Book excerpt: _The Leaky Establishment_ is an atomic farce whose author David Langford once worked in the gentle radioactive glow of Britain's nuclear weapons industry, and hilariously satirizes its ghastly bureaucracy from the inside. Black comedy overtakes the unfortunate defence-scientist hero Roy Tappen when a "harmless" theft of office furniture lands him with his very own doomsday nuclear stockpile at home. Chain reactions of insanely comic escapades follow, with disaster piled on disaster, leading the increasingly desperate Tappen to the borders of science fiction as he seeks a way out of the mess.