"I'll talk to the President. This calls for an executive decision. Meanwhile, I suggest you take that plane back to New York, Mr. Waverly. You hold onto Mr. Zorki until you hear from me. I'll leave the details to you. I'm sure our Washington scientists will want to know all there is to know about this—ah—discovery."
"Thank you, Mr. Secretary."
The Chiefs of Staff exchanged hopeless looks and incredulous gestures. A man of some merit and obvious importance had said a most remarkable thing. Was it true? Could it be true—even in this amazing day and age?
"Proof," barked the Chief of the Army. "You mentioned you had proof. What kind of proof can you have of a thing like this?"
Mr. Waverly stood up, bowing to the officials surrounding him. His leathery face was furrowed.
"The proof is Mr. Zorki himself. When we first got our hands on him, we put him through the usual tests. Physical, mental, etcetera. A Security precaution. There was an accident the first day in the laboratory. One of my men left a ray machine on which fires, literally, radium bullets. Mr. Zorki received enough radioactive particles to kill a roomful of people. He survived with no more than a mild headache. When we questioned him about it, he made his boast about his chemical. We believed him. The proof was before our eyes. That was about a week ago, and Mr. Zorki is still very much alive. Need I say more? Obviously, he himself is innoculated with this drug of his."
"I can think of an easier way to test him," the Army head growled. "Line him up on a firing range and cut him in two with some automatic weapons. Life everlasting! It's ridiculous, I tell you."
Mr. Waverly had no more to say of an important nature.
"Thank you for your attention. I'll be going now. Please remember that we at Uncle will do all in our power to hold on to Mr. Zorki."
The War Room was quiet long after Mr. Alexander Waverly had left the table.
Not even the outspoken Army Chief dared repeat his infamous suggestion. As practical as it would be, the government just didn't operate that way, did it?
Outside the Pentagon building, a long dark touring car was waiting for Mr. Waverly. He entered it quickly and settled himself in the interior. His kindly brown eyes were unaccustomably grim.
"Airport," he said tersely to his special driver.
The nation's capital lay quiet and serene in the gathering darkness; the mammoth illumination of numberless lights and glares gave the impression of an immense, lit-up stage where great dramas were about to unfold.
Mr. Waverly's special car shot away from the curb, wheels spinning on the gravel, grinding almost in protest.
Away All Girls
The explosion, when it came, was something to remember the rest of one's life.
For April, it marked the beginning of a new appreciation for the effects of a detonation under water. She had gambled on the physical principle that liquid would dissipate the bursting concussion of a charge of explosives. She had counted on the rolling force of torrents of water, pushed by the powerful thrust of the blast, wherever it might come from, to collapse the walls of the basement. But she had not reckoned on the maelstrom that would ensue.
Eternities seemed to have passed since she and Joanna Paula Jones (Lord, what a name that was!) first huddled in the locker. The swirling, dirty waters had flooded their narrow stall, rising in a steady surge. It had sloshed against their chests, reaching their chins—a thunderous cataract of noise.... And then had come the biggest noise of all. A cyclonic, ear-pounding whoooommmmpppp of sound and fury. The world had turned upside down.
A skyrocketing, roller-coastering universe in which the heavens opened wide and the waters of the deluge carried them away like two bits of flotsam in a roaring ocean. Wherever the explosives had been planted, there was no escaping the waterfall. The watery room split into mountainous columns of flying foam and rubble. The locker cubicle that held herself and the girl buckled apart, the tin sides flying. Their two helpless figures whipped forward, like two grains in an elevator chute. Tons of water and wreckage poured through the collapsed walls of the building where the mammoth, gaping holes allowed them passage. April tried to hang onto something, sought to reach the girl, but it was useless. She was swept along on a tidal wave of such force that the breath almost burst from her lungs.
It was a mad miracle of daylight and darkness, life and death.
They were outside the building now, shooting along a narrow, dim alley, their bodies buffeted and catapulted like corks in the sea. April let her body relax and go limp; it was the only thing her training had left her as a conditioned reflex. The rest was confusion, and the exhilarating hope that she might get out of this mess alive. She uttered one last prayer that Joanna Paula Jones would do likewise.
Behind her, she sensed the thundering vibration of destruction. There was a cataclysm of violence and disintegration in the air. Then her lungs were full of the foul, wretched water. She sputtered, struck her hands out like flails, trying blindly to check her headlong propulsion. It was a veritable Perils of Pauline situation—
It was then that her head struck the cobbled sides of the building.
The rest was darkness in the surrounding fierce thunder of holocaust.
She awoke to the keening of sirens and an earthquake of sound. When she opened her eyes, she didn't know where she was. She lay quietly, composing herself. She counted slowly, waiting for the clamor in her bosom to slow down. She could feel her heart thumping.
She checked herself gingerly, expertly for broken bones and more severe injuries. Darkness surrounded her, intermittently pierced by the probing beam of a searchlight. She took stock of her surroundings; weariness throbbed through all the muscles in her body.
She was lying on her side somewhere, half of her soaking in water. She stared up; the cubed, dark outline of a span of concrete rose above her. A bridge. She was under a bridge, lying on a damp, muddy shore with her naked feet still extended into a low body of gently running water. She made herself sit up, conscious of a tingling in her limbs. Her arms and legs ached. Her ribs felt sore and bruised. She shook herself, trying to locate all the uproar and confusion of the night. It was not far away.
She lay back on her right side, studying the bridge ramp arcing overhead. Dark and ghostly. Beyond it, to the left, she made out a fiery hue lighting up the night sky. From one point, she heard the clang of sirens, the hoarse shouts of fiercely busy men. Dimly, she made out the tops of the green trees, forming a solid mass of cover to the East. She looked down the river and remembered where she was.
The factory. The explosion. Bronx Park. Yes, she had been hurled outward by the blast, carried through the wall, out into the alley and then—of course. She had been swept to the river and dragged along until her body had anchored in low water close to the shore, under this very bridge. She wasn't that far from the building. And the girl—
Joanna Paula Jones was nowhere in sight.
She raised herself stiffly. A sharp pain centered its hot knives in her right thigh, letting her know she had torn a ligament somewhere. She had gotton off easily, though. It was a miracle to be alive. The girl, obviously—
April then put aside the thought of her. She blocked out the bedlam that reigned some five hundred yards away. On her feet, she tested her legs. Stiff but they'd have to do. She hobbled toward an incline of ground at the side of the bridge. A paved walk lay in a wash of moonlight. As she had suspected, because of the bridge, she was close to a park exit. She fumbled at her soaked clothes. The baggy man's pants were like ridiculous balloons. Her bra, taut from immersion, was strangling her breasts. Firmly and with great effort, she tore the trouser bottoms below the knees and fashioned a semishirt to cover her torso. It was a farce but it would have to do. She had lost the oversized shoes that had adorned the feet of the man she had killed.