DAY OF THE MORON
BY H. BEAM PIPER
[Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's natural to trust the unproven word of the fellow who's "on myside"—but the emotional moron is on no one's side, not even his own.Once, such an emotional moron could, at worst, hurt a few. But with themighty, leashed forces Man employs now....
There were still, in 1968, a few people who were afraid of the nuclearpower plant. Oldsters, in whom the term "atomic energy" producedsemantic reactions associated with Hiroshima. Those who saw, in thetowering steam-column above it, a tempting target for enemy—which stillmeant Soviet—bombers and guided missiles. Some of the CentralIntelligence and F.B.I. people, who realized how futile even the mostelaborate security measures were against a resourceful and suicidallydetermined saboteur. And a minority of engineers and nuclear physicistswho remained unpersuaded that accidental blowups at nuclear-reactionplants were impossible.
Scott Melroy was among these last. He knew, as a matter of fact, thatthere had been several nasty, meticulously unpublicized,near-catastrophes at the Long Island Nuclear Reaction Plant, allinvolving the new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors, and that therehad been considerable carefully-hushed top-level acrimony before theMelroy Engineering Corporation had been given the contract to installthe fully cybernetic control system intended to prevent a recurrence ofsuch incidents.
That had been three months ago. Melroy and his people had moved in, beenassigned sections of a couple of machine shops, set up an assembly shopand a set of plyboard-partitioned offices in a vacant warehouse justoutside the reactor area, and tried to start work, only to run into thealmost interminable procedural disputes and jurisdictional wranglings ofthe sort which he privately labeled "bureau bunk". It was only now thathe was ready to begin work on the reactors.
He sat at his desk, in the inner of three successively smaller officeson the second floor of the converted warehouse, checking over asymbolic-logic analysis of a relay system and, at the same time,sharpening a pencil, his knife paring off tiny feathery shavings ofwood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, withthinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous,half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabbyleather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks ofpaint showed where some military emblem had been, long ago. While hisfingers worked with the jackknife and his eyes traveled over the page ofclosely-written symbols, his mind was reviewing the eight different waysin which one of the efficient but treacherous Doernberg-Giardanoreactors could be allowed to reach critical mass, and he was wonderingif there might not be some unsuspected ninth way. That was a possibilitywhich always lurked in the back of his mind, and lately it had beengiving him surrealistic nightmares.
"Mr. Melroy!" the box on the desk in front of him said suddenly, in afeminine voice. "Mr. Melroy, Dr. Rives is here."
Melroy picked up the handphone, thumbing on the switch.
"Dr. Rives?" he repeated.
"The psychologist who's subbing for Dr. von Heydenreich," the box toldhim patiently.
"Oh, yes. Show him in," Melroy said