The Project Gutenberg EBook of Security, by Ernest M. Kenyon

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Title: Security

Author: Ernest M. Kenyon

Release Date: July 28, 2008 [EBook #26140]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

SECURITY

_If you let a man learn, and study, and work--and clamp
a lid on so that nothing he takes into his mind can be
let out--one way or another he'll blow a safety valve!_

BY ERNEST M. KENYON

Illustrated by Freas

Suddenly Collins snapped the pencil between his fingers and hurled the
pieces across the lab, where they clattered, rolled from the bench to
the floor, and were still. For a moment he sat leaning against the desk,
his hands trembling. He wasn't sure just when the last straw had been
added, but he was sure that he had had enough. The restrictions, red
tape, security measures of these government laboratories seemed to
close in on his mind in boiling, chaotic waves of frustration. What
was the good of his work, all this great installation, all the gleaming
expensive equipment in the lab around him? He was alone. None of them
seemed to share his problem, the unctuous, always correct Gordon, the
easy-mannered, unbearable Mason, all of them gave him a feeling of
actual physical sickness.

Gardner's "Nucleonics and Nuclear Problems" lay open on the desk before
him, but he looked instead beyond through the clear curving glass windows
toward the sweep of green hills and darkening sky and the shadows of the
lower forests that gave Fair Oaks its name. Beside him unfinished lay the
summaries of the day's experiments, and the unorganized, hurriedly jotted
notes for tomorrow's work. The old intellectual alertness was gone.
Delight in changing theory, in careful experimentation no longer sprang
from his work and were a part of it. There was a dull, indefinable aching
in his head and a dry, dissatisfied sensation in his mouth.

Along the ordered walks