someone falling through a window!" Peng exclaimed.
His chief's face was shadowed with a momentary irritation. "If that isanother one of my men having a foolish accident--"
"What do you mean?" Peng inquired.
"Mean?" his chief repeated in exasperation. "I'll tell you what I mean.Since this interrogation started four of my men have injured themselvesin silly, stupid accidents; like the captain who fell off his chair andbroke his leg. If I didn't know my men, I would swear that they had allbeen drinking!"
There was a sudden, single shot. They hurried along the hall but beforethey could reach the room at the end they had to drop to the floor toescape the fusillade of bullets that whined down the corridor.
* * * * *
In the great Operations Room of the Pentagon, the uppermost echelons ofthe American General Staff glared at Dr. Titus whose civilian presencewas defiling this military "holy of holies."
An admiral, sitting next to General Fyfe, banged his fist on the tableand almost shouted at Titus. "So you're one of the idiots who's beenadvising the President not to let us commit our forces in Afghanistan.Do you realize the Russians will--"
Titus appealed to the Chairman of the General Staff. "Do I or do I nothave the floor? Hm-m-m?" Reluctantly, the chairman restored order andmotioned Titus to continue. "It is true that the President has beenpersuaded to not commit the United States to any further militaryadventures until we have given a plan of mine some little time to takeeffect. Gentlemen, we have in operation a secret weapon that, if allgoes well, will make any future military undertakings unnecessary andbring about the destruction of our enemies." At the mention of "secretweapon," the entire General Staff, excepting Fyfe, creaked forward intheir seats with eager interest. "The secret weapon is aneighteen-year-old boy named Dolliver Wims, recently commissioned alieutenant in the Army and now in Russian hands."
An avalanche of derisive remarks concerning his sanity roared down onTitus but he ignored them and continued. "Wims came to work for us lastspring and nothing in his manner or appearance indicated that he was inany way unusual. However, he had hardly been with us a month beforecomplaints from my staff started flooding my office. Our accident ratesoared skyward and all staff fingers pointed at Wims. I investigated anddiscovered that in spite of the accusations Wims was never _directly_involved in these mishaps. He was present when they occurred, yes, buthe never pushed or bumped anyone or dropped anything or even fingeredanything he wasn't supposed to and yet in the face of this fact, almosteveryone, including my most dispassionate researchers, invariably blamedWims. Finding this extremely odd, I kept the boy on and under varioussubterfuges I probed, tested and observed him without his knowledge.
"Then one day I became annoyed with him; without just cause I mustadmit, merely because I was not getting any positive results; and Ihandled him rather roughly. Within seconds I sliced open a finger. Myirritation mounted and later I went to shove him rudely aside and down Iwent, giving my head a nasty crack on the edge of a lab bench. I feltwonderful as I sat in pain on the floor, sopping the blood out of myeyes. With the blow an idea had come to me and I felt I at last knewwhat Wims was and the factor that triggered his dangerous potential. Forweeks afterward, under carefully controlled conditions, I was as nastyto him as I dared be. It took my most delicate judgment to avoid fatalinjury but I managed to document the world's first known _accident proneinducer_. I call him Homo Causacadere, the fall causer, whose activatoris hostility.
"We have always had the accident prone, the person who has apsychological proclivity for having more than his share of mishaps. Wimsis an individual who can make an accident prone of _anyone_ whothreatens his well being and survival. This boy, who, as indicated bythe tests, hasn't an unkind thought for any creature on this planet, hasan unconscious, reactive, invulnerable defense against persons whoexhibit even the slightest hostility toward him. The energies of theirown hostility are turned against them. The greater the hostility, themore accidents they have and the more serious they become. And theincrease in accidents gives rise to an increase in hostility and so itgoes in an ever widening circle of dislocation and destruction.
