On January 3, 1956, the Air Force reported that a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched from Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, had been destroyed when it appeared to be wandering off course. About the same date, a Panamanian freighter, riding the gulf-stream toward the West Indies, radioed a report of sighting a massive oil slick and a scattering of debris, some of it bearing Russian insignia. No survivors were found. The U.S. State Department solicitously inquired of the Soviet Union if any of its vessels had been lost in the winter storms of the Caribbean. The Soviet Union testily replied that no Soviet vessels could have been lost, since Soviet vessels, as a matter of sound international principle, confined their operations to their own territorial waters. During Easter Week of 1956, the FBI announced the arrests of four men on charges of espionage: A druggist in Tucson, Arizona; an importer in San Francisco; a retired real-estate operator in Los Angeles; an obscure trucker in northern California. All pleaded guilty in order to escape the gas chamber. The details of the charges against them were not disclosed, except to members of a Federal Grand Jury. Two other published items are worth noting: The May, 1956, issue of the journal published by the Institute of Research Engineers reported that one of its members, Dr. J. O. Smith, had recovered from injuries suffered in the explosion of a butane stove and had accepted a government research position in Washington, D.C. The other item was a paragraph in Aviation Weekly, congratulating Major General David William Sanders on his promotion to Brigadier General. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eddie, by Frank Riley