He waited by the telephone for the return call from the States. He noticed that the receiver was becoming somewhat soft in his hand. His thumbprint was on the white plastic of the receiver. Then he remembered that plastic was made from a petroleum base. His shirt felt clammy, and he remembered that the synthetics of the shirt were made from a petroleum base.
He pulled at his shirt. Instead of feeling like cloth, it felt like warm caramel.
His callback was almost immediate. Yes, his superiors in the Department of Commerce were interested in the substance, and they wanted five tons of it.
"Five tons?" he asked incredulously. "Why do you need so much for testing?"
"Well, everybody wants to test it. Defense. Agriculture. CIA."
"No way. How can I get you five tons?"
"What can you get?"
"An oil can ML"
"Good. We'll fly in a píane."
The first plane that came for the substance couldn't take off again. The second one immediately covered its engines with a fine gauze screen to protect anything in the air from getting to its fuel. It made the mistake, however, of taking off into an inland breeze. It got to 7,000 feet before the engines stopped and the controls became mush. Guests at the Mullet Bay Hotel stood on their verandas watching. Another plane took off and made it out seven miles before it dropped into the sea.
Finally, the government employee wrapped a whole mess of the white waxy substance in a big tightly woven canvas bag so that it would not be carried by the wind, and went around to hangars at the airport looking for planes that might not have been affected. Two
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hangars in the lee of a hill, their windows shut tight, had such planes. The employee waited until there was a breeze coming in off the ocean and then had the pilot fly right out into it.
The canvas bag of the substance reached Washington that day, and by nightfall, the president of the United States was being told that civilization as they knew it might well be endangered.
"Well," he said with a charming twinkle, "that certainly is a problem. But then again, we've faced problems like these before and won. What it took was spunk, a willingness to work and, well, just plain faith, I guess."
His words brought a few gentle tears to the members of his cabinet. Lumps came up in throats. They thought about the hard times and how people got through those sorts of times by hard work and faith. Most of them had gotten to where they were by hard work and faith. They were from California, and they were familiar with deep, meaningful traditions. That was because all theirs were fresh. None of them went beyond a year ago June. There was nothing like California for a fresh tradition.
"Excuse me, Mr. President," said the reporting scientist. "You have not faced the extinction of civilization like this."
"Oh, gosh, yes, we have. That's where you're wrong, mister. We've faced it before and won."
There was applause in the cabinet room. The secretary of defense said he had never seen a better performance. The secretary of the interior said he hadn't been so inspired since he saw the beautiful neat cartons of a new paper company built where a forest had once Uttered the landscape.
The president of the United States thanked everyone.
But the scientist was adamant.
"I don't think I have quite made myself clear. This is not a battle to try men's wills. It is a disaster. It is an avalanche that is coming down on all of us."
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"I played in an avalanche movie," said the president. "I remember we bid in a log cabin. It was with Vera Hruba Ralston. We fell in love in the cabin and then when I got out, I hunted down the man who caused the avalanche. Gave him a good punch in the nose and that was it."
The secretary of defense nodded. He was glad the president had everything under control because his system couldn't stand another shock. He was still trying to recover from what had happened to him the previous week at an Army base.
He was being shown a weapon by some soldiers. He liked weapons. They reminded him of accounting offices, neat and tidy.
"Go ahead and try your weapon," the secretary of defense had said. And then there was this awful deafening bang of a noise.
"What in bleet hawzus name was that?"
"That was a gun, sir," explained the colonel assigned to escort him.
"A what?"
"A gun, sir."
"Well, I know what that is, but what the hell are people doing hunting on an Army base?"
"No, no. Not for hunting. Infantrymen use guns too, sir. Rifles. Pistols. Cannons. Guns, sir."
"Oh. Well, what does the noise do?" the secretary of defense had asked.
"Do? It doesn't do anything."
"Then why do you have it?"
"It comes when you shoot a projectile. It is the gunpowder exploding."
"Yes?"
"Well, that's it. The noise is a byproduct of shooting a projectile."
"Okay," said the secretary of defense, his logical mind moving in for the kill. "Why do you want to shoot projectiles anyway? What's the purpose in that?"
"Well, sir, it's to kill the enemy."
"How do you know it's going to kill the enemy?" 89
"You don't, sir," said the colonel. "Sometimes you miss."
"Then what you have is a waste of a projectile, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see. Well, we'll have to cut that out. We're not going to just waste the taxpayers' money hurling expensive projectiles around, not even knowing if they're going to miss or not. That's why radio carbon laser computer ray systems are so much better."
"Can an infantryman carry one?"
"Oh, no. It's the size of a house and won't be off the drawing boards until the year 2038 at the earliest. But it is better. And it doesn't make noise. A gun, you say?"
The secretary of defense had shaken his head to get the ringing noises out, but he hadn't been the same since. He was glad everything was under control. He just wished that noisy scientist would leave the cabinet room.