"As a scientist I would have preferred to take the many months, perhapsyears, necessary to investigate this phenomenon thoroughly, howeverthese are critical times and I was possessed with an inspired idea onhow we might utilize this phenomenon against the enemies of the freeworld. Through a colleague on the Scientific Advisory Council I got thePresident's ear and he decided to let us try, on the basis, I'm certain,that the best way to handle screwball scientists is to allow them one ortwo harmless, inexpensive insanities in the hope that they will make anerror and discover something useful.
"Through the good offices of General Fyfe, who was apprised of our plan,Wims was snatched into the Army, commissioned and sent to Burma to becaptured. Intelligence advises that he has been taken to Moscow which isfor him, an American officer ostensibly on a secret mission, the mosthostile environment extant." Titus shook his head. "I suppose I shouldfeel sorry for those poor Russians. They don't have a chance."
"Sorry for them!" Fyfe blustered. "Think what I've had to go through.Those ridiculous orders; couldn't explain to anyone. All my people thinkthat I've lost my mind. Felt like a fool giving that idiot a battlefieldcommission during a training exercise."
"It was necessary to give him some rank," Titus explained. "TheCommunists wouldn't expect a private to be sent on a secret mission;they just wouldn't bother to interrogate him. Now an officer, whosereturn was specially requested the day following his capture would seizetheir attention and surely they would apply their nasty pressures tofind out why. He hasn't been returned through the regular monthlyexchange and they even deny having captured him which seems to indicatethat the plan is working."
An admiral stirred and shifted under his crust of gold. "How long havethey had him?"
"Six weeks."
"And nothing's happened yet," the admiral commented. "My guess is thatwe could sit here for six years and nothing would come of such abarnacle-brained scheme."
An Air Force general spoke up in the breezy jargon of the youngestservice. "I'm with the old man from the sea on this one," he said as theadmiral winced. "I just don't see spending billions for alphabet bombsand then warming our tails on them while these psycho-noseys move in andtry to fight these sand-lot wars with voodoo and all that jazz."
* * * * *
An aide hurried in from the adjoining message center and handed thechairman a paper. Everybody waited in silence while the chairman seemedto take an unusually long time to read it. Finally he looked up andsaid. "This is a special relay from the President's office and since itconcerns us all I'll read it aloud." He held the paper up and read,"Apropos of your present conference with Dr. Titus, it may please theGeneral Staff to learn that the Russian Communist Party newspaper,_Pravda_, has just denounced the newspaper of the Red Army, _Izvestia_,as a tool of the decadent, warmongering, capitalist ruling circles ofthe imperialist Western bloc. Other evidence of severe internal upheavalof a nature favorable to the West is pouring in through news channelsand being confirmed by State and CIA sources. Congratulations, Dr.Titus."
Dr. Titus arose with unconcealed triumph. "Gentlemen, apparently myhypothesis is correct. The disintegration that will crumble our enemieshas already begun. Our secret weapon is a stunning success!"
The crusted admiral looked sourly at Titus. "Of course you're onlyassuming that this Wims person is responsible. We'll never really know."
"Why won't we?" Titus demanded. "You speak of him as if he were dead ordoomed and I tell you he is no such thing. Don't you understand? Hecannot be harmed! And when he gets back here, as he will, he'll tell ushimself exactly what and how it happened."
The aide rushed in with another message. "Again from the President," heannounced. "It has been confirmed by CIA," he began reading aloud, "thattwo weeks ago a group of Chinese officials in a Russian aircraft landedat a Fin
nish airfield. It is now known definitely that an ostensibly illmember of their group who was put aboard their plane in a stretcher wasin reality a young American officer. Among other things, this explainsthe eighteen contradictory Five Year Plans announced by Peiping thisweek. CIA says they are going the way of the Russians. Againcongratulations, Dr. Titus."
"Well, General Fyfe," Titus said, smiling at him, "perhaps you now feelsomewhat differently about this Wims business, hm-m-m?"
Fyfe roared, unable to contain himself any longer: "Do you _really_believe that rot you've been feeding us? You have the audacity to