From the very beginning, it had been my intention to write this account. But I certainly hadn't intended to write it while residing under police surveillance in the Recuperating Ward of St. Luke's Memorial Hospital. Nor did I expect the interest and encouragement of the police officer who put me here. Nonetheless, Sgt. Nicolas Falasca of the Ohio State Police has been most helpful both in the many long discussions we have had and in procuring the notes and data from my laboratory for the preparation of this manuscript.
But I'm afraid there shall be a considerable lot of me in this manuscript—which, I hastily assert, is not its purpose at all. My apologies for that. Fact is, there's a considerable lot of me, as anyone can see. The term I rather prefer using is roly-poly.
For the record, however, I am duly Certified-at-Birth as one Albert Jamieson Cooling, to which has been added, by my own modest efforts, a few odd alphabetic symbols such as M.S. and Ph.D. I am currently holding down a professorship at a small, privately endowed Tech college, have some mentionable background in both nuclear physics and biochemistry, possess a choice collection of rather good jazz records, have a particular fondness for barbecued spareribs—and, of late, have become an inventor.
If I've left something out, such as horn-rimmed glasses, then, by the point of my little black beard, it must be the wardrobe of 36 sport jackets. Wives? Well, I've been tempted, but a professor's salary can't support alimony.
My discovery of the Cooling Effect itself came quite by accident. But twice now, that accident has almost killed me. It may be argued that this is no more than I should have expected, however, since the invention which "followed naturally" can only be called one thing.
I have invented a new weapon.
That's right—a Cooling gun.
But let it be said that because I was once a war scientist, my inventiveness must therefore tend toward weapons and I should be strongly tempted to reach for the nearest one available. The term war scientist has been used so much, and has grown so commonplace, that it has become universally accepted as the label for anyone who spent as little as six weeks in the old AEC. I was in it for six years, and I voluntarily walked out.
The official policies and inter-agency politics of that era seem of little consequence now, when we have three permanent space satellites circling the Earth and one of them is Russian. We're no longer in a weapons race; both sides have reached the Ultimate Weapon in that contest. Nobody's hiding or betraying classified secrets any more. There's all that silicon-rich basalt waiting to be cheaply processed out on the Moon, if we can only get there....