A Stone and a Spear BY RAYMOND F. JONES Illustrated by JOHN BUNCH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Given: The future is probabilities merging into one certainty. Proposition: Can the probabilities be made improbables so that the certainty becomes impossible? From Frederick to Baltimore, the rolling Maryland countryside lay under a fresh blanket of green. Wholly unaware of the summer glory, Dr. Curtis Johnson drove swiftly on the undulating highway, stirring clouds of dust and dried grasses. Beside him, his wife, Louise, held her blowing hair away from her face and laughed into the warm air. "Dr. Dell isn't going to run away. Besides, you said we could call this a weekend vacation as well as a business trip." Curt glanced at the speedometer and eased the pressure on the pedal. He grinned. "Wool-gathering again." "What about?" "I was just wondering who said it first--one of the fellows at Detrick, or that lieutenant at Bikini, or--" "Said _what_? What are you talking about?" "That crack about the weapons after the next war. He--whoever it was--said there may be some doubt about what the weapons of the next war will be like, but there is absolutely no doubt about the weapons of World War IV. It will be fought with stones and spears. I guess any one of us could have said it." Louise's smile grew tight and thin. "Don't any of you ever think of anything but the next war--_any_ of you?" "How can we? We're fighting it right now." "You make it sound so hopeless." "That's what Dell said in the days just before he quit. He said we didn't _have_ to stay at Detrick producing the toxins and aerosols that will destroy millions of lives. But he never showed us how we could quit--and be sure of staying alive. His own walking out was no more than a futile gesture." "I just can't understand him, Curt. I think he's right in a way, but what brought _him_ to that viewpoint?" "Hard to tell," Curt said, unconsciously speeding up again. "After the war, when the atomic scientists were publicly examining their consciences, Dell told them to examine their own guts first. That was typical of him then, but soon after, he swung just as strongly pacifist and walked out of Detrick." "It still seems strange that he abandoned his whole career. The world's foremost biochemist giving up the laboratory for a _truck farm_!" Louise glanced down at the lunch basket between them. In it were tomatoes that Dr. Hamon Dell had sent along with his invitation to visit him. * * * * *