Two of the four students looked gratefully at Duff. He had succeeded in side-tracking old Slocum on his favorite theme for long enough to use up the period. Professor Slocum hastily assigned a double day’s work for the next seminar and, smiling and nodding, skittered down the rather dim hall.
Duff walked into the sunshine feeling neither warmed nor illuminated. Logic was well enough. There was also such a thing as complacency. The world had been complacent about the Kaiser, about Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. A lot of the world had been wrecked owing to such complacency. Possibly old bald-headed Slocum was on the beam. But possibly there was a radioactive beam in the making, right in Miami.
As Duff walked toward his next class he gazed rather doubtfully down the palm-lined, flower-bright streets of Coral Gables. Far in the distance he could see the tops of buildings in the center of Miami — white towers above the flat green land. He tried to imagine a sudden and unexpected brilliance flaring down there, hurting the eyes, setting ten thousand fires, launching a terrible spray of gamma rays and sending forth a steely wall of blast across the city.
Somebody clapped his back. “Shut your mouth, Bogan! Flies’ll enter!”
He grinned weakly. “Hi, Scotty.”
“Must have been some dream!”
Duff nodded and walked along with young Smythe, who continued, “What dazed you, baby?”
“Just — fantasy. I’ve been to a seminar in quantum math. Old Slocum got talking about atom bombs. I was imagining one going off in Miami.” He expected Scotty to laugh.
But the somewhat younger man merely shook his head. “That old goat will never forget his dear old Manhattan District days!”
“You know him?”