The Early Asimov Volume 3 - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,36

important to the war effort. Periodically, there were revisions of the draft rules, and it was a rare month in which it did not look at one time or another as though I might be drafted. (It kept me on my toes, I can tell you, but I did not feel particularly ill-used. My predominant feeling was that of a sneaking guilt at not being drafted and some shame that I was relieved at my deferment.)

During 1944, the uncertainty went so far that I was called in for a physical examination, and it at once turned out that my nearsightedness was so bad as to render me ineligible for the draft anyway.

After V-E Day, the navy yard was ordered to retain only some percentage of those of its deferred employees, allowing the remainder to be drafted. Presumably, the navy yard would select its most important employees to keep, but they knew a better trick, according to the tale we employees heard. They retained all draftable employees who met the physical requirements, and removed protection from those who did not meet them either because of age or physical defect. In this way, they hoped to keep them all - those who were fit, because they were declared necessary, and those who were overage or unfit, because they were overage or unfit.

I, as an unfit employee, was one of those declared non-essential.

And then (you guessed it) the Army lowered its physical requirements. The result was that those navy yard employees with bad eyes or other mild deficiencies were put in imminent peril of the draft, while others, who were in every way equivalent except that they were in good shape, were not. (You may well laugh.)

For four months after V-E Day, it was up and down with me and the draft and I never knew, on one day, whether I might not receive my induction notice on the next. While I waited, the atom bombs were dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese formally surrendered on September 2.

On September 7, 1945, I received my notice of induction. I didn't enjoy it, of course, but I tried to be philosophical. The war was over, and, whatever difficulties I might have during the two years I expected to be in, at least no one would be shooting at me. I entered the Army on November 1, 1945, as a buck private.

Naturally, during all the fuss over the draft, culminating in my induction, I did no writing. There was an eight-month hiatus, in fact, the longest in three years.

On January 7, 1946, however, while I was still working my way through basic training in Camp Lee, Virginia, I began another 'positronic robot' story, called 'Evidence.' I made use of a typewriter in one of the administrative buildings.

Naturally, it was slow work. I didn't finish first draft till February 17, and then everything came to a halt when, the very next day, I discovered that I would be among those sent out to the South Pacific to participate in 'Operation Crossroads.' This was the first postwar atom bomb test, on the island of Bikini (which later gave its name to a bathing suit so skimpy as to react on the male constitution - in theory - like an atom bomb). The fact that a week later I received my check for the anthologization of 'Blind Alley' did little to raise my spirits.

We left on March 2, 1946, traveling by train and ship, and arrived in Honolulu on March 15. There then began a long wait before we could go on to Bikini (the atom bomb test was postponed, of course). When time began to hang heavy enough, I returned to 'Evidence.' I persuaded a sympathetic librarian to lock me up in the building when it closed for lunch so that I had an hour each day absolutely alone at the typewriter. I finished the story on April 10, and mailed it off to Campbell the next day.

On April 29, I received word of its acceptance. By that time, the word rate had reached two cents.

I never did go to Bikini, by the way. Some administrative error back home ended the allotment being sent to my wife. I was sent back to the United States on May 28 to inquire into the matter; it was all straightened out by the time I was back at Camp Lee. As long as I was there, however, I applied for a 'research discharge' on the ground that I was