Free Scandal in the Secret City by Diane Fanning Page A

be nice to be married to someone who treated me as an equal, who saw value in my work as much as in their own – one who didn’t feel a need to prove their manhood through procreation. It seems as if all my life, the world has been in turmoil. Why would I want to bring a child into this mess? Why wouldn’t I want to have control of my own life, since there is no way I can control the world and its chaos?’
    ‘We’re women. That’s just what we do,’ Ann said.
    ‘This woman will not.’
    ‘Amazing. My mom needs to meet you – she doesn’t seem to believe there are other options.’ From that idea, a Thanksgiving dinner invitation followed the next day.

EIGHT
    B efore leaving work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I went up to the Calutron to look it over while it was in operation and to plan my course of action for the next morning. As I walked around the circumference, observing the moving parts, I heard a belligerent voice that seemed to be directed at me.
    ‘Hey, what’re you doing up here, miss? You’re no Calutron girl.’
    I turned around and faced a middle-aged, balding man with a bulbous nose and downturned mouth. I read his badge and said, ‘I’m authorized to be here, Mr DeVries.’ Then, I turned away from him and back to the Calutron.
    ‘Don’t turn your back on me, missy. Let me see the clearance code on your badge or I’ll call security.’
    I really wanted to ignore him and his rude request but thought better of it. If he did call security it might cause a lengthy delay in my work.
    He looked hard and long at my identification as if he were interpreting a coded message and said, ‘OK. OK. You have a right to be here but that doesn’t mean you have a right to monkey with the equipment. Hey, wait a minute – Elizabeth Clark? Aren’t you that girl scientist rooming with the Nance girl from over in Lynchburg?’
    ‘You know Ruth?’
    ‘Nah, never met her. But I know her sister Irene.’
    ‘How nice for you,’ I said. ‘Can I get back to work now?’
    ‘Don’t get all high hat with me, missy. You might be a scientist but you’re still a girl and I’m responsible for the functioning of the machinery.’
    I stepped close enough to him to poke a finger in his chest. ‘If you don’t scram right away and let me do my work in peace, I will call security.’ I spun away from him and acted engrossed while I listened for noises of his departure. For a minute, all I heard was the sound of his breathing. Then, I heard his feet shuffling away as he mumbled, ‘You dames are all alike.’
    I was out of bed before dawn on Thanksgiving morning, dressing as quietly as I could, trying not to disturb Ruth’s sleep. She’d gone to bed in a blue mood the night before. Poor thing had never been away from home on Thanksgiving and like most of the Calutron girls, a trip home wasn’t possible because of the time to travel and the gas needed for the journey. She’d be having dinner in the cafeteria with her sister.
    I hadn’t found the contamination source yet but I had a number of analytes to process. If all went well, I could accomplish that over the weekend. This morning, I’d use my physics background more than my knowledge of chemistry to try to find something suspicious.
    The quiet within the Calutron building was spooky. The huge machinery cast tall shadows in the dim lighting and the absence of employees made it feel like a ghost town. I needed to look inside so I disassembled a portion of the exterior housing of the massive machine. Every little clink of a tool against metal echoed throughout the building adding to the eeriness of the atmosphere. I compared what I found inside the machinery to the engineering specifications.
    Nothing seemed amiss – every nook and cranny of the equipment appeared to be in compliance with the diagrams. Still, there was a problem, which possibly meant a flaw in the design itself. I pulled out a silver wire wound electromagnet, turning it around to view its