The attendants made a quick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into the warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.

Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each patient.

At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through the lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jotted lengthily in her chart book.

When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.

The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mile to the main administration building where her car was parked.

As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the barred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hills towards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients' mess hall.

* * * * *

The sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light burning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warm hills.

At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat up in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing and occasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room. Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that sheltered the deserted crafts building.

He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.

The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw stark shadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.

An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild screams of the frightened and demented patients.

It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceiling lights began flashing on throughout the big institution.

Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by a small mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had been the arts and crafts building.

Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried through the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in the explosion.

None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.

The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked the surrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster units from a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at the still-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.