OPERATION PUMICE
By Raymond Z. Gallun
HE got all the way through the guard lines and that must have taken some fancy figuring, or else it was just kid luck. It happened to be Mel Robbins who discovered him, early in the morning, when it was still cool and not quite broad daylight. Robbins was one of the two inside men of Operation Pumice.
Mel had come out of the mess-trailer and was having his digestion cigarette, when he spotted the youngster sprawled on his stomach on the New Mexico desert. Mel walked toward him without hurry, the way you might do when you see something so out of place that it leaves you incredulous. Ten paces away, Mel stopped and studied his find for all of two minutes. The boy never moved nor even seemed to know that anybody was so near.
He was spindly, fifteen or sixteen. Ten days ago he must have been very pale—maybe was the bookish kind—because now he was unbelievably sunburned. Shreds of dry skin stuck out from his blistered lips; his thin nose and high cheekbones were scabbed. The back of his neck, above his dirty T shirt, was so crusted that it was like lizard hide. All this indicated vast and unaccustomed tribulation.
But on his face there was a look of ridiculous rapture, as if he saw the millennium coming true; as if being here was worth a hundred times what it had cost, or fifty times what flesh could endure.
. . .
