 Why does Thaddeus Funston smile at the sight of the demolished arts and crafts building?
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. Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place. "Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and then stood up. 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. 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. 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. At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills that sheltered the deserted crafts building. 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. 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. 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. In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily. "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.
 His self-constructed clay atom bomb was effectively detonated
 His prophecy of an alien invasion was fulfilled  He is gleeful at the idea of part of the mental hospital being destroyed  His self-constructed clay atom bomb was effectively detonated  He knows the explosion will distract the hospital staff and give him an opportunity to escape