arm and left the crafts building for the day.

The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile
to the main administration building where her car was parked.

As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the
barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills
towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant
came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'
mess hall.

* * * * *

The sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the
ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light
burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm
hills.

At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat
up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and
occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.
Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that
sheltered the deserted crafts building.

He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.

The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark
shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.

An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck
the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a
thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild
screams of the frightened and demented patients.

It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling
lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.

Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a
small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been
the arts and crafts building.

Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed
with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried
through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the
explosion.

None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a
welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.

The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the
surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units
from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the
still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.

Within fifteen mi