“Why don’t you just give them a direct verbal yes or no and save yourself all this trouble?” Raskob asked.
General Bogan could tell Raskob was becoming restless. His eyes were fastened on the red blip and its inexorable progress.
“Actually we do both. But an enemy could easily come up on the same radio frequency and give whatever message it wanted just by imitating the voice of the President or one of our commanding officers,” General Bogan said. With a smile, he added, “Remember that our President has a rather distinctive regional accent which can be easily imitated. Also, when people talk over the radio there is often a misunderstanding of what is said, especially if there is any radio interference. But there can be no interference with the FailSafe box. It can be activated in only one manner and at the express order of the President.”
The Congressman turned from the board and spoke sharply to the General. “And what if someone up there—or down here—cracks?”
“You will probably remember, Congressman Raskob, that last July, the Air Force testified before your committee on our program to give a psychological screening to any airman who had anything to do with nudear weapons,” General Bogan added, trying to keep the irony from his voice. “From generals down to privates.”
“Yes, sir, there are a number of people who believe that the Air Force has a high incidence of madmen among its air crews,” Colonel Cascio said with a smile. “A few years back there was a lot of upset about whether or not an individual madman, ranging from a general down to the pilot of a plane, could start a war. With this procedure we may still have the madmen around but there is nothing they can do to start a war.”
Raskob’s eyes were back on the Big Board. Now he licked his lips. When he spoke his voice had something more than the rasp of irritation in it.
“Well, what else are you doing?” he asked brusquely. “Jesus Christ, that could be an ICBM or a Russian bomber and as far as I can tell you aren’t doing very much about it.”
General Bogan could not resist. “We are doing a good deal right now. Fighter planes are flying toward the unidentified object, ICBMs are going through the initial stage of preparation for launching, whole squadrons of bombers are being fueled and armed in case it really is an enemy vehicle that is coming toward us,” be said, “But, Congressman Raskob, if we went full out every time an unidentified object appeared on the screen we would need four times the appropriations that we now get from Congress. All-out safety is a very expensive thing.”
Raskob missed the irony. “What do you mean ‘every time that this happens’?” Raskob asked. “How often does this happen?”
“About six times a month,” General Bogan said. “And if we went straight to Condition Red each time it would probably cost around a billion dollars.”
Instantly Raskob’s face relaxed, his whole posture became easy. He laughed.
“O.K., General, you win,” Raskob said. “I got that bit about the congressional appropriations. But you should have told me that, it happened six times a month. It can’t be very dangerous if it happens that often.”
“Sir, we never take a chance,” Colonel Cascio said. His voice had an odd sharp inflection to it, almost reproving. “Right now we don’t know what that object is. We treat it exactly as if it were an enemy vehicle of some sort. If we cannot identify it in a few more minutes or it acts suspiciously we will go to Condition Yellow. If we still are unsatisfied or things occur that complicate the picture we might even go to Condition Green. The last condition, as you know, is Condition Red. We have never gone to Condition Red, for that would mean that we actually considered ourselves at war and would launch weapons, all of our weapons, at the enemy. What all of this machinery assures is that if we do go to war it is not by accident or because of the act of some madman. This system is infallible.”
Colonel Cascio was wrong.
Branching off from the War Room is a warren of powerfully built and beautifully orchestrated rooms. Each room has a function. Each is protected by sheaths of reinforced concrete and a layer of lead. Each is air-conditioned. Each is linked to the War Room by alternate methods of communication. The whole thing is as symmetrical, efficient, and orderly as the mind and muscle of man can make it.
One room in the warren about the War Room is labeled Presidential Command Net. The door is guarded by an Air Force man twenty-four hours a day. Within the room-of classified length and classified breadth-there are six low, gray, squat machines. Above them is a sign which reads Fail-Safe Activating Mechanisms. Below that sentence and in heavy raised red letters are the words To be used only at express Presidential order. There are two desks in the room. One of them is in front of the bank of six machines. The other is behind the bank of machines.
Seated behind each of the desks is an enlisted man whose sole duty is to check the mechanical condition of the activation machine. The machines are deliberately not covered. All of the operating parts must be visible to the two inspectors. The air which is forced into the room is triple-filtered so that it is dustless.
At about the moment that Colonel Cascio said the word “infallible” a sergeant sitting at one of the desks stood up and walked around the bank of machines.
“Frank, how you fixed for cigarettes?” the sergeant asked. “I’m out.”
Frank tossed him a pack of Chesterfields. The sergeant reached to catch them. At that moment in Machine No. 6 a small condenser blew. It was a soundless event. There was a puff of smoke no larger than a walnut that was gone instantly.
The sergeant sniffed the air. He turned to Frank. “Frank, do you smell something?” he asked. “Like something burning?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Frank said. “You bumming cigarettes all the time and then not paying me back, that burns me.”
They grinned at one another. The sergeant returned to his desk. Things returned to normal… almost. A small shield hid from the sergeant’s view the tiny knob of burnt carbon on top of the disabled condenser. No instruments on the table indicated a malfunction.
Congressman Raskob was a tough man. He regained his composure quickly. Now he was even enjoying the situation. It had something of the elements of politicsmit.
“Can you project the fighter planes that are flying toward the unidentified object onto the Big Board?” Raskob asked.
“Certainly, sir,” Colonel Cascio said.
He moved some levers. A few feet from the red blip a phosphorescent worm began to glow, became more distinct, and then broke itself into six separate blips, all black. They were diminishing the distance between themselves and the red blip at a rate which was perceptible to the human eye.
“Those are Canadian fighters. They are probably subsonic planes so they will dose the unidentified object in a half hour or so.”
“Colonel Cascio, what information do we have on the UFO?”
Colonel Cascio walked over to the machine and tore off a piece of tape. He handed it to General Bogan. It read, “UFO at Angels 30, speed 525, heading 196.”
“That means that it’s at 30,000 feet going 525 miles an hour on a compass heading of 196,” General Bogan said.
“Just suppose, General, that the planes get there right on schedule, what are they likely to find?” Raskob asked.
“Usually it is a commercial airliner that has neglected to file a flight plan or has been blown off course by high winds,” General Bogan said. “But keep in mind, sir, that there is a big blank space over the Atlantic where neither the radar sets from Europe nor America have the range to pick up planes. This wasn’t much of a problem with slow-flying planes at low altitudes, but with jets going at high speeds and altitude they can drift a couple of hundred miles while they are ‘in the gap.’ Occasionally the radar itself makes a mistake and gets a blip off the moon or a swarm of geese or gets a false echo from a satellite. But the radar mistakes have pretty well been eliminated since 1960.”