The Wonder Effect Read Free

manned-bomber attacks for a purely local do. Walter frowned. It had suddenly occurred to him that with the air-transport flight lanes screwed up by military fighters on simulated missions everything within a thousand miles might be rerouted into stack patterns. What the devil would that do to his plane’s departure time?
    Then he smiled forebearingly. He was, in a way, pleased to be annoyed. It meant he was entering into the adult world of appointments and passages. They said that when a raid drill began to be a damn interruption instead of a welcome break from classes and a chance to smooch, then, brother, you were growing up. He guessed he was growing up.
    “Goddam foolishness,” growled the man who sat next to Chase on the bench, as though it were a personal attack. More jets shredded sound overhead and he glared at Chase. Walter inventoried his English shoes, seal ring and pale cigar and at once engaged him in conversation. The man was some graduate’s father; they had got separated in the raid drill, and Pop was sore as a tramped bunion. The whole drill thing was damned childishness, didn’t Walter see that? And vindictive damned childishness when they chose to throw one on graduation day of a major university. If only Crockhouse had been elected in ‘96 instead of Braden, with his packed ballots in Indiana and. Puerto Rico!
    Here Walter Chase’s interest cooled, because Pop sounded like a politician, revealed himself to be a Nationalist and thus was out of power. But there was no escaping the bench. What Pop objected bitterly to was the multiple levels of expense. Here the drill was knocking men out of production, but the damn Middle-Road Congress said they had to be paid anyhow. And if the Defense Department was making it a full-scale simulated raid, did Walter know what that meant? That meant that there went thirty or forty Nineveh Abies at a hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, and was that enough? No. Then they sent up four or five Tyres at ninety thousand apiece to knock down the Ninevehs. Did that make sense? He paused to glare at Walter Chase.
    Walter said, “Well, that’s the Cold War for you. Say, who d’you like in the All-Star-“ He didn’t get to finish the sentence.
    “L.A.” snapped Pop, without losing a beat. “Get the damn monkey-business over with, that’s what I say. I’m a sneak-puncher and I’m proud of it. If we’d put our man in the White House instead of that psalm-singing Braden there wouldn’t be any Moscow or Peking or Calcutta by now and we wouldn’t be sitting here on our butts!”
    Somebody clawed through from the bench in front;
    with horror, Chase recognized old man Baggett. But Douglasina’s Daddy did not recognize him. Flushed with rage and politics he had eyes only for the sneak-punch advocate. “You’re right it’s monkey-business, fat-mouth!” he snarled. “No thanks to you and your Crock-house we aren’t dead in this cellar instead of safe and secure! President Braden is a hundred percent pledged to the C.S.B., God bless it, and-“
    The rest of his sentence and Sneak-Punch’s angry reply were drowned out by a further flight of jets overhead, and then the wham-wham-wham of interceptor missiles blowing simulated attackers out of the sky.
    Somehow, heaven knew how, Walter Chase managed to sneak away, inching through the packed rows of benches. As soon as the All Clear siren toots began he was up and out, ignoring the freshman warden’s puppy-like yaps that they should remain in their seats until the front benches had been emptied-
    Routine. It was all strictly routine.
    Out on the campus, Chase headed for the airport in earnest, and was delighted to find that his flight was still on time. How lucky he was, he thought, with more pride than gratitude. “What are you, sir?” asked the robot baggage-checker, and he said, “Washington,” with pleasure. He was on his way. He was headed for Washington, where Dr. Hujes of The Cement Research and