A Touch of Infinity by Howard Fast

fourth—when you come to the final box, there’s not enough sand on all the beaches to satisfy it.”
    The discussion went on, and Herbert Cooke squirmed uneasily. His eyes constantly strayed to the slides on the table.
    â€œOnce it gets out …” the judge was saying.
    â€œIt can’t get out,” the FBI man said flatly. “They already decided that. When you think of what the kids and the hippies could do with this one—no, it’s a question of time. When? That’s up to you people.”
    â€œAs soon as possible,” Channing put in.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” Herbert asked.
    â€œDDT’s been outlawed, but this will be an exception. We’ve already experimented with a concentration of DDT—”
    â€œExperimented?”
    â€œWe trapped about eighteen of them alive. The DDT is incredibly effective. With even a moderate concentration, they die within fifteen minutes.”
    â€œWe’ll have forty helicopters,” the FBI man explained. “Spray from the air and do the whole thing between three and four A.M. People will be asleep, and most of them will never know it happened. Saturation spraying.”
    â€œIt’s rough on the bees and some of the animals, but we have no choice.”
    â€œJust consider the damn kids,” Chief Bradley pointed out to Herbert. “Do you know they’re having peace demonstrations in a place like New Milford? It’s one thing to have the hippies out every half hour in New York and Washington and Los Angeles—but now we got it in our own backyard. Do you know what we’d have if the kids got wind that we’re spraying these bugs?”
    â€œHow do they die?” Herbert asked. “I mean, when you spray them, how do they die?”
    â€œThe point is, Herb,” Judge Billings put in, “that we need your image. There have been times when it’s been a damn provoking image—I mean your wife riding around with that Mother for Peace sticker on her bumper and holding the vigils and all that kind of thing, not to mention that petition she’s been circulating on this ecology business—it’s just dynamite, this ecology thing—so I’ll be frank to tell you it has been a mighty provoking image. But I suppose there’s two sides to every coin, and I’m the first one to say that you can’t wipe out a whole generation of kids; damn it, you can’t even lock them up. You got to deal with them, and that’s one of your virtues, Herb. You can deal with them. You have the image, and it’s an honest image and it’s worth its weight in gold to us. There’ll be trouble, but we want to keep it at a low level. Those crazy Unitarians are already stirring up things, and I’m a Congregationalist myself, but I could name you two or three Congregationalist ministers who would stir up a hornest’s nest if they were sitting here. There are others too, and I think you can deal with them.”
    â€œI was just wondering how they die when you spray them,” Herbert said.
    â€œThat’s just it,” Channing said eagerly. “There may not be much explaining to do. The DDT appears to paralyze them almost instantly, even when it’s not direct, even when it’s only a drift. They stop movement and then they turn brown and wither. What’s left is shapeless and shriveled and absolutely beyond any identification. Have a look at this slide.”
    He took one of the slides and held a magnifying glass over it. The men crowded close to see, and Herbert found himself joining them.
    â€œIt looks like last season’s dead cockroach,” said Bradley.
    â€œWe want you to set the time,” Dobson, the FBI man, told them. “It’s your turf and your show.”
    â€œWhat about the dangers of the DDT?”
    â€œOverrated—vastly overrated. We sure as hell don’t recommend a return to it. The Department of