Day of the Moron | Page 5

door on the left. "Suppose we go in and have dinner together. This
cafeteria, here, is a horrible place. It's run by a dietitian instead of a chef, and everything's
so white-enamel antiseptic that I swear I smell belladonna-icthyol ointment every time I
go in the place. Wait here till I change clothes."
* * * * *
At the Long Island plant, no one was concerned about espionage--neither the processes
nor the equipment used there were secret--but the countersabotage security was
fantastically thorough. Every person or scrap of material entering the reactor area was
searched; the life-history of every man and woman employed there was known back to
the cradle. A broad highway encircled it outside the fence, patrolled night and day by
twenty General Stuart cavalry-tanks. There were a thousand soldiers, and three hundred
Atomic Power Authority police, and only God knew how many F.B.I, and Central
Intelligence undercover agents. Every supervisor and inspector and salaried technician
was an armed United States deputy marshal. And nobody, outside the Department of
Defense, knew how much radar and counter-rocket and fighter protection the place had,
but the air-defense zone extended from Boston to Philadelphia and as far inland as
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
The Long Island Nuclear Power Plant, Melroy thought, had all the invulnerability of
Achilles--and no more.
The six new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors clustered in a circle inside a
windowless concrete building at the center of the plant. Beside their primary purpose of
plutonium production, they furnished heat for the sea-water distillation and chemical
extraction system, processing the water that was run through the steam boilers at the main
power reactors, condensed, redistilled, and finally pumped, pure, into the water mains of
New York. Safe outside the shielding, in a corner of a high-ceilinged room, was the
plyboard-screened on-the-job office of the Melroy Engineering Corporation's
timekeepers and foremen. Beyond, along the far wall, were the washroom and locker
room and lunch room of the workmen.
Sixty or seventy men, mostly in white coveralls and all wearing identification badges and
carrying dosimeters in their breast pockets and midget Geigers strapped to their wrists,
were crowded about the bulletin-board in front of the makeshift office. There was a hum
of voices--some perplexed or angry, but mostly good-humored and bantering. As Melroy
and Doris Rives approached, the talking died out and the men turned. In the sudden
silence, one voice, harshly strident, continued:
"... do they think this is, anyhow? We don't hafta take none of that."
Somebody must have nudged the speaker, trying without success to hush him. The
bellicose voice continued, and Melroy spotted the speaker--short, thick-set, his arms
jutting out at an angle from his body, his heavy features soured with anger.
"Like we was a lotta halfwits, 'r nuts, 'r some'n! Well, we don't hafta stand for this. They

ain't got no right--"
Doris Rives clung tighter to Melroy's arm as he pushed a way for himself and her through
the crowd and into the temporary office. Inside, they were met by a young man with a
deputy marshal's badge on his flannel shirt and a .38 revolver on his hip.
"Ben Puryear: Dr. Rives," Melroy introduced. "Who's the mouthy character outside?"
"One of the roustabouts; name's Burris," Puryear replied. "Wash-room lawyer."
Melroy nodded. "You always get one or two like that. How're the rest taking it?"
Puryear shrugged. "About how you'd expect. A lot of kidding about who's got any
intelligence to test. Burris seems to be the only one who's trying to make an issue out of
it."
"Well, what are they doing ganged up here?" Melroy wanted to know. "It's past
oh-eight-hundred; why aren't they at work?"
"Reactor's still too hot. Temperature and radioactivity both too high; radioactivity's still
up around eight hundred REM's."
"Well, then, we'll give them all the written portion of the test together, and start the
personal interviews and oral tests as soon as they're through." He turned to Doris Rives.
"Can you give all of them the written test together?" he asked. "And can Ben help
you--distributing forms, timing the test, seeing that there's no fudging, and collecting the
forms when they're done?"
"Oh, yes; all they'll have to do is follow the printed instructions." She looked around. "I'll
need a desk, and an extra chair for the interview subject."
"Right over here, doctor." Puryear said. "And here are the forms and cards, and the
sound-recorder, and blank sound disks."
"Yes," Melroy added. "Be sure you get a recording of every interview and oral test; we
may need them for evidence."
He broke off as a man in white coveralls came pushing into the office. He was a scrawny
little fellow with a wide, loose-lipped mouth and a protuberant Adam's apple; beside his
identity badge, he wore a two-inch celluloid button lettered: I.F.A.W.