The oddly elusive brunette

It was love at first sight--all over the world!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity November 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Certainly a faithful representation of a male simian cast in brass would, granted reasoning powers, have felt unusual trepidation if exposed to the Wisconsin weather that fateful winter morning.

I myself was inordinately glad that I lived in the project's Bachelor Officers Quarters only a short block from the UNACMEA/WAGS installation and that my first experience with Wisconsin winter three years before had prompted the purchase of the thermo-parka I was then wearing.

UNACMEA/WAGS is, I realize, a formidable array of letters. Though quickly recognizable, of course, from constant stereonews repetition, it is usually not immediately decipherable except by the UN which spawned it and the eggheads who maintain it.

I help maintain it. I also maintain that I'm not an egghead. Literally, that is. I do have a bushy albeit greying head of hair and a reasonably handsome (Mom always said) face beneath; otherwise the brunette might have--but first I must translate UNACMEA/WAGS. It's important.

When the United Nations finally established worldwide atomic control three years ago--in '65--it created the Atomic Control Monitor Establishment at its New York Headquarters with an Alternate installation here near Racine. Piecing together most of the capitals, the alternate set-up comes out UNACMEA. The WAGS, of course, is easy. W for Wisconsin. AGS for Alternating Gradient Synchrotron.

Everyone knows what an AGS is from the publicity given to the 25-Bev unit which went in at Brookhaven National Laboratories back in the International Geophysical Year. Pix of that 700-foot diameter horizontal doughnut were in all papers, mags and fax when it started producing anti-protons, anti-neutrons and, among the Long Island neighbors, a few tremulous anti-science folk.

Despite the parka I was shivering like a displaced Hottentot on Pluto at aphelion as I approached the UNACMEA building next to the 1400-foot diameter rings of WAGS. Activating the Harlan sphincter, I stepped into the console room. I'd activated the parka's auto-open when I realized that the last man out the night before, taking some dimpled weather gal's prognostications as utter veracity, had apparently kicked off the thermostat; the room was only slightly less frigid than external Racine.

Re-zippering, I kicked over the master switch to activate WAGS (which had to be operating when the other physicists arrived); then I beelined for the thermostat.

"You'd think," I said to the room's emptiness, "that certain sad sapiens of the genus homo would think more of personal physical comfort than the saving of infinitesimal quantities of fuel--"

Which is when there came from behind me a chattering but pleasant feminine voice saying, "C-c-cut the rec-c-criminations and g-g-get some heat in here b-b-but fast, prof-f-fessor!"

I was startled but turned slowly none the less, rationalizing that the place had been deserted when I'd entered and that no one else could be physically present since I'd entered alone and the only door hadn't been opened since.

I fully expected to find one of the headquarters stenos grinning at me over the closed circuit stereo from the Ad Building and I wasn't about to begin to feed her ego by showing startlement.

I faced instead a very much present, very much alive and very lovely raven-haired young lady who was in that remarkably provocative state of nearly absolute deshabille that only the new Parisian sunsuits can provide. The young lady's excitingly rounded curves were, however, a rather curious blue and it had fleetingly occurred to me that she was an extra-terrestrial when my better sense came to the fore and I said rather inanely,

"You should be wearing more in Wisconsin this time of year!"