_It was love at first sight--all over the world!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Certainly a faithful representation of a male simian cast in brass
would, granted reasoning powers, have felt unusual trepidation if
exposed to the Wisconsin weather that fateful winter morning.
I myself was inordinately glad that I lived in the project's
Bachelor Officers Quarters only a short block from the UNACMEA/WAGS
installation and that my first experience with Wisconsin winter three
years before had prompted the purchase of the thermo-parka I was then
wearing.
UNACMEA/WAGS is, I realize, a formidable array of letters. Though
quickly recognizable, of course, from constant stereonews repetition,
it is usually not immediately decipherable except by the UN which
spawned it and the eggheads who maintain it.
I help maintain it. I also maintain that I'm not an egghead. Literally,
that is. I do have a bushy albeit greying head of hair and a reasonably
handsome (Mom always said) face beneath; otherwise the brunette might
have--but first I must translate UNACMEA/WAGS. It's important.
When the United Nations finally established worldwide atomic control
three years ago--in '65--it created the Atomic Control Monitor
Establishment at its New York Headquarters with an Alternate
installation here near Racine. Piecing together most of the capitals,
the alternate set-up comes out UNACMEA. The WAGS, of course, is easy. W
for Wisconsin. AGS for Alternating Gradient Synchrotron.
Everyone knows what an AGS is from the publicity given to the 25-Bev
unit which went in at Brookhaven National Laboratories back in
the International Geophysical Year. Pix of that 700-foot diameter
horizontal doughnut were in all papers, mags and fax when it started
producing anti-protons, anti-neutrons and, among the Long Island
neighbors, a few tremulous anti-science folk.
Despite the parka I was shivering like a displaced Hottentot on Pluto
at aphelion as I approached the UNACMEA building next to the 1400-foot
diameter rings of WAGS. Activating the Harlan sphincter, I stepped into
the console room. I'd activated the parka's auto-open when I realized
that the last man out the night before, taking some dimpled weather
gal's prognostications as utter veracity, had apparently kicked off the
thermostat; the room was only slightly less frigid than external Racine.
Re-zippering, I kicked over the master switch to activate WAGS (which
had to be operating when the other physicists arrived); then I beelined
for the thermostat.
"You'd think," I said to the room's emptiness, "that certain sad
sapiens of the genus homo would think more of personal physical comfort
than the saving of infinitesimal quantities of fuel--"
Which is when there came from behind me a chattering but pleasant
feminine voice saying, "C-c-cut the rec-c-criminations and g-g-get some
heat in here b-b-but fast, prof-f-fessor!"
I was startled but turned slowly none the less, rationalizing that the
place had been deserted when I'd entered and that no one else could be
physically present since I'd entered alone and the only door hadn't
been opened since.
I fully expected to find one of the headquarters stenos grinning at me
over the closed circuit stereo from the Ad Building and I wasn't about
to begin to feed her ego by showing startlement.
I faced instead a very much present, very much alive and very lovely
raven-haired young lady who was in that remarkably provocative state
of nearly absolute deshabille that only the new Parisian sunsuits can
provide. The young lady's excitingly rounded curves were, however, a
rather curious blue and it had fleetingly occurred to me that she was
an extra-terrestrial when my better sense came to the fore and I said
rather inanely,
"You should be wearing more in Wisconsin this time of year!"
* * * * *
Her dark eyes flashed and she wriggled her shapely shoulders angrily
with interesting shock waves.
"Since when is this Wisconsin?" she cried. "It's HOAGS' exploding that
caused this cold!" She paused. "Isn't it?"
"HOAGS!" I echoed. Things started to add then that by logic couldn't.
HOAGS is a new installation, an accelerator where two streams of
particles orbiting in opposite directions were caused to meet head-on.
Hence the HO.
HOAGS is at Cape Canaveral, Florida, whence American satellites have
lanced spaceward since IGY. Cape Canaveral in February boasts the
weather that permits if not cries for the abbreviated type of costume
this gorgeous young damsel was wearing.
While I was thinking I was also listening and she was spluttering that
her father was General Schoener of the Atomic Energy Commission and
that he would have me suitably punished if I had kidnapped her--
"Now wait a sec," I said, throwing her my parka after a natural period
of bug-eyed hesitation. "I wouldn't be about to kidnap anyone, least of
all a flighty teenager."
"I'm twenty-one," she said, her eyes flashing with indignation, and
proceeded to enfold the parka around everything save the tip of her
cold-pink nose and her long curved legs. The elusive tip of her nose
wasn't worth trying to follow as she buried her raven-haired head in
the fur collar; there was more of the curvaceous lower extremities in
view which merited and claimed my attention. Devoted attention.
"Well?" she said.
"Yes, thank you," I answered, glad the heat--the furnace's thermal
radiation, that is--was coming up.
"I mean, what'll we do?"
"I hadn't given that much mature thought," I answered, "but now that
you mention--"
"Stop the parrying!" she cut in sharply.
"Parrying was farthest from my mind," I said.