The Book of Philip Jose Farmer

"Inspiration is found in many places," Mough said, noting van Skant's questioning expression. "Dr. Kerls often comes up with an idea after drinking from his fount of wisdom, as he calls it, hah, hah!"

"I wish to see Dr. Legzenbreins immediately," van Skant said.

"Yeah, there she is, just going into her office," Dr. Mough said. "Ain't she too much? I'm in love with her, and so are my two colleagues, the imbeciles! But she's too dedicated to get married as yet. She's a beautiful young scientist."

"And who's that?" van Skant said, pointing at a huge, pimply-faced girl in a laboratory coat who had just waddled out of the office.

"That's her mad daughter."

"Mad? You mean, angry?"

"Nuts," Mough said. "Oh, I don't mean to you, Doctor! She's nuts, out of her skull, real woo-woo, you know. But a brilliant idea man! She's the one thought of the moths."

"That figures," van Skant said.

As he put the handkerchief back in his pocket, he felt something flutter. The insect that he removed and threw away was a large white moth with a scoop-shaped mouth. It flapped around and around the big room until it passed through the steam from an open tube in which bubbled a dark red liquid.

The moth dropped as if it had had a heart attack and fell into the tube, where it disintegrated.

The red liquid turned a bright yellow.

Dr. Lorenzo yelped, apparently with delight, and he motioned for his colleagues and the fat girl to hasten to the tube. Kerls had just picked up a ten-footlong glass pipe to fit onto a partially assembled setup. He turned when Lorenzo yelled, and the end of the pipe swung around and struck Mough in the back of his head. The cracking noise carried across the huge room.

Kerls dropped the pipe on Mough's head as he struggled to get up from the floor. Kerls ran, ducked behind a table, and reappeared by Lorenzo.

Mough staggered up off the floor, feeling the back of his head.

Van Skant strode up to the group, pushing his big belly as if it contained mail from the President, and he said, "What's so interesting?"

Mough's eyes had lost their glaze by then. He was looking suspiciously at Kerls, who was bending over the tube, rubbing his hands, and humming. Mough said, "Ah, Dr. van Skant, I presume? Yes, the moth undoubtedly contains the missing element, or elements, or combination thereof. We've been looking for a long time..."

"On government time?"

"On our lunch hour," Dr. Lorenzo said.

"It'll be easier just to use moths than to try to analyze a moth and determine the particular stuff responsible for the reaction," Dr. Kerls said. "Hyungh! Hyungh!"

"No trouble there," Dr. Lorenzo said. "We just send the janitor outside with a shovel and a bucket."

"What is that stuff?" Dr. van Skant bellowed, his face red.

"A universal solvent," Dr. Mough said, smiling proudly.

Van Skant struggled for breath and then pointed his finger at the tube. "A universal solvent? But that tube..."

"Oh, the reaction takes time," Kerls said, cracking his knuckles and then looking at his wristwatch, the large white-gloved hands of which were at 12:32. "In fact..."

The tube disappeared, and the yellow fluid splashed over the mica-topped table.

One corner of the table and a leg were gone.

A hole appeared in the floor, and a scream from the room below came up through it. And then, far below, there was a hiss of severed steam pipes. Presently, intermingled with the hiss, was a gurgle. A moment later, a splash.

"Possibly sheared plumbing," Dr. Mough said, smiling.

Van Skant's face had turned from red to gray.

"My God!" he yelled when he had finally gotten his breath again. "It'll go all the way to the center of the Earth!"

Dr. Mough passed his hand over his bangs and his face and then cried, "You jerks! You shoulda used less solvent like I told you!"

Kerls was on his right; Lorenzo, his left. His fists caught each in the mouth simultaneously, and they staggered back clutching their faces.

"How deep will that stuff really go?" van Skant screamed.

Mough blinked, rubbed the back of his head, and said, "What? Oh, that! The solvent evaporates within half an hour, so there's no problem there."

A low rumbling noise shook the building, and then the hole in the floor gushed black liquid.

Later on, after much litigation it was established that the oil well was the property of the Federal government. A few days after the suit was settled, very little mattered. But that was some time in the future.

Van Skant, in his report, admitted that he didn't remember much of anything from the moment he heard the rumble. He thought that Dr. Kerls had picked up a big plastic pipe to insert into the hole in the floor as a plug. He thought, but could not swear to it, that the end of the pipe had struck him across the forehead when Dr. Kerls turned around with it on his shoulder. He made a very poor witness for the government, and so the suit against Serendipitous Laboratories and its head, the beautiful young scientist, Dr. Legzenbreins, was dropped.

By the time that Serendipitous had moved into a new building, the oil well had been capped and Southern California was cleansed of its moths. Dr. Mough, during a news interview, said, "How were my colleagues and I to know that one of the atmospheric toxics which the moths were mutated to eat would be a sex stimulant and that the mutants would breed entirely out of hand? Uh, please don't quote that last remark."

Dr. Mough revealed that Serendipitous was mutating bats which could, as it were, vacuum-clean the air. The company was also mutating goats to eat land pollutants and refuse, and sharks which would digest oceanic pollutants.

At that very moment, Dr. Legzenbreins was in her office with her daughter.

"I need a man," Desdemona whined.

"Who doesn't?" her mother said.

Desdemona blew out her bubble gum and looked cross-eyed at the iridescent bubble. Her mother became tense. Was Desdemona getting another fabulous idea?

The big bubble collapsed into the big mouth.

"You need a man?" Desdemona said. "You? The most beautiful woman in the world?"

"That's what scares them off," Dr. Legzenbreins said. "And the few that don't scare, the studs with low IQ's, I can't stand. So I'm in as bad a way as you are. Ironic, ain't it?"

"Drs. Kerls, Lorenzo, and Mough would marry you within a minute, and they're Ph.D.'s," the daughter said, drooling.

"They're five feet tall, and I'm six feet two," the mother said. "Besides, I'm not sure they're not punch-drunk."

"They're brilliant!"

"The two states are not necessarily incompatible."

"I don't want big words. I want a man. I'm twenty-five!"

"I have a man for you," the mother said. "A psychoanalyst."

She added, "In a very high-class private sanitorium."

But she did not mean it. Her daughter provided the creative genius of Serendipitous. She herself, though a genius, was basically an analytic scientist, and her three assistants were basically synthesizers. Without madness, science would get no place, and Dr. Legzenbreins knew it.

She put on a very tight peekaboo dress and called in the three for a conference.

"I won't marry until my daughter marries and quits bugging me about her sex life or lack thereof. I'd suggest a lover. But she is, as you know, quite insane, and insists on remaining a virgin until she has a husband. Now, each of you goofballs has asked me many times to marry him."

Dr. Kerls stood up, danced backward, cracked his knuckles, and said, "I repeat my offer."

Dr. Mough kicked him in the knee and slapped him twice in the face before he hit the floor. As Dr. Kerls tried to get up, he was hit on the head with the coffee tray, which bent to form a semihelmet.