Shadow of the Bomb

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Lord, he was exhausted. This had been his longest day yet in what he had come to call “the basement.” When he finally got out, he was too tired to even drop in at the U.T. for a nightcap. The unrelenting deadline pressure was bad enough, but the damn secrecy made it even worse.

It seemed like everybody he knew on the faculty was asking questions, always more questions. He knew many of them were jealous, of course. That was obvious — and understandable. But he couldn’t go anywhere now without the probing, nosing, snooping.

“What is it you’re really working on?” became the standard opening query, and when he gave his stock reply about it being “just a metallurgy lab project,” he got the eye rolls, tongue-clucking, and arch comments, such as, “Yeah, sure, that’s why we never see you in your office.” “That’s why you’re not teaching now.” “That’s why so many buildings on the campus are boarded up, with those armed soldiers out in front — even at poor old Stagg Field, for God’s sake.” “Don’t give us that met lab crap. Something big’s going on, isn’t it?”

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