by Philip Wylie
For perhaps an hour they watched the cloud rise, change shape in the strong winds aloft, and start to dissipate.
“Somebody else,” Duff had said, “should have seen it. Though there are darn few ships in these parts, I imagine.” His eyes moved from the distant, separating clouds to the beach; they followed its curve to the Bahama Banks, a glittering, empty infinitude of shallow sea. “Anyhow, it’ll show up on plenty of instruments and a slew of people will be down here, looking, pretty soon.”
Eleanor said, “Was it close enough to—to hurt us?”
He stared at her, then smiled, and found a lump coming in his throat. “Lord,” he murmured, “why didn’t you ask that before? No. Too far away. The radiation here couldn’t have amounted to anything.”
The girl smiled back. “Glad I had a physicist along to tell me.”
The first half of the Orange Bowl game ended in the usual pandemonium. Teams trotted from the field and were replaced by bands in red uniforms, in blue, in green, in gold and in the white of the University of Miami. Thousands of colored balloons rose in the sky. The combined bands began to play. Floats moved sedately from the corners of the stadium and paraded around the field. One of these—an immense replica of an orange—proceeded to the center of the field and opened magically. The Orange Bowl Queen stood inside it, and girls on the floats, pretty girls in bathing suits, began to throw real oranges to the crowd. The governors of three states marched forward with what the program called “a retinue of beauty” to crown the queen.
Standing in her robes, smiling, waving, Eleanor felt happy. She was very tired, but everything would soon be over.
In the Yates box, Duff grinned at the yelling of Marian and the shrill whistling of Charles. He handed a pair of borrowed field glasses to Mrs. Yates, who faced her wheel chair to see every detail of the coronation.
Duff gazed at Eleanor, standing straight and lovely, as he mused on the recent, dramatic past. They had been discovered on the island by a Coast Guard plane which flew in to investigate. A second plane had taken them back to Miami, where they had landed secretly. Eleanor had given out the story that she had suffered a “loss of memory” due to “exhaustion and an accidental fall” and spent two nights with “a friend in Fort Lauderdale.” Nothing about kidnaping, about enemy agents, about a mushroom cloud rising where a boat had vanished. That would not become public, Duff reflected, until it was all over.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the grinning face of Scotty Smythe. “Duff, old boy, can you come over to our box for a few minutes? Dad and mother are there. And a couple of other people who want to see you.”
Out of the sunlit field the coronation ended. Eleanor’s float led a circling parade to the jubilant blaring of bands. Duff followed Scotty along an aisle of the jam-packed stadium. He greeted the Smythe family happily, and found himself, to his surprise, shaking hands with General Baines, and then with a physicist he had always wanted to meet, a Doctor Adamas who was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
The general presently murmured to Duff, “Adamas and I actually came down to see you.”
“Me!”
“We both are flying back to Washington as soon as possible after this dandy game. If you could spare us a few minutes now, for a stroll outside—”
It was there, between the stadium walls and the parked cars, that Duff got the shock of his life. He walked along slowly with the general and the scientist.
The soldier did most of the talking. “No use, Bogan, of my telling you what the country owes you. We’ve dug out that bomb in New York. One in Philadelphia. Two in Washington. Soon have them all. The Stacey woman talked.”
“I should have figured her out sooner,” Duff said, with a self-depreciatory shake of his head. “And the country owes Scotty Smythe far more than me. After all, if he hadn’t driven over to the Yateses’ to help me, and if he hadn’t come in when nobody answered his knock, he’d never have found my note or phoned Higgins where I’d gone, and why. The search for the yacht wouldn’t have started.” Duff shuddered slightly. “They’d have got away with the whole thing!”
“There is nothing tangible we can do for young Smythe,” the general replied, grinning at the disclaimer. “His father, my good friend, is amply endowed with worldly goods. In fact, Bogan, the father thinks your influence has made a serious man out of a rather featherbrained boy.”
“Scotty was always a man,” Duff answered defensively. “He just liked to look frivolous.”
“The point is,” Adamas said dryly, “you’ve done a very great, very brave and very brilliant service to your country, and one for which there cannot be, at this time, any public reward whatever.”
Duff laughed. “Reward? Why should I get a reward? Anybody would have done what I did—and better. If I hadn’t been so dumb—”
The general’s mouth dropped open and snapped shut. The scientist coughed, cleared his throat and looked closely at the trunk of a nearby palm. And he spoke. “We’ve gone over your records, Bogan. The FBI has quite a dossier. Besides being a twenty-one-carat fool for danger, you’re a good man in the field. My field. Our field. A certain nuclear project is being moved down here under old Slocum. We’d like you to work on it as you continue your studies. We’ve fixed it so the work itself will contribute toward a doctorate.”
Duff had been trying to say he’d be glad to work on any project the Atomic Energy Commission thought he was worthy of. But the mention of an opportunity to get his final degree made him stand still. Tears came in his eyes.
“D-d-don’t deserve anything of the sort,” he stammered.
General Baines snorted, “Damn it, man! Stop the modesty! Surely you realize what you saved the country from!”
