Year of the Jackpot 15

strength. But what was their strength? Their beginnings had
been so obscure that Breen had had to go back and dig into
the December 1951 filesbut he had been approached twice
this very week to join them, right inside his own officeonce
by his boss, once by the janitor.
He hadn't been able to chart the Know-Nothings. They
gave him chills in his spine. He kept column-inches on them,
found that their publicity was shrinking while their numbers
were obviously zooming.
Krakatau blew up on July i8th. It provided the first im-
portant transpacific TV-cast; its effect on sunsets, on solar
constant, on mean temperature, and on rainfall would not
be felt until later in the year. The San Andreas fault, its
stresses unrelieved since the Long Beach disaster of 19331
continued to build up imbalancean unhealed wound run-
ning the full length of the West Coast. PelBe and Etna
erupted; Mauna Loa was still quiet.
Flying saucers seemed to be landing daily in every state.
No one had exhibited one on the groundor had the De-
partment of Defense sat on them? Breen was unsatisfied
with the off-the-record reports he had been able to get; the
alcoholic content of some of them had been high. But the
sea serpent on Ventura Beach was real; he had seen it. The
troglodyte in Tennessee he was not in a position to verify.
Thirty-one domestic air crashes the last week in July . , .
was it sabotage? Or was it a sagging curve on a chart? And
that neo-polio epidemic that skipped from Seattle to New
York? Time for a big epidemic? Breen's chart said it was.
But how about B.W.P Could a chart know that a Slav bio-
chemist would perfect an efficient virus-and-vector at the
right time? Nonsensel
But the curves, if they meant anything at all, included
"free will"; they averaged in all the individual "wills" of a
statistical universeand came out as a smooth function,
Every morning three million "free wills" flowed toward the
center of the New York megapolis; every evening they
flowed out againall by "free will," and on a smooth and
predictable curve.
Ask a lemming! Ask (dl the lemmings, dead and alive-
let them take a vote on it! Breen tossed his notebook aside
and called Meade, "Is this my favorite statistic?"
"Potty! I was thinking about you."
"Naturally. This is your night off."
"Yes, but another reason, too. Potiphar, have you ever
taken a look at the Great Pyramid?"
"I haven't even been to Niagara Falls. I'm looking for a