at the rumpled figure of Colonel Thurgood.

"I've listened to some silly stories in my life, colonel," the general said coldly, "but this takes the cake. You come in here with an insane asylum inmate in a strait jacket and you have the colossal gall to sit there and tell me that this poor soul has made not one, but two atomic devices out of modeling clay and then has detonated them."

The general paused.

"Why don't you just tell me, colonel, that he can also make spaceships out of sponge rubber?" the general added bitingly.

In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama of the Washington landscape. He stared hard.

In the distance, a white cloud began billowing up from the base of the Washington Monument, and with an ear-shattering, glass-splintering roar, the great shaft rose majestically from its base and vanished into space on a tail of flame.

THE END