"C M Kornbluth - Gomez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

us by mail, but they don't. In the newspaper business they come in-and demand to see the editor. Could I
use it, by the way? The readers ought to get a boot out of it."

He hesitated and said: "All right-if you don't use my name. Just say 'a prominent physicist.' I didn't think
it was too funny myself though, but I see your point, of course. The boy may be feeble-



minded-and he probably is-but he believes, like too many people, that science is just a bag of tricks that
any ordinary person can acquire-"

And so on and so on.

I went back to the office and wrote the interview in twenty minutes. It took me longer than that to talk
the Sunday editor into running the Gomez letter in a box on the atom-anniversary page, but he finally saw
it my way. I had to retype it. If I'd just sent the letter down to the composing room as was, we would
have had a strike on our hands.

On Sunday morning, at a quarter past six, I woke up to the tune of fists thundering on my hotel-room
door. I found my slippers and bathrobe-and lurched Wearily across the room. They didn't wait for me to
unlatch. The door opened. I saw one of the hotel clerks, the Sunday editor, a frosty-faced old man, and
three hard-faced, hard-eyed young men. The hotel clerk mumbled and retreated and the others moved
in. "Chief," I asked the Sunday editor hazily, "what's going-?"

A hard-faced young man was standing with his back to the door; another was standing with his back to
the window and the third was blocking the bathroom door. The icy old man interrupted me with a crisp
authoritative question snapped at the editor. "You identify this man as Vilchek?"

The editor nodded.
 "Search him," snapped the old man. The fellow standing guard at the window slipped up and frisked me
for weapons while I sputtered incoherently and the Sunday editor avoided my eye.

When the search was over the frosty-faced old boy said to me: "I am Rear Admiral MacDonald, Mr.
Vilchek. I'm here in my capacity as deputy director of the Office of Security and Intelligence, U. S.
Atomic Energy Commission. Did you write this?" He thrust a newspaper clipping at my face.

I read, blearily:

What's So Tough About A-Science? Teenage Pot-Washer Doesn't Know

A letter received recently by a prominent local atomic scientist points up Dr. Sugarman's complaint (see
adjoining column)



that the public does not appreciate how hard a physicist works. The text, complete with "mathematics"
follows:

Esteemed Sir: