Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/44

 same price. Most of Marcus' other customers felt the same way."

That was better. It was an accident, then, that more than one component was in the same plant. An accident that couldn't be very well foreseen. Faced with the necessity of getting a new subcontractor, or—

That implied direct knowledge. On whose part? Did Tosdal know? Did Triesting? If each handled only one component, there were seven components to the assembly—That meant perhaps a maximum of seven different companies similar to Tosdal and Triesting doing the cover-up—for one assembly.



One town. Temple City. Two Companies. Triesting. Tosdal. Temple. Triesting. Tosdal. T T T. That couldn't mean anything, of course.

Could it?

Suppose he took the telephone book and found five more companies beginning with the letter T?

He went through the classified book three times before he had what he wanted. It took a month, working at home and at the office. His list had to be made carefully. Better to include too many than exclude one. If he had been doing such a list earlier, he would have left out a specialties company. What he wanted was anyone registered as a possibility to do assembly work. Leave out fabrications for the moment. Risky, but leave them out for the moment, and assume the pattern would carry through.

He was left with the names of seventy-three companies beginning with the letter T.

Now what? It seemed obvious. There were several ways. Direct observation. Employment of an agency. Cautious telephone calls. A phony questionnaire.

No, he wasn't ready to go to an agency. Too much danger of a leak. Too much chance of a leak on telephone calls, or questionnaire. Only surely secret way was the long way—observation.

He marked a city map carefully, to show the location of all the companies on his list, then he started driving. 44