He heard nothing but the lonely passage of the bullets in the mist.
“I’m a UN man,” he mumbled. “You people up there know what a UN man is? You know what happens when you meet one?”
When he reached the tank, he had another bullet in his right arm. But they didn’t know he was coming and when you get within ten feet of a tank, the men inside can’t see you.
He just had to stand up and drop the bottle down the gun barrel. That was all—with a broken hip and a wounded right arm.
He knew they would see him when he stood up but he didn’t think about that. He didn’t think about Sergeant Rashid, about the complicated politics of Africa, about crowded market streets. He had to kill the tank. That was all he thought about. He had decided something in the world was more important than himself, but he didn’t know it or realize the psychologists would be surprised to see him do this. He had made many decisions in the last few minutes. He had ceased to think about them or anything else.
With his cigarette lighter, he lit the rag stuffed in the end of the bottle.
Biting his tongue, he pulled himself up the front of the tank. His long arm stretched for the muzzle of the gun. He tossed the bottle down the dark throat.
As he fell, the machine-gun bullets hit him in the chest, then in the neck. He didn’t feel them. He had fainted the moment he felt the bottle leave his hand.
The copter landed ten minutes later. Umluana left in a shower of bullets. A Russian private, the ranking man alive in the station, surrendered the survivors to the Belderkans.
His mother hung the Global Medal above the television set.
“He must have been brave,” she said. “We had a fine son.”
“He was our only son,” her husband said. “What did he volunteer for? Couldn’t somebody else have done it?”
His wife started to cry. Awkwardly, he embraced her. He wondered what his son had wanted that he couldn’t get at home.
A FILBERT IS A NUT
by Rick Raphael
That the gentleman in question was a nut was beyond question. He was an institutionalized psychotic. He was nutty enough to think he could make an atom bomb out of modeling clay!
Miss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on the shoulder. “You’re doing just fine, Mr. Lieberman. Show it to me when you have finished.”
The oldster in the stained convalescent suit gave her a quick, shy smile and went back to his aimless smearing in the finger paints.
Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the other patients working at the long tables in the hospital’s arts and crafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites, lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers’ prospects for the pennant.
Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere complex of buildings that housed the main wards.
The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a word of advice here, and a suggestion there.
She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he carefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay.
“And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?” Miss Abercrombie asked.
The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to draw away from the woman.
“We mustn’t be antisocial, Mr. Funston,” Miss Abercrombie said lightly, but firmly. “You’ve been coming along famously and you must remember to answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very complicated.” She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.
Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.
Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.
“Atom bomb.”
A puzzled look crossed the therapist’s face. “Pardon me, Mr. Funston. I thought you said an ‘atom bomb.’”
“Did,” Funston murmured.
Safely behind the patient’s back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so slightly. “Why that’s very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative thought. I’m very pleased.”
She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.
A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood up and stretched.
“All right, fellows,” he called out, “time to go back. Put up your things.”
There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairs being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.
At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and then stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walk back across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made a quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.
Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she made short, precise notes on the day’s work accomplished by each patient.
At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted lengthily in her chart book.
When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.
The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile to the main administration building where her car was parked.
As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients’ mess hall.
The sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the ward lights winked out at nine o’clock, leaving just a single light burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm hills.
At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room. Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that sheltered the deserted crafts building.
He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.
The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark shadows on the walls of the suddenly- illuminated ward.
An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck the hospital buildings in a wave of force
