Day of the Moron
()
About this ebook
Read more from H. Beam Piper
101 Science Fiction Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ultimate Sci Fi Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Classic Sci-Fi Collection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Science Fiction Omnibus #2 (Serapis Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpace Viking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ullr Uprising: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ministry of Disturbance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Golden Age of Science Fiction - Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUllr Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The H. Beam Piper Megapack: 33 Classic Science Fiction Novels and Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science Fiction Omnibus #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpace Viking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks", McElhattan, Pa. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGenesis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Other Human Race (Fuzzy Sapiens) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flight From Tomorrow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrossroad's of Destiny Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpace Viking (Serapis Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Fuzzy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Edge of the Knife Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hunter Patrol Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lone Star Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/515 Great Science Fiction Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Cosmic Computer: Terro-Human Future History Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Slave is a Slave Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Little Fuzzy: Terro-Human Future History Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Day of the Moron
Related ebooks
Day of the Moron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mind Reader: After Dinner Conversation, #55 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Maya Stone Murders Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Luminous Face Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Eighth Day: Quarterback Operations Group Book 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Your Consciousness is an Alien Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Disintegration Machine (Professor Challenger Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSuite Mentale: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Puller Monk Novels: Quantico Rules and Sleeper Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tripleye: Book 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDr. Biddeldorf Goes to Hell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of the Four Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCorruption City: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Campus Detective: The Sociopath Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSherlock Holmes: The Final Problem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of the Four (Diversion Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anatomy of Fear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twice Dying Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Death by Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of the Four: New Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelf Portrait Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Golden Hinde Conspiracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Raid from Mars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuantico Rules Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Descendants #8 - Objectivity: The Descendants Main Series, #8 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrigger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of the Four: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSherlock Holmes - The Sign of the Four Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sign of the Four Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Science Fiction For You
Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cryptonomicon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Authority: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Firestarter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Day of the Moron
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Day of the Moron - H. Beam Piper
DAY OF THE MORON
H. Beam Piper
OZYMANDIAS PRESS
Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by H. Beam Piper
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DAY OF THE MORON
DAY OF THE MORON
There were still, in 1968, a few people who were afraid of the nuclear power plant. Oldsters, in whom the term atomic energy
produced semantic reactions associated with Hiroshima. Those who saw, in the towering steam-column above it, a tempting target for enemy—which still meant Soviet—bombers and guided missiles. Some of the Central Intelligence and F.B.I. people, who realized how futile even the most elaborate security measures were against a resourceful and suicidally determined saboteur. And a minority of engineers and nuclear physicists who remained unpersuaded that accidental blowups at nuclear-reaction plants were impossible.
Scott Melroy was among these last. He knew, as a matter of fact, that there had been several nasty, meticulously unpublicized, near-catastrophes at the Long Island Nuclear Reaction Plant, all involving the new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors, and that there had been considerable carefully-hushed top-level acrimony before the Melroy Engineering Corporation had been given the contract to install the fully cybernetic control system intended to prevent a recurrence of such incidents.
That had been three months ago. Melroy and his people had moved in, been assigned sections of a couple of machine shops, set up an assembly shop and a set of plyboard-partitioned offices in a vacant warehouse just outside the reactor area, and tried to start work, only to run into the almost interminable procedural disputes and jurisdictional wranglings of the sort which he privately labeled bureau bunk
. It was only now that he was ready to begin work on the reactors.
He sat at his desk, in the inner of three successively smaller offices on the second floor of the converted warehouse, checking over a symbolic-logic analysis of a relay system and, at the same time, sharpening a pencil, his knife paring off tiny feathery shavings of wood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, with thinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous, half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabby leather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks of paint showed where some military emblem had been, long ago. While his fingers worked with the jackknife and his eyes traveled over the page of closely-written symbols, his mind was reviewing the eight different ways in which one of the efficient but treacherous Doernberg-Giardano reactors could be allowed to reach critical mass, and he was wondering if there might not be some unsuspected ninth way. That was a possibility which always lurked in the back of his mind, and lately it had been giving him surrealistic nightmares.
Mr. Melroy!
the box on the desk in front