There was nothing on the table but a bowl of water and a great lump of modeling clay. While the psychiatrists were taking the strait jacket off Thaddeus in the staff car outside, Colonel Thurgood spoke to the weary Miss Abercrombie.
"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same kind of clay he used before?"
"I brought it along from the same batch we had in the store room at the hospital," she replied, "and it's the same amount."
Thurgood signaled to the doctors and they entered the shack with Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie.
She smiled at Funston.
"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston," she said. "These nice men have brought us way out here just to see you make another atom bomb like the one you made for me yesterday."
A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the shack and then spotted the clay on the table. Without hesitation, he walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top atomic scientists watched in fascination.
His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in front of him.
Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense silence.
"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow." She looked at the men and nodded her head.