 Who is Miss Abercrombie
Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction November 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Illustrated by Freas Miss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on the shoulder. Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and crafts shop. Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere complex of buildings that housed the main wards. "We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston," Miss Abercrombie said lightly, but firmly. "You've been coming along famously and you must remember to answer when someone talks to you. Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so slightly. Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart book of patient progress. 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. 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. 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. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from a welter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight. Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavy radiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men and equipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away. At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon of Atomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBI agents and an Army full colonel disembarked. "It's impossible and unbelievable," Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for the fifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group of experts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater.
 A therapist who specializes in hand- and joint-related activities
 An art teacher brought in to supervise activity time at the institution  A government agent keeping tabs on the people at the mental institution under the guise of a therapist  A therapist who specializes in hand- and joint-related activities  One of the therapists personally appointed to keep an eye on Thaddeus