Make Mine Homogenized

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction, April, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  MAKE MINE HOMOGENIZED

  By RICK RAPHAEL

  Illustrated by Freas

  Anyone looking for guaranteed sound science will have to lookelsewhere. But if it's fun you want ... try the world's most potenteggnog!

  "Shoo," Hetty Thompson cried, waving her battered old felt hat at theclucking cluster of hens eddying around her legs as she plowed throughthe flock towards the chicken house. "Scat. You, Solomon," she calledout, directing her words at the bobbing comb of the big roosterstrutting at the edge of the mob. "Don't just stand there like asatisfied cowhand after a night in Reno. Get these noisy females outtamy way." She batted at the hens and they scattered with angry squawksof protest.

  Hetty paused in the doorway of the chicken house to allow her eyes tobecome accustomed to the cool gloom after the bright glare of the ranchyard. She could feel the first trickles of sweat forming under theman's shirt she was wearing as the hot, early morning Nevada sun beatdown on her back in the doorway.

  Moving carefully but quickly through the nests, she reached and gropedfor the eggs she knew would be found in the scattered straw. As sheplaced each find carefully in the bucket she carried, her lips moved ina soundless count. When she had finished, she straightened up and leftthe chicken house, her face reflecting minor irritation.

  Again the hens swirled about her, hoping for the handfuls of crackedcorn she usually tossed to them. On the other side of the yard Solomonstepped majestically along the edge of the vegetable garden, nevercrossing the hoed line separating garden from yard.

  "You'd better stay over there, you no-account Lothario," Hetty growled."Five eggs short this morning and all you do is act like you were justthe business agent for this bunch of fugitives from a dumpling pot."Solomon cocked his head and stared Hetty down. She paused at the footof the backporch steps and threw the rooster a final remark. "You don'tdo any better than this you're liable to wind up in that pot yourself."Solomon gave a scornful cluck. "Better still, I'll get me a youngrooster in here and take over your job." Solomon let out a squawk andtook out at a dead run, herding three hens before him towards thechicken house.

  With a satisfied smile of triumph, Hetty climbed the steps and crossedto the kitchen door. She turned and looked back across the yard towardsthe barn and corrals.

  "Barneeeeey," Hetty yelled. "Ain't you finished with that milking yet?"

  "Comin' now, Miz Thompson," came the reply from the barn. Hetty let thescreen door slam behind her as she walked into the kitchen and placedthe bucket of eggs on the big work table. She had her arm up to wipeher moist forehead on the sleeve of her shirt when she spotted thegolden egg lying in the middle of the others in the galvanized bucket.

  She froze in the arm-lifted position for several seconds, staring atthe dully glowing egg. Then she slowly reached out and picked it up. Itwas slightly heavier than a regular egg, but for the dull, gold-bronzemetallic appearance of the shell, looked just like any of the othertwenty-odd eggs in the bucket. She was still holding it in the palm ofher hand when the kitchen door again slammed and the handy man limpedinto the room. He carried two pails of milk across the kitchen and setthem down near the sink.

  "Whatcha lookin' at, Miz Thompson?" Barney Hatfield asked.

  Hetty frowned at the egg in her hand without answering. Barney limpedaround the side of the table for a closer look. Sunlight streamingthrough the kitchen windows glinted on the shell of the odd egg.Barney's eyes grew round. "Now ain't that something," he whispered inawe.

  Hetty started as though someone had snapped their fingers in front ofher staring eyes. Her normal look of practical dubiousness returned.

  "Huh," she snorted. "Even had me fooled for a second. Something wrongwith this egg but it sure is shootin' ain't gold. One of them fool hensmust of been pecking in the fertilizer storeroom and got herself anoverdose of some of them minerals in that stuff.

  "What are you staring at, you old fool," she glared at Barney. "Itain't gold." Hetty laid the egg at one side of the table. She walked tothe sink and took a clean, two-gallon milk can from the drainboard andset it in the sink to fill it from the pails of rich, frothy milkBarney had brought in the pails.

