AFTER TEN MINUTES there was complete quiet.
"What about the insects?" asked Vaughn.
"They're dead," said Battle, rising and stretching. "Their respiratory system can't keep up with the growth. They were good for about ten minutes, then they keel over. Their tracheae can't take in enough oxygen to keep them going, which is a very good thing for the New Jersey countryside."
He strolled over to the vast pile of rubble and began turning over timbers, Miss Millicent assisting him.
"Ah!" he grunted. "Here it is!" He had found the body of an apple-green young lady whose paint was beginning to peel, revealing a healthy pink beneath. With many endearing terms he brought her out of her swoon as Miss Millicent's eyebrows went higher and higher.
Finally she exploded, as the two were cozily settled on a mountainous upholstery-needle that had, at some time, got lost in the sofa.
"Just when, Lieutenant, did you find out that these people weren't invaders from an asteroid?"
Rattle raised his eyebrows and kissed the girl. "Have no fear, darling,"
he said. "A gentleman never—er—kisses—and tells.
Gomez
Now that I'm a cranky, constipated old man I can afford to say that the younger generation of scientists makes me sick to my stomach. Short-order fry cooks of destruction, they hear through the little window the dim order: "Atom bomb rare, with cobalt sixty!" and sing it back and rattle their stinking skillets and sling the deadly hash—just what the customer ordered, with never a notion invading their smug, too-heated havens that there's a small matter of right and wrong that takes precedence even over their haute cuisine.
There used to be a slew of them who yelled to high heaven about it.
Weiner, Urey, Szilard, Morrison—dead now, and worse. Unfashionable.
The greatest of them you have never heard of. Admiral MacDonald never did clear the story. He was Julio Gomez, and his story was cleared yesterday by a fellow my Jewish friends call Malach Hamovis, the Hovering Angel of Death. A black-bordered letter from Rosa advised me that Malach Hamovis had come in on runway six with his flaps down and picked up Julio at the age of thirty-nine. Pneumonia.
"But," Rosa painfully wrote, "Julio would want you to know he died not too unhappy, after a good though short life with much of satisfaction . .
."
I think it will give him some more satisfaction, wherever he is, to know that his story at last is getting told.
It started twenty-two years ago with a routine assignment on a crisp October morning. I had an appointment with Dr. Sugarman, the head of the physics department at the University. It was the umpth anniversary of something or other—first atomic pile, the test A-bomb, Nagasaki—I don't remember what, and the Sunday editor was putting together a page on it. My job was to interview the three or four University people who were Manhattan District grads.
I found Sugarman in his office at the top of the modest physics building's square gothic tower, brooding through a pointed-arch window at the bright autumn sky. He was a tubby, jowly little fellow. I'd been seeing him around for a couple of years at testimonial banquets and press conferences, but I didn't expect him to remember me. He did, though, and even got the name right.
"Mr. Vilchek?" he beamed. "From the Tribune?"
"That's right, Dr. Sugarman. How are you?"
"Fine; fine. Sit down, please. Well, what shall we talk about?"
"Well, Dr. Sugarman, I'd like to have your ideas on the really fundamental issues of atomic energy, A-bomb control and so on. What in your opinion is the single most important factor in these problems?"
His eyes twinkled; he was going to surprise me. "Education!" he said, and leaned back waiting for me to register shock.
I registered. "That's certainly a different approach, doctor. How do you mean that, exactly?"
He said impressively: "Education—technical education—is the key to the underlying issues of our time. I am deeply concerned over the unawareness of the general public to the meaning and accomplishments of science. People underrate me—underrate science, that is —because they do not understand science. Let me show you something." He rummaged for a moment through papers on his desk and handed me a sheet of lined tablet paper covered with chicken-track handwriting. "A letter I got," he said. I squinted at the penciled scrawl and read:
October 12
Esteemed Sir:
Beg to introduce self to you the atomic Scientist as a youth 17 working with diligence to perfect self in Mathematical Physics. The knowledge of English is imperfect since am in New-York 1 year only from Puerto Rico and due to Father and Mother poverty must wash the dishes in the restaurant. So es teemed sir excuse imperfect English which will better.
I hesitate intruding your valuable Scientist time but hope you sometime spare minutes for diligents such as I. My difficulty is with neutron cross-section absorptionof boron steel in Reactor which theory I am working out Breeder reactors demand
for boron steel, compared with neutron cross-section absorption of for any Concrete with which I familiarize myself. Whence arises relationship
indicating only a fourfold breeder gain. Intuitively I dissatisfy with this gain and beg to intrude your time to ask wherein I neglect. With the most sincere thanks.
J. Gomez
% Porto Bello Lunchroom
124th St. & St. Nicholas Ave.
New-York, New-York
I laughed and told Dr. Sugarman appreciatively: "That's a good one. I wish our cranks kept in touch with us by mail, but they don't. In the newspaper business they come in-and demand to see the editor. Could I use it, by the way? The readers ought to get a boot out of it."
He hesitated and said: "All right—if you don't use my name. Just say 'a prominent physicist.' I didn't think it was too funny myself though, but I see your point, of course. The boy may be feebleminded—and he probably is—but he believes, like too many people, that science is just a bag of tricks that any ordinary person can acquire—"
And so on and so on.
I went back to the office and wrote the interview in twenty minutes. It took me longer than that to talk the Sunday editor into running the Gomez letter in a box on the atom-anniversary page, but he finally saw it my way. I had to retype it. If I'd just sent the letter down to the composing room as was, we would have had a strike on our hands.
On Sunday morning, at a quarter past six, I woke up to the tune of fists thundering on my hotel-room door. I found my slippers and bathrobe-and lurched Wearily across the room. They didn't wait for me to unlatch. The door opened. I saw one of the hotel clerks, the Sunday editor, a frosty-faced old man, and three hard-faced, hard-eyed young men. The hotel clerk mumbled and retreated and the others moved in.
"Chief," I asked the Sunday editor hazily, "what's going—?"
A hard-faced young man was standing with his back to the door; another was standing with his back to the window and the third was blocking the bathroom door. The icy old man interrupted me with a crisp authoritative question snapped at the editor. "You identify this man as Vilchek?"
The editor nodded.
"Search him," snapped the old man. The fellow standing guard at the window slipped up and frisked me for weapons while I sputtered incoherently and the Sunday editor avoided my eye.
When the search was over the frosty-faced old boy said to me: "I am Rear Admiral MacDonald, Mr. Vilchek. I'm here in my capacity as deputy director of the Office of Security and Intelligence, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Did you write this?" He thrust a newspaper clipping at my face.
I read, blearily:
WHAT'S SO TOUGH ABOUT A-SCIENCE?
TEENAGE POT-WASHER DOESN'T KNOW