The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Sure enough, half a hundred tiny minnows swam in the open places and among the water plants and hid under the lily pads. Four of his crimson, night-blooming lilies were out, each one as big as a dinner plate. His torch moved about, touching the flowers, penetrating the clear water to search out snails and to follow the upward dive and downward lunge of water beetles. A small branch had dropped on one of the day-blooming lilies, and Duff walked over to a cabbage palm where he kept a dip net for retrieving such objects.

The branch lay among the lily pads at a place where they intermingled — reddish leaves floating alongside green. The surface was covered densely in an area as big as the top of a dining-room table. But, in dipping out the branch with one arm while with the other hand he aimed the flashlight, Duff opened up a space between the pads. It wasn’t a wide gap, but it was wide enough to allow the light beam to penetrate the water to what should have been the bottom of the pond— and wasn’t. A board was revealed.

Duff tossed out the small branch and pulled the lily pads farther apart. He presumed the board had fallen into the pond during the October hurricane, and wondered why it hadn’t floated. He thought it might be a section of one of the boxes in which the lilies were planted, a section came loose, but held under water by a nail.

With the idea of “box” on his mind, Duff gasped audibly. He pushed hard at the leaves. It was not a side of a lily box and it was not a board. Leaning, holding his light closer, he could now see the top, the grain of hardwood, the glimmer of varnish or wax, and a glint of brass screw heads around the sides. Probing again with the net and changing his position, he thought he made out handles at both ends of the box.

He switched out his light. He let the lily pads float together, covering a hiding place that wasn’t as ideal as Harry’s closet, since, from time to time, Duff cleaned out excess algae in the pond and scrubbed its sides, wading hip-deep. But it was a good-enough hiding place now, because he performed those chores at long intervals and had finished them just after the blow in October.

Those thoughts had taken seconds only. He leaned the net against a tree and walked along the east side of the house. Harry’s lights were on. After a moment, he saw Harry as he passed the window — Harry in pajamas.

Duff went back quietly to the pool. The thing to do, he reflected, was to wade in, get the box and hide it somewhere else. Or, better, put it in it in the station wagon as soon as Eleanor returned from work and drive straight to the FBI. This one, Duff thought, would probably contain uranium — pure uranium — shaped for a certain use.

Duff sat down on the grassy edge of his pool. He took off his shoes and socks. He was excited, exultant, and also afraid. He did not know just what he feared, just why he was afraid. Then, abruptly, he did know. It was the disturbance of a leaf behind him or the tiny sound of a pine needle snapping underfoot. A very near sound, too near to give him time to escape or even to whirl around for attack. For he was sitting and there was something, somebody, in the dark right behind him.

For a second or two he was unable to think at all. Then, when he thought he heard the whisper of a swung weapon of some kind, he tried to lunge as far forward as he could. Fear was a sickness in him as he plunged, and fear was his final recollection. There was a ringing sound, a bursting in his head that he sensed at the instant and never afterward remembered…

In the house, Harry turned out his light and went to his window. He looked at the moonglow. From the sinkhole west of the house came a murmurous croaking of bullfrogs. At last he walked to his bed and lay down to sleep.

Mrs. Yates, weary and warm under her reading light, pulled toward herself the pivoted bedside table that Duff had built. With a pencil, she wrote a goodnight note to her daughter. She pinned the note to her wheel chair and gave it a push which rolled it through the door and into the living room where Eleanor would see it.

Marian Yates slept peacefully; damp curls of her dark hair overspread her pillow.

Charles Yates, having finished the last installment of The Queen of the Planet Brandri, tossed Fabulous Science Magazine onto the floor and switched out his light. There was silence, deep and tropical.