[Illustration] Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction November 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. A FILBERT IS A NUT BY RICK RAPHAEL _That the gentleman in question was a nut was beyond question. He was aninstitutionalized psychotic. He was nutty enough to think he could makean atom bomb out of modeling clay!_ Illustrated by Freas Miss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on theshoulder. "You're doing just fine, Mr. Lieberman. Show it to me when youhave finished. " The oldster in the stained convalescent suit gave her a quick, shy smileand went back to his aimless smearing in the finger paints. Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed theother patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts andcrafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites, lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers'prospects for the pennant. Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills wereseen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mentalinstitution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the mainbuildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austerecomplex of buildings that housed the main wards. The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a wordof advice here, and a suggestion there. She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs ofclay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, hecarefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay. "And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?" Miss Abercrombie asked. The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as thepatient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if todraw away from the woman. "We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston, " Miss Abercrombie said lightly, but firmly. "You've been coming along famously and you must remember toanswer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks verycomplicated. " She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts. Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place. Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply. "Atom bomb. " A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. "Pardon me, Mr. Funston. Ithought you said an 'atom bomb. '" "Did, " Funston murmured. Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever soslightly. "Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creativethought. I'm very pleased. " She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients. A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stoodup and stretched. "All right, fellows, " he called out, "time to go back. Put up yourthings. " There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairsbeing moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put onemore dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaninglesssmears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette. At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bitof clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, heclapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere andthen stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walkback across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made aquick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into thewarm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them. Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chartbook of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, shemade short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by eachpatient. At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay balland stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced throughthe lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jottedlengthily in her chart book. When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tuckedthe chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day. The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mileto the main administration building where her car was parked. As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at thebarred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hillstowards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendantcame 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 theward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single lightburning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warmhills. At 3:01 a. M. , Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He satup in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing andoccasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room. Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills thatsheltered 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 starkshadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward. An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struckthe hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of athousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wildscreams of the frightened and demented patients. It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceilinglights began flashing on throughout the big institution. Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by asmall mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had beenthe arts and crafts building. Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bedwith a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurriedthrough the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in theexplosion. None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from awelter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight. The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked thesurrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster unitsfrom a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at thestill-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building. Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavyradiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men andequipment 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 ofAtomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBIagents and an Army full colonel disembarked. At 5:45 a. M. A cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blastcrater. In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily. "It's impossible and unbelievable, " Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for thefifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group ofexperts 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 AECmen offered timidly. "Not over three kilotons. " "I don't care if it was the size of a peanut, " Thurgood screamed. "Howdid it get here?" A military intelligence agent spoke up. "If we knew, sir, we wouldn't bestanding around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS anatomic 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 everythingthat was in that building?" Thurgood swept his hand in the generaldirection of the blast crater. "Colonel, I've told you a dozen times, " the hospital administrator saidwith exasperation, "this was our manual therapy room. We gave ourpatients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems, through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problemsthat led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paintsand clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, thenMadame 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 thismorning 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 littledoctor. "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 herenow, " the doctor snapped. * * * * * Outside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians movedaround the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examiningevery tiny scrap that might have been a part of the building at onetime. A jeep raced down the road from the hospital and drew up in front of thetent. An armed MP helped Miss Abercrombie from the vehicle. She walked to the edge of the hill and looked down with a stunnedexpression. "He did make an atom bomb, " she cried. Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leapedforward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint. At 4:00 p. M. , the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staffroom of the hospital administration building. Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on theedge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fiston the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce withevery beat. "It's ridiculous, " Thurgood roared. "We'll all be the laughingstocks ofthe world if this ever gets out. An atomic bomb made out of clay. Youare all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out. " At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at thebroadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists, strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shatteredweariness. "Miss Abercrombie, " one of the physicists spoke up gently, "you say thatafter the patients had departed the building, you looked again atFunston's work?" The therapist nodded unhappily. "And you say that, to the best of your knowledge, " the physicistcontinued, "there was nothing inside the ball but other pieces of clay. " "I'm positive that's all there was in it, " Miss Abercrombie cried. There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AECman present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. Theyconferred briefly and then the intelligence officer spoke. "That seems to settle it, colonel. We've got to give this Funstonanother chance to repeat his bomb. But this time under our supervision. " Thurgood leaped to his feet, his face purpling. "Are you crazy?" he screamed. "You want to get us all thrown into thisfilbert factory? Do you know what the newspapers would do to us if theyever got wind of the fact, that for one, tiny fraction of a second, anyone of us here entertained the notion that a paranoidal idiot withthe IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay? "They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!" At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer'sgreatcoat that concealed the strait jacket binding him and with anofficer's cap jammed far down over his face, was hustled out of a smallside door of the hospital and into a waiting staff car. A few minuteslater, the car pulled into the flying field at the nearby community anddrove directly to the military transport plane that stood at the end ofthe runway with propellers turning. Two military policemen and a brace of staff psychiatrists sworn tosecrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboardthe plane. They plopped him into a seat directly in front of MissAbercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and intothe night skies. The plane landed the next morning at the AEC's atomic testing grounds inthe Nevada desert and two hours later, in a small hot, wooden shackmiles up the barren desert wastelands, a cluster of scientists andmilitary men huddled around a small wooden table. There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump ofmodeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket offThaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the wearyMiss Abercrombie. "Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the samekind of clay he used before?" "I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at thehospital, " she replied, "and it's the same amount. " Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack withThaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie. She smiled at Funston. "Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston, " she said. "These nice men havebrought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like theone you made for me yesterday. " A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around theshack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, hewalked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the dampclay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's topatomic scientists watched in fascination. His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clayparts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere infront of him. Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over thetable just as he had done the previous day. From time to time sheglanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funstonfinished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tensesilence. "Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow. " Shelooked at the men and nodded her head. The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid ofclay carefully in place. Funston stood up and the doctors escorted himfrom the shack. There was a moment of hushed silence and then pandemonium burst. Theexperts converged on the clay ball, instruments blossoming from nowhereand cameras clicking. For two hours they studied and gently probed the mass of child's clayand photographed it from every angle. Then they left for the concrete observatory bunker, several miles downrange where Thaddeus and the psychiatrists waited inside a ring ofstony-faced military policemen. "I told you this whole thing was asinine, " Thurgood snarled as thescientific teams trooped into the bunker. Thaddeus Funston stared out over the heads of the MPs through the opendoor, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a suddencry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face. A brilliance a hundred times brighter than the glaring Nevada sun litthe dim interior of the bunker and the pneumatically-operated doorslammed shut just before the wave of the blast hit the structure. * * * * * Six hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his straitjacket, sat between his armed escorts in a small room in the Pentagon. Through the window he could see the hurried bustle of traffic over thePotomac and beyond, the domed roof of the Capitol. In the conference room next door, the joint chiefs of staff werecloseted with a gray-faced and bone-weary Colonel Thurgood and hisbaker's dozen of AEC brains. Scraps of the hot and scornful talk driftedacross a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat ina neatly-tied bundle. In the conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chillingglance at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood. "I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel, " the generalsaid coldly, "but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insaneasylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sitthere and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomicdevices 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 spaceshipsout of sponge rubber?" the general added bitingly. In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panoramaof the Washington landscape. He stared hard. In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of theWashington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar, the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into spaceon a tail of flame. THE END