A Filbert Is a Nut, Page 2

slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the littledoctor.

  "Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?"

  "We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way herenow," the doctor snapped.

  * * * * *

  Outside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians movedaround the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examiningevery tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at onetime.

  A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of thetent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle.

  She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunnedexpression.

  "He did make an atom bomb," she cried.

  Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leapedforward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint.

  At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staffroom of the hospital administration building.

  Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on theedge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fiston the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce withevery beat.

  "It's ridiculous," Thurgood roared. "We'll all be the laughingstocks ofthe world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. Youare all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out."

  At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at thebroadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists,strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shatteredweariness.

  "Miss Abercrombie," one of the physicists spoke up gently, "you say thatafter the patients had departed the building, you looked again atFunston's work?"

  The therapist nodded unhappily.

  "And you say that, to the best of your knowledge," the physicistcontinued, "there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay."

  "I'm positive that's all there was in it," Miss Abercrombie cried.

  There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AECman present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. Theyconferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke.

  "That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funstonanother chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision."

  Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling.

  "Are you crazy?" he screamed. "You want to get us all thrown into thisfilbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if theyever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second,anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot withthe IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay?

  "They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!"

  At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer'sgreatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with anofficer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a smallside door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minuteslater, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community anddrove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end ofthe runway with propellers turning.

  Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn tosecrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboardthe plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of MissAbercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and intothe night skies.

  The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds inthe Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shackmiles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists andmilitary men huddled around a small wooden table.

  There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump ofmodeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket offThaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the wearyMiss Abercrombie.

  "Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the samekind of clay he used before?"

  "I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at thehospital," she replied, "and it's the same amount."

  Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack withThaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.

  She smiled at Funston.

  "Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston," she said. "These nice men havebrought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like theone you made for me yesterday."

  A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around theshack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, hewalked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the dampclay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's topatomic scientists watched in fascination.

  His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clayparts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere infront of him.

  Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over thetable just as he had done the previous day. From time to time sheglanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funstonfinished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tensesilence.

  "Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow." Shelooked at the men and nodded her head.

  The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid ofclay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted himfrom the shack.

  There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. Theexperts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhereand cameras clicking.

  For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clayand photographed it from every angle.

  Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles downrange where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring ofstony-faced military policemen.

  "I told you this whole thing was asinine," Thurgood snarled as thescientific teams trooped into the bunker.

  Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the opendoor, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a suddencry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.

  A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun litthe dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated doorslammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure.

  * * * * *

  Six hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his straitjacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over thePotomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.

  In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff werecloseted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and hisbaker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk driftedacross a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat ina neatly-tied bundle.

  In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chillingglance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.

  "I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel," the generalsaid coldly, "but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insaneasylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sitthere and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomicdevices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them."

  The general paused.

  "Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceshipsout of sponge rubber?" the general added bitingly.

  In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panoramaof the Washington landscape. He stared hard.

  In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of theWashington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar,the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into spaceon a tail of flame.

>   THE END