“Of course. How else does an ordinary citizen latch onto plutonium?”
“You out and out stole it?”
“In a manner of speaking. That is, I had someone else steal it. No, that’s not quite accurate. Someone else who had already stolen it gave it to me.”
“Gave it to you?” Marty challenged. “You mean to tell me somebody just donated it?”
“What are you, a federal agent?” Doc Brown smiled. “Look, I don’t want you to know too much. It might be bad for you. All I can say is that someone had this plutonium and they gave it to me for another project. I deemed that project not only less important than mine but actually harmful to the future of society. So I killed two birds with one stone by switching the plutonium from their evil project to my progressive and kindly project.”
“You’re not screwing around with our space program, are you?”
“Nothing like that,” Doc replied sanctimoniously. “I consider the conquest of space a beneficial scheme. Perhaps scheme isn’t the best word, but rest assured I’m all for it. Now please don’t press me further. It’s for your own good that you should know no more details.”
“All right,” Marty murmured.
“Now, before we proceed further, we must protect you,” Doc said.
He strode to the step-van and removed a yellow radiation suit. “Put this on,” he said.
Marty locked the video camera and stepped into the suit. The night had become chilly and it felt good to add the extra layer of material. With the hood pulled up, he felt totally divorced from the rest of the world, like a deep-sea diver on the floor of the ocean.
Working slowly, Doc Brown took a four-inch cylinder from the step-van, handling it with great delicacy. Marty knew that within the capsule must be a plutonium rod, surrounded by water, the new source of power for the time vehicle. Inching the DeLorean closer to the truck so that the plutonium would not have to be moved far, Marty returned to the video camera and started it again as Doc Brown stepped to the rear of the car and placed the plutonium cylinder into the loading hopper. He then sealed the hopper shut and tossed back the hood of his radiation suit.
“It’s safe now,” he smiled. “Everything is lead-lined.”
Marty took off his own hood and waited for Doc Brown’s next instructions.
“Just be sure you get my send-off,” Doc Brown smiled. “It’d be a shame if everything came out on tape but that.”
“Where are you headed?”
“The future.”
“How far?”
“Whoops,” Brown muttered, snapping his fingers. “Almost forgot my luggage.”
He jogged back to the step-van, grabbed a suitcase and returned to the DeLorean. “Who knows if they’ll have cotton underwear in the future?” he said. “I’m allergic to all synthetics. It would be rather unpleasant to find myself in the future with a terrible rash.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Marty asked.
“My machine works,” Doc Brown retorted. “You just saw it, didn’t you?”
“I meant, are you sure the future’s safe? Suppose you run smack into the bomb? Or it’s a society of robots that take you prisoner. At least you know the past is safe. Nobody there has better equipment than you. But the future—”
Doc Brown smiled, touched by the young man’s interest in his safety. “What you say makes a lot of sense,” he admitted. “I gave it a lot of thought when I was considering where I should go first. But I’ve always dreamed of seeing the future a lot more than rehashing the past. I’d like to see where mankind’s headed, up or down. And besides,” he added with a sly chuckle, “if I head down the road a quarter century, I’ll be able to find out who won the next twenty-five World Series and Super Bowls. Won’t that be a nice piece of information to have for my old age?”
Marty nodded. “Well, be sure to look me up when you get there and I’ll fill you in on the details of what’s been happening,” he said.
“Indeed I will.”
Clearing his throat, Doc once again assumed a more serious attitude as he addressed the camera.
“I, Dr. Emmett Brown,” he began, “am about to embark on a historic journey—”
Einstein started barking furiously.
Brown halted in mid-phrase. What was it—a mall security guard, a cat, or something worse?