A Filbert Is a Nut Part 2

Six hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait jacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon.

Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over the Potomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol.

In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff were closeted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and his baker's dozen of AEC brains. Sc.r.a.ps of the hot and scornful talk drifted across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in a neatly-tied bundle.

In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling glance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.

"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel," the general said coldly, "but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them."

The general paused.

"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps out of sponge rubber?" the general added bitingly.

In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama of the Was.h.i.+ngton landscape. He stared hard.

In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument, and with an ear-shattering, gla.s.s-splintering roar, the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into s.p.a.ce on a tail of flame.

THE END