strip him. It was going so well.
    Then he discovered the small two-way radio on Early's belt. It was not sending. Early was FBI. The building was crawling with FBI, alerted by Thorpe. Maybe even the Coca-Cola guys were FBI.
    "Well, now the wolfs in the fold," he said to Early, snatching his gun from inside his uniform. He searched for and found Jack Harris's ID and FBI badge as well. He then picked up the radio so as to better monitor the movements of the others. He wondered if Deter had gone nuts yet. It didn't seem so, not with the radio quiet.
    It would come soon, drawing them like flies to Deter. Poor Deter.
    He climbed back up to where Harris was, reading the building specs, and he studied them for some moments, memorizing what he needed and moving on.
     
    Inspector Donna Thorpe's helicopter flew over Fermilab, and she studied the details on the ground. The cars in the lot thinned out quickly now. The enormous Fermilab was a monument to nuclear physics, built by the U.S. Government; all its research was government-funded. From it had come an array of nuclear physics by-products and a better understanding of space and the universe. The huge circle at the rear of the building, the length of several football fields, appeared to be a giant racetrack; in fact it was the world's first nuclear "loop." Inside the accelerator loop, atoms were bombarded against one another and "smashed" to create infinitely smaller pieces of matter, the behavior and nature of which was carefully scrutinized and monitored by the sophisticated computers and analyzed by the geniuses employed here.
    From where she sat she could see both the industrial area and, in the distance, Fermilab Village, with its empty farmhouses and a grazing herd of protected buffalos milling about. She could see the Geodesic Dome, the Proton Area, the Master Substation, and the Meson Detector Building. She saw all roads leading in and out of Argonne National Laboratories, which was bordered by Kirk and Butterfield roads. All those entrances were now being blocked on orders.
    She had been unable to stop Harris and his three friends from interfering with Swisher and Ovierto, but she had him in the net now and that was what counted.
    She stared again at the accelerator, imagining the speed with which the atoms flew through the concrete-lined tunnel —the speed of light. For a moment she wondered if Dr. Maurice Ovierto's brain did not work like the atom smasher, ever moving in heats to destroy and reduce and reduce and reduce. It might be a fitting place to see him reduced to a sniveling, pleading pulp of flesh.
    The atom smasher was so large that it could not be seen in its entirety except from the air. Like her plan, she thought. So far, nothing untoward had happened.
    She tried to raise Harris again, but the man seemed to be deliberately ignoring her calls. He'd pay for his insubordination. She cursed him for his arrogance.
    "Take me to the top of the building," she ordered the pilot.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    Despite herself, she had to get inside... had to get close. She could smell Ovierto, another and even more arrogant bastard. He was here. So close it gave her goose bumps.
     
    The specs had shown the service