Story of atomic espionage; in the empty and echoing desert wastes of New Mexico a small group of government specialists worked on a highly secret military project; given the isolation, riding herd on the physicists was a relatively easy job for the Security Chief, but it was also boring, and he was sure it was mutual loneliness and the mocking silence of the empty spaces that led to his affair with Sarah; he couldn't have been more mistaken; almost too late he learned that the laughing promise in her tawny eyes was not a prelude to love but an invitation to death and dishonor.