  "Sally come fresh this morning, Miz Thompson," he said. "Got herself areal fine little bull calf."

  Hetty looked at the two pails of milk. "Well, where's the rest of themilk, then?"

  "That's Queenie's milk," Barney said. "Sally's is still out on theporch."

  "Well bring it in before the sun clabbers it."

  "Can't," Barney said.

  Hetty swung around and glared at him. "What do you mean, you can't? Yousuddenly come down with the glanders?"

  "No'm, it's just that Sally's milk ain't no good," he replied.

  * * * * *

  A frown spread over Hetty's face as she hoisted one of the milk pailsand began pouring into the can in the sink. "What's wrong with it,Barney? Sally seem sick or something?" she asked.

  Barney scratched his head. "I don't rightly know, Miz Thompson. Thatmilk looks all right, or at least, almost all right. It's kinda thinand don't have no foam like you'd expect milk to have. But mostly, itsure don't smell right and it danged well don't taste right.

  "_Phooey._" He made a face at the memory of the taste. "I stuck myfinger in it when it looked kinda queer, and took a taste. It shoretasted lousy."

  "You probably been currying that mangey old horse of yours before youwent to milking," Hetty snorted, "and tasted his cancerous old hide onyour fingers. I've told you for the last time to wash your hands beforeyou go to milking them cows. I didn't pay no eighteen hundred dollarsfor that prize, registered Guernsey just to have you give her bag feverwith your dirty hands."

  "That ain't so, Miz Thompson," Barney cried indignantly. "I did too,wash my hands. Good, too. I wuzn't near my horse this morning. Thatmilk just weren't no good."

  Hetty finished pouring the milk into the cans and after putting thecans in the refrigerator, wiped her hands on her jeans and went outonto the porch, Barney trailing behind her. She bent over and sniffedat the two milk pails setting beside the door. "_Whew_," sheexclaimed, "it sure does smell funny. Hand me that dipper, Barney."

  Barney reached for a dipper hanging on a nail beside the kitchen door.Hetty dipped out a small quantity of the milk, sipped, straightened upwith a jerk and spewed the milk out into the yard. "Yaawwwk," shespluttered, "that tastes worse 'n Diesel oil."

  She stirred distastefully at the swirling, flat-looking liquid in thepails and then turned back to the kitchen. "I never saw the like ofit," she exclaimed. "Chickens come out with some kind of sorry-lookingegg and now, in the same morning, an eighteen hundred dollarregistered, fresh Guernsey gives out hogwash instead of milk." Shestared thoughtfully across the yard at the distant mountains, nowshimmering in the hot, midmorning sun. "Guess we could swill the hogswith that milk, rather'n throw it out, Barney. I never seen anythingthem Durocs wouldn't eat. When you get ready to put the other swill inthe cooker, toss that milk in with it and cook it up for the hogs."

  Hetty went back into her kitchen and Barney turned and limped acrossthe yard to the tractor shed. He pulled the brim of his sweat-stainedStetson over his eyes and squinted south over the heat-dancing sage andsparse grasslands of Circle T range. Dust devils were pirouetting inthe hazy distance towards the mountains forming a corridor leading tothe ranch. A dirt road led out of the yard and crossed an oiled countyroad about five miles
south of the ranch. The county road was now theonly link the Circle T had to the cattle shipping pens at Carson City.The dirt road arrowed south across the range but fifteen miles from theranch, a six-strand, new, barbed-wire fence cut the road. A white metalsign with raised letters proclaimed "Road Closed. U.S. GovernmentMilitary Reservation. Restricted Area. Danger--Peligre. Keep Out."

  The taut bands of wire stretched east and west of the road for morethan twenty miles in each direction, with duplicates of the metal signhung on the fence every five hundred yards. Then the wires turned southfor nearly a hundred