IT WAS THE first time that the U.S. Marines had ever been routed with water pistols.

The screen flickered. Another scene replaced the first. But the afterimage had burned itself on my mind.

A distorted sun that had no business in a mid-Illinois sky made the scene bright for the long-range cameras. A regiment of Marines, helmeted, wearing full packs, toting rifles with bayonets and automatic weapons, were stumbling backward in full retreat before a horde of naked men and women. The nudists, laughing and capering, were aiming toy cowboy-sixshooters and Captain Orbit rayguns. These sprayed streams of liquid from tiny muzzles, streams that arched over desperately upraised guns and squirted off the faces under the helmets.

Then, the tough veterans were throwing their weapons down and running away. Or else standing foolishly, blinking, running their tongues over wet lips. And the victors were taking the victims by the hand and leading them away behind their own uneven lines.

Why didn’t the Marines shoot? Simple. Their cartridges refused to explode.

Flamethrowers, burpguns, recoilless cannon? They might as well have been shillelaghs.

The screen went white. Lights flashed on. Major Alice Lewis, WHAM, put down her baton.

“Well, gentlemen, any questions? None? Mr. Temper, perhaps you’d like to tell us why you expect to succeed where so many others have failed. Mr. Temper, gentlemen, will give us the bald facts.”

I rose. My face was flushed; my palms, sticky. I’d have been wiser to laugh at the major’s nasty crack about my lack of hair, but a quarter century hadn’t killed my self-consciousness over the eggish-ness of my head. When I was twenty, I came down with a near-fatal fever the doctors couldn’t identify. When I rose from bed, I was a shorn lamb, and I’d stayed fleeced. Furthermore, I was allergic to toupees. So it was a trifle embarrassing to get up before an audience just after the beautiful Major Lewis had made a pun at the expense of my shining pate.

I faced a roomful of civilians and officers, all V.I.P. or loud brass. Through the window at the back, I could see a segment of snow-covered Galesburg, Illinois. The declining sun was perfectly normal. People were moving about as if it were customary for fifty thousand soldiers to be camped between them and the valley of the Illinois, where strange creatures roamed through the fantastically i luxuriant vegetation.

‘tl I paused to fight down the wave of reluctance which invariably inundated me when I had to speak in public. For some reason, my upper plate always went into a tap dance at such crucial moments.

“Ladie-s-s and gentlemen, I’s-s-saw S-s-susie on the’s-s-sea-shore yes-s-sterday.” You know what I mean. Even if you’re describing the plight of the war orphans in Azerbaijan, you watch your listeners smile and cover their lower faces, and you feel like a fool.

I shouldn’t have taken so long to summon my nerve, for the major spoke again. Her lip curled. It was a very pretty lip, but I didn’t think even a nonpermanent wave improved its appearance at the moment.

“Mr. Temper believes he has the key to our problem. Perhaps he does. I must warn you, however, that his story combines such unrelated and unlikely events as the escape of a bull from the stockyards, the drunken caperings of a college professor who was noted for his dedicated sobriety, to say nothing of the disappearance of said professor of classical literature and two of his students on the same night.”

I waited until the laughter died down. When I spoke, I said nothing about two other improbably connected facts. I did not mention the bottle I had purchased in an Irish tavern and shipped i to the professor two years before. Nor did I say what I thought one of the camera shots taken by an Army balloon over the city of Onaback meant. This photograph had shown a huge red brick statue of a bull astride the football field of Traybell University.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “before I say much about myself, I’ll tell you why the Food and Drug Administration is sending a lone agent into an area where, so far, the combined might of the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines have failed.”

Red faces blossomed like flowers in springtime.

“The F. D.A. necessarily takes a part in the affaire a I’Onaback. As you know, the Illinois River, from Chillicothe to Havana, now runs with beer.”

Nobody laughed. They’d long ago quit being amused by that. As for me, I loathed any alcoholic drink or drug. With good reason.

“I should modify that. The Illinois has an odor of hops, but those of our volunteers who have drunk from the river where the stuff begins to thin out don’t react to it as they would to a regular alcoholic drink. They report a euphoria, plus an almost total lack of inhibition, which lasts even after all alcohol is oxidized from their bloodstream. And the stuff acts like a stimulant, not a depressant. There is no hangover. To add to our mystification, our scientists can’t find any unknown substance in the water to analyze.

“However, you all know this, just as you know why the F.D.A. is involved. The main reason I’m being sent in, aside from the fact that I was born and raised in Onaback, is that my superiors, including the President of the United States, have been impressed with my theory about the identity of the man responsible for this whole fantastic mess.

“After this situation had come to the notice of the ED.A. authorities, I was assigned to the case. Since so many Federal Agents had disappeared in Onabagian territory, I decided to do some checking from the outside. I went to the Congressional Library and began reading the Onaback Morning Star and Evening Journal backwards, from the day the Library quit receiving copies of them. Not until I came across the January 13 issues of two years ago, did I find anything significant.”

I stopped. Now that I had to put my reasonings in spoken words before these hardheaded bigshots, I could weigh their reception. Zero. Nevertheless, I plunged ahead. I did have an ace-in-the-hole. Or, to be more exact, a monkey-in-a-cage.

“Gentlemen, the January 13 issues related, among other things, the disappearance on the previous night of Dr. Boswell Durham of Traybell University, along with two of his students in his survey course on classical literature. The reports were conflicting, but most of them agreed on the following. One, that during the day of the 13th, a male student, Andrew Polivinosel, made some slighting remark about classical literature. Dr. Durham, a man noted for his mildness and forbearance, called Polivinosel an ass. Polivinosel, a huge football player, rose and said he’d toss Durham out of the building by the seat of his pants. Yet, if we are to believe the witnesses, the timid, spindly, and middle-aged Durham took the husky Polivinosel by one hand and literally threw him out of the door and down the hall.

“Whereupon, Peggy Rourke, an extremely comely coed and

Polivinosel’s ‘steady,’ persuaded him not to attack the professor. The athlete, however, didn’t seem to need much persuasion. Dazed, he made no protest when Miss Rourke led him away.

“The other students in the class reported that there had been friction between the two and that the athlete bugged Dr. Durham in class. Durham now had an excellent opportunity for getting Polivinosel kicked out of school, even though Polivinosel was Little Ail-American. The professor didn’t, however, report the matter to the Dean of Men. He was heard to mutter that Polivinosel was an ass and that this was a fact anyone could plainly see. One student said he thought he detected liquor on the professor’s breath, but believed he must have been mistaken, since it was campus tradition that the good doctor never even touched Cokes. His wife, it seems, had a great deal to do with that. She was an ardent temperance worker, a latter-day disciple of Frances Willard.