pencils and their holder anywhere! He searched the room fruitlessly. Finally he stood, frustrated, in the middle of the room. "Dammit!" he said, "Pencil, come here!"
Silently the pencil rose from beneath the seat cushions where it had fallen, floated through the air and bumped Mike lightly on the back of the head. Startled, Mike turned around, and stared at the pencil floating in mid air! Half in a dream, he reached out and took it.  "Oh, my God!" he said, "Oh, my God!"
Out of nowhere a soft voice answered, "Not mine!"
"Huh?" said Mike. There was a soft and gentle laughter as Mike sat down. "On, no," he thought, "I'm going crazy! I'm hearing things!"  Mike was practically unaware that he had flipped open the binder and he was drawing, but it was not a kangaroo. In a few moments his eyes fell on his work. he had drawn the Earth and the moon, as seen from space, and between them was a strange object....a short cylinder with six bumps on the front of it. When he finished, he signed the picture, but not with his own signature. In the left-hand corner he wrote, "Galileo."
He replaced the pencil in its appropriate place in the binder and stared at the picture.
"Bureaucrats!" he cursed, shut the binder, and hurried from his apartment. In a few minutes he was in Horton's office telling him what happened.
"What's the matter, Doc?" he asked, "Am I freaking out?"
"Hardly," said Horton. "You've demonstrated the powers of levitation, a Spirit has spoken to you, and you've made an automatic drawing." He went over to the phone and called Cooper, and asked him to come to the infirmary. In a few moments Cooper arrived.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," said Horton, "Mike just drew this. Is that an MLC?"
Cooper took the picture and stared at it. "It sure looks like it," he said. "Where did YOU ever see pictures of an MLC?" Cooper asked Mike.
"I've never seen pictures of one," answered Mike. "I don't even know what one is."
"An MLC," said Cooper, "is a Multiple Launch Cluster. They were the last things the space cranes took up before the shuttle program was shut down. The United States has two-hundred of those babies orbiting the Earth. Each one holds six warhead injectors, and each of these injectors carries three warheads. When the government knew they weren't going to be able to maintain the old underground silos any longer, they dismantled the rocket and put all the warheads in these launch clusters, and put them in orbit. They're supposed to be fool proof and fully automatic. If their sensors detect warheads coming at the United States, they automatically zero in on the country of origin and fire their warheads. Result- no more country of origin, even if there's no more United States to protect! Stupid, huh?"