That was a surprise. A big one.
"And it's thanks to you!"
"Me?"
–
He flipped the newspaper at me. I caught it in midair, and there it was, smeared all over the face of the Kansas City Sentinel. Great, black, tall shrieking streamer heads:
AMERICA HAS ATOMIC DEFENSE!
I scanned the two columns of stumbling enthusiastic prose that trailed over on to Page Two. Stein came over and leaned over my shoulder and breathed on my ear as we read. He hadn't seen the sheet, either. It ran something like this:
America, it was learned today, has at last an absolute defense, not only to the atomic bomb, but to every gun, every airplane, every engine, every weapon capable of being used by man. Neither admitted nor denied at this early date by even the highest government officials, it was learned by our staff late last night that America's latest step forward….
Column after column of stuff like that. When the reporter got through burbling, he did have a few facts that were accurate. He did say it was my doing that set off the last atomic bomb test; he did say that I was apparently invulnerable to violence powered by electrical or internal combustion engines; he did say what I could do, and what I had done, and how often. He didn't say who I was, or what I looked like, or where I'd come from, or what I did or didn't know.
Sprinkled through the story-and I followed it back to Page 32 and the pictures rehashed of the traffic jam in Detroit-were references to T. Sylvester Colquhoun, the boy who dumped the original plate of beans. He attested this and swore to that. Whoever he was, wherever he got his information, he-there was his picture on Page 32, big as life and twice as obnoxious; Mr. Whom and the van Dyke.