“Then let me put in some footnotes,” Morgan said. “One of the scientists in that first group was a top-notch man with the Los Alamos think tank. Knew his stuff inside out, helped develop the Vela program. When their report got the presidential blow-off, he made some testy comments, said they were all zoo animals coming out with idiotic theories to discredit his panel’s conclusions. Talk is that the White House was gun-shy about a confrontation with the South Africans, whom it damn well knew were manufacturing atomics, and maybe doing it with Israeli participation.”

He shrugged. “You got to sympathize with Jimmy’s predicament. With the gas crunch fresh in people’s minds, and Khomeini swift-kicking the Shah out of Iran, the poor guy was deep in the moat. Sharks closing in around him. Another domestic or foreign affairs boondoggle and any chance he had of swimming his way out was finished. The press, political opponents, average citizens, everybody wanted a pound of his flesh. Jimmy, well, the last thing he would’ve wanted was to out two long-standing allies for their complicity in banned nuclear-bomb testing. What was he supposed to do? Impose trade embargoes? Ask the U.N. Security Council to censure them? Neither option would’ve been to America’s advantage. So the sats, Navy, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency people became wrong, and the ivory-tower professors became right. In my opinion, Jimmy managed to convince himself of their rightness, and the nuke turned into an unexplained occurrence. Better for everyone that way.”

Constance Burns was nodding her head.

“A zoo event,” she said.

The affirmative smile Morgan directed at her was as gentle as a pat on the back.

“There you go,” he said. “Now, as our good friend Jak more or less implied, there’s a dash of supposition in what we’ve been talking about. Over the past couple of decades South African officials have admitted to the test, then backed off their admissions, then acknowledged them again, then qualified their acknowledgments, then shut up altogether. Same with the Israelis. Their newspapers printed articles quoting Knesset members about their government’s exchange of nuclear weapons blueprints for uranium from South Africa’s mines, then got those quotes retracted on them. But I believe the story of the zoo event’s been written. A nuclear detonation took place near Bouvetoya Island in September 1977. Low yield, about a third of a Hiroshima. Maybe subsurface, maybe an air-burst. It took place. And the leader of the Western world covered his ears, and closed his eyes, and claimed to be deaf and blind to the incident. Because dealing with it wasn’t advantageous to him. And for one other major reason.”

Langkafel looked at him. “Which would be . . . ?”