Page 43 - Three Adventures

Deflator Mouse

“Ah, but if you can get some kind of scoop, something the others
have missed—”
“That would sure make them sit up and notice me. But it’s not as
easy as it sounds. The old guys—well, older than me, anyway—
they’ve been around for years on their beat, making contacts with the
police and the politicians. They know where to go and who to talk to.
I suppose I’ll learn a lot by tagging along, but I’ll never get a by-line
that way.”
“Hmm. Tell you what, Bob: if I ever get wind of anything where I
work—nothing that would violate security, of course—I’ll let you
know immediately.”
“Wow!” Bob’s face lit up. “Like some big scientific breakthrough?
That would be great, Ken!”

* * * * *

Thursday, the day before Project Salamander’s demonstration,
Captain Jack prowled the programmers’ offices, trying the direct
approach.
“You ever see this before?” he growled at Edith Tweazell. The
remote sensing specialist blinked behind her bifocals and took the
sheet of paper from Lampson’s sausage-like fingers. She lowered her
head, moving toward the feeble glow of a clamped-on desk lamp. She
silently scrutinized the cartoon and its caption: evidently a collage, it
portrayed Noah, leaning over the edge of the ark, refusing entry to a
pair of small lizard-like creatures. “Save yourselves,” the patriarch
was quoted, “we may not make it.” In case there was any doubt
about the identity of the rejected reptiles, an arrow linked them to the
word “salamander,” also neatly cut and pasted into the picture. The
ark itself bore the legend “S.S. Deflator Mouse”.
“Naw, that isn‘t even funny, is it? What is this, anyway? Some kind
of psychological test?” She grinned wickedly, revealing a row of
tobacco-stained incisors.
“Well, what about this one?” Edith barely glanced at the old
Herblock cartoon of huge looming anthropomorphized nuclear
missiles, complete with Joe McCarthy five o’clock shadows, leaning
over the Capitol dome, which had opened as if on a hinge; the
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