nutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy
radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and
equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.

At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of
Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI
agents and an Army full colonel disembarked.

At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blast
crater.

In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.

"It's impossible and unbelievable," Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the
fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of
experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.
"How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?"

"It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel," one of the haggard AEC
men offered timidly. "Not over three kilotons."

"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut," Thurgood screamed. "How
did it get here?"

A military intelligence agent spoke up. "If we knew, sir, we wouldn't be
standing around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS an
atomic explosion."

Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.

"Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everything
that was in that building?" Thurgood swept his hand in the general
direction of the blast crater.

"Colonel, I've told you a dozen times," the hospital administrator said
with exasperation, "this was our manual therapy room. We gave our
patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,
through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems
that led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paints
and clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, then
Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman."

"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,"
Thurgood sighed. "I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 this
morning blew it to hell and gone.

"And I've got to find out how it happened."

Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little
doctor.

"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?"

"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here
now," the doctor snapped.

* * * * *

Outside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved
around the perimeter