“A lot of people besides me—”
“Fiddlesticks! Rubbish! You can continue your studies here. Take your M.A. Then your Ph.D. And have a job meanwhile. It will pay you seven fifty a month, Bogan, and I have orders from the President of the United States—who wants to shake your hand someday, incidentally—that you’re to accept.”
A roar came from inside the stadium as the opposing teams returned to the field. The scientist, after a look at Duff, took the general’s arm. “Let’s watch the kickoff.”
Duff couldn’t speak. When he was able to control his emotions, he walked back into the frenzied stadium and joined the Yates family. He saw the game, and didn’t see it. He was thinking that he was a rich man now. For a minute he had imagined that “seven fifty” a month had meant seven dollars and a half. Then he knew. He could rent Harry’s room and they wouldn’t need to find another boarder. He could put in some improvements, like an electric stove. By and by he’d be a doctor of philosophy, an atomic scientist. Miami made a touchdown and he was only dimly aware—
After the sun set and as the first unimportant-looking buds of the night-blooming jasmine commenced to explode their honeysweet perfume into the twilight, Duff sat alone beside his lily pool. They’d just come home from the game. He hadn’t told the Yateses, yet, about his reward; he was afraid, still, that he’d break up—maybe blubber.
Eleanor had been escorted home, minutes before. He expected she would leave again, soon, for another dinner party.
Charles kicked open the front screen. “Hey, Duff! Kitchen faucet’s leaking!”
The homely need somehow bolstered Duff. He laughed. “Washer coming up!” He had shut off the water when Eleanor appeared—in a house dress.
“I thought—”
She read the thought. “I begged off, Duff. After all, I did say I’d been ill. I’m cooking tonight—thank heaven! No more Cinderella! The coach is a punkin again and the horses are mice. And am I happy about that!”
Duff nodded vaguely. He felt that women were impossible to understand. He tinkered with the faucet and she came close, watching him. There was a way her hair curved at the nape of her neck. There was a certain shape of her eyes and a special light in them, a topaz light. A warmth and a femininity about her. Sh
e had lovely lips. And he knew the girl very well—though not, perhaps, well enough to do what he did, which was to put down the wrench, take her in his arms and kiss her, hard. Alarmed afterward, he let go.
“I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it! I’m still distraught—judgment’s shot!”
Her eyes shone. “Sure is! You let go. Why?”
Duff turned away a little. “I’ve tried to be a brotherly kind of a guy, Eleanor. It’s a beam I can’t entirely stay on. But after all, your type of man is some really elegant person, like Scotty.”
“Scotty is pretty elegant,” she answered very softly. “He had a big crush on me. I had to kind of bust it up—pretend I was crazy about six other lads. He caught on. I mean, he caught on to who I really did care for. So he pitched in to help that guy. It’s like Scotty.”
Duff nodded and his blue eyes were never more vague, more forlorn. “Then there is somebody.”
Her first words of love were, “What does a girl have to do in the case of scientists—hire a marriage broker? You dope! You oaf! You nitwit! You precious dumbbell!”
Marian, who had come quietly through the door, yelled, “Mother! Duff and El are having a quarrel!”
Her big sister ignored the interruption and went on talking to Duff in a strange voice, “Yes, there’s somebody! Somebody who ought to find out—seeing I phone all over the country to get him when I’m in trouble! Seeing how jealous I am about his dating another girl! Somebody I’ve practically been married to for a year and a half! At least, I’ve had him around, like a husband. And we’ve had all the trials and tribulations and domestic problems and discomforts and the scrimping and misery and work of marriage, together. Enough to know for sure we could make a swell team! And none of the joy, except a sort of—distant companionship.”
“Mother,” Marian bawled jubilantly, “I was wrong! They’re necking!” She added in mock horror, “You better come out here and chaperone!”
Eleanor drew away a little and said, “I’ve loved you, you lug, since the day you came stammering in here, towering and shuffling, polite and uneasy, asking for a place to board that was ‘reasonable’! Everything at the Yateses’ is reasonable, Duff—even poor—and maybe we’re crazy if we get married, the way it is. But we’ll make out. I know it!”
“About that,” he said, and gulped, “maybe I ought to tell you. I just got a job.”
About the Author
Philip Wylie (1902–1971) was a prolific writer whose work spanned a range of genres from men’s adventure and detective stories to science fiction and social criticism. Several of his novels, including When Worlds Collide, Night Unto Night, and Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, as well as the Crunch & Des stories, were adapted as movies and television shows, and his novel Gladiator is considered one of the inspirations for the iconic character Superman.
Wylie was also a commentator on American society. In 1942 he published Generation of Vipers, a bestselling book of essays that attacked the complacencies of the American way of life. His novel The Disappearance presents a dystopia in which men and women vanish from the perception of the opposite sex, allowing Wylie to explore the issues of women’s rights and homosexuality. Wylie recognized early the potentially catastrophic effects of pollution and climate change and wrote both fiction and nonfiction on those topics.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author᾿s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1956 by Philip Wylie
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0994-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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