The Small Back Room

London, March, 1943. Sammy Rice is a scientist working in a makeshift scientific research unit in a government ministry out of a makeshift proverbial and literal back room in a government office building. They have no real mandate and only work on what is asked of them. While the senior scientist is Professor Mair, Sammy, an explosives and munitions specialist, is widely regarded as the real brains, the one who has the good balance in being able to apply that science to what is happening on the ground. While he likes Mair and his colleagues both as scientists and people, he quietly seethes about the conduct of the manager, R.B. Waring, in Waring's goal of upward career mobility often at the expense of the greater good. Sammy is in constant physical pain as he wears an artificial prosthesis in place of his missing right foot. One of his proverbial crutches is whiskey, which does not dull the physical pain but the emotional pain and which he tries to avoid if only because he's a struggling alcoholic. His other emotional crutch is Sue, Waring's secretary with who he is in a clandestine relationship, with who he has a standing Wednesday night date, and who lives across the hall from him. That crutch on Sue is despite he feeling like he is not a good enough man for her in both his physical and emotional issues. Sammy's life in all aspects is affected by being asked to consult on a secret project with Captain Dick Stuart as young males have been killed in what are assumed hidden explosives dropped by the Germans, they who have to figure out if that is indeed the case, what the explosives are hidden as, and what triggers them.