hey'd do!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She smiled at Funston.

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

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

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

Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the
table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she
glanced at her watch. The m