* * * * *

The sun was crawling up the side of the mountains when Johnny and Dr.
Peterson swung out of the ranch yard between two armored scout cars for
the sixty-mile trip down the range road. Dew glistened in the early
rays of light and the clear, cool morning air held little hint of the
heat sure to come by midmorning. There was a rush of photographers
towards the gate as the little convoy left the ranch. A battery of
cameras grabbed shots of the vehicles heading south.

It was the beginning of a day that changed the entire foreign policy of
the United States. It was also the day that started a host of the
nation's finest nuclear physicists tottering towards psychiatrists'
couches.

In rapid order in the next few days, Peterson's crew reinforced by
hundreds of fellow scientists, technicians and military men, learned
what Johnny Culpepper already knew.

They learned that (1) Sally's milk, diluted by as much as four hundred
parts of pure water, made a better fuel than gasoline when ignited.

They also learned that (2) in reduced degrees of concentration, it
became a substitute for any explosive of known chemical composition;
(3) brought in contact with the compound inside one of the golden eggs,
it produced an explosive starting at the kiloton level of one egg to
two cups of milk and went up the scale but leveled off at a peak as the
recipe was increased; (4) could be controlled by mixing jets to produce
any desired stream of explosive power; and (5) they didn't have the
wildest idea what was causing the reaction.

In that same order it brought (1) Standard Oil stock down to the value
of wallpaper; (2) ditto for DuPont; (3) a new purge in the top level of
the Supreme Soviet; (4) delight to rocketeers at Holloman Air Force
Research Center, Cape Canaveral and Vandenburg Air Force Base; and (5)
agonizing fits of hair-tearing to every chemist, biologist and
physicist who had a part in the futile attempts to analyze the two
ingredients of what the press had labeled "Thompson's Eggnog."

While white-coated veterinarians, agricultural experts and chemists
prodded and poked Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III, others were giving a
similar going-over to Hetty's chicken flock. Solomon's outraged screams
of anger echoed across the desert as they subjected him to fowl
indignities never before endured by a rooster.

Weeks passed and with each one new experiments disclosed new uses for