Duff looked out the windows. He watched a huge truckload of dead branches proceed down the street past several pretty houses. He reflected that there were still hurricane-detached branches hanging serenely in the Yates trees. His mind passed to greater worries.
There was the matter of the proposal of marriage to Eleanor Yates by Scotty Smythe, of the New York-Bar Harbor-Palm Beach Smythes. Duff had nothing against Smythe. He was a good-looking, intelligent, witty young man. Eleanor deserved the best. Plainly, she liked Smythe. The question was: Did Smythe represent the best? A lightweight, Duff felt. No character. Too smooth. Too social. Too much given to girl-chasing. It was Duff’s belief, during the reverie, that he was thinking in abstract, detached and big-brotherly terms. Any suggestion that jealousy motivated him would have been met by a haughty, almost amused stare of his china-blue eyes.
By coincidence, yet not surprisingly — since Doctor Slocum greatly enjoyed discussing his part in the work of the Manhattan District; within the limits of secrecy, of course — Duff’s wandering attention came back abruptly to a relevant speech: “Some of our early calculations on the subsidiary effects of nuclear reactions to bomb-released particles were rendered difficult by—”
Duff listened, hoping to be able to frame a question that might start a new line of discussion which would not advance the class in any way, but which might help him with another worry. Luckily for Duff, when the professor finished a sentence as long and as neatly balanced as a complex equation, Iron-Brain Bates, the grind of the group, took an ideal tack.
“Doctor,” he said, “to deviate for a moment. How many bombs do you think Russia has?”
The mathematician frowned momentarily, as if he were not to be budged from the path of instruction. Then he grinned. “If our present political misadventuring continues, we will probably find out how many in the most pragmatic fashion. They will be dropped on us!”
The four graduate students laughed. Duff said, “Let’s hope most of them will miss.”
And he went on idly, “Of course, any nation that had only a few atomic bombs could easily smuggle them into this country and distribute them at ideal sites, to be exploded at the time chosen by that nation.”
“Easier said then done!”
“Why?” Duff asked. “Look at prohibition. Hundreds of tons of stuff brought across every border every week. Florida, here, was a center for it. Million bays, channels, waterways, lagoons, empty wastes of Everglades—”
“An atom bomb, Mr. Bogan, is pretty big. Very heavy.”
“It could be built in small pieces. Imported, so to speak, in sections.”
Hank Garvey, who intended to be a math teacher, said, “There’s radioactivity. How do you smuggle radioactive stuff?”
The professor scowled at Hank. “You really ought to know, Mr. Garvey, that neither plutonium nor the disintegrative isotope of uranium is radioactive enough to be detected readily. Oppenheimer pointed out that you’d need a screwdriver to find a bomb on a ship—
have to open every case aboard. Until you assemble a critical mass— enough of the stuff in one spot to set up a chain reaction — your plutonium or uranium would be comparatively easy to handle.”
“Then,” said Duff, “what’s to hinder a nation from mining our cities?”
“Unpleasant notion,” the professor smiled. “Mr. Bogan, you have always inclined toward the fantastic.”
“What’s fantastic about it? If you were a nation with only a few dozen atom bombs, and if you intended to attack, wouldn’t you be smart to plant all the bombs you could exactly where they’d wreck the most vital industries or kill the most people, rather than risk them in bombers that might be shot down or might miss the targets?”
“There, gentlemen, we have an example of the very sort of pseudo-logic I discussed a week ago yesterday!” Professor Slocum’s delight brought chagrin to Duff even before he went on, “Any nation with a few atomic bombs, only a few, would like to plant them in any enemy nation. True, gentlemen. Such bombs could be fabricated in sections, assembled later, armed and made ready for firing. They could be rigged for detonation by radio. The borders of the United States are comparatively unguarded; large objects and quantities of objects have been smuggled into this nation. So far, we see nothing to limit or to prevent the reality of Mr. Bogan’s shocking implication that one cold winter night or one day — one busy working day — atomic bombs might be exploded without warning in a dozen cities or more. It is logical — to a point. To what point, gentlemen?”
Duff’s three seminar mates contemplated the problem. They seemed unable to find in it any major syllogistic flaw.
Professor Slocum chuckled. “What defenses have we?”
“Well,” said Iron-Brain, “there’s the FBI—”
“Correct! The Federal Bureau of Investigation! Also an active body known as Central Intelligence. Also the various branches of Military Intelligence. The Immigration men. The Treasury men. Finally, an alert police force, sheriffs and the like. In other words, an invisible net protects our people. Many nets, I ought to say. A hole in one layer is matched by a fresh fine mesh behind the hole. In addition, in the camp of any enemy, in their secret societies, their so-called underground their cells and so on, this nation has undercover agents.
Malevolent plotters are marked men. It would be impossible to set up an organization large enough to bring in, assemble, rig and conceal atomic bombs.”
Down the hall a bell rang.
Two of the four students looked gratefully at Duff. He had succeeded in side-tracking old Slocum on his favorite theme for long enough to use up the period. Professor Slocum hastily assigned a double day’s work for the next seminar and, smiling and nodding, skittered down the rather dim hall.
Duff walked into the sunshine feeling neither warmed nor illuminated. Logic was well enough. There was also such a thing as complacency. The world had been complacent about the Kaiser, about Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. A lot of the world had been wrecked owing to such complacency. Possibly old bald-headed Slocum was on the beam. But possibly there was a radioactive beam in the making, right in Miami.
As Duff walked toward his next class he gazed rather doubtfully down the palm-lined, flower-bright streets of Coral Gables. Far in the distance he could see the tops of buildings in the center of Miami — white towers above the flat green land. He tried to imagine a sudden and unexpected brilliance flaring down there, hurting the eyes, setting ten thousand fires, launching a terrible spray of gamma rays and sending forth a steely wall of blast across the city.
Somebody clapped his back. “Shut your mouth, Bogan! Flies’ll enter!”
He grinned weakly. “Hi, Scotty.”
“Must have been some dream!”
Duff nodded and walked along with young Smythe, who continued, “What dazed you, baby?”
“Just — fantasy. I’ve been to a seminar in quantum math. Old Slocum got talking about atom bombs. I was imagining one going off in Miami.” He expected Scotty to laugh.
But the somewhat younger man merely shook his head. “That old goat will never forget his dear old Manhattan District days!”
“You know him?”
“Slightly — in a painful way. He’s head of the department where I keep flunking. Trig this year. Duff,” it was said earnestly, “do you think there is any way for the feeble-minded — meaning me— to ever catch onto the mere meaning of trigonometry?”
“Why you studying it?”
“Had to have the credit. In science. To graduate.”
“Why don’t you come and talk about it to me? I bet I could straighten you out. Trig’s a cinch. Trouble is, they teach it hard.”