Now he and the DNI were talking of launching MKG himself into space. I got to my feet and faced Peace. ' Are you really serious about this incredible idea of shanghai-ing America's top scientist in order to launch him into space to prove the value of SNAP?'
We are not shanghai-ing him. MKG wants to go'
I turned to the DNI, but he ignored me and picked up his tiny punch and hammer.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
The DNI prised loose a chip of shale. I should have made it clear. This is not a kidnapping job. It is more than that.'
If Geoffrey got the publicity works for his so-called funeral, imagine,' I said, what MKG's launching will be like: a round-by-round, second-by-second commentary by every radio and television station in the world.'
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. The DNI let my words fall dead. Peace stared into his brandy.
I was conscious of Mam'zelle Adele's eyes on me.
Then the DNI looked up and hooked his thumb into the eyesocket of the fossil. He said, MKG goes alone. No publicity. You, John, and Geoffrey, and Mam'zelle Adele apart from a handful of experts-will be the only people present at the launch.'
Sirius's send-off from Cape Kennedy with the two American moon astronauts aboard had been one of the most spectacular shows the world had seen to date. Now the DNI was talking of a secret launch Of the Vice-President with a handful of men and one woman!
You're talking in riddles,' I said shortly.
Peace inclined his head slightly towards the DNI as if he, master-brainwasher that he was, should explain. The measure of rapport between them was plain to see.
You see,' began the DNI, MKG is a Navy man..
I realized-the sea The DNI had moulded the great new Royal Navy with Peace as its star; MKG was the Navygraduated supreme technocrat of the space age. The common bond which held them together was the sea.
Man is the sea,' the pedantic voice said softly. He tapped the fossil skull. This creature was the remote ancestor of Old Fourlegs, the coelacanth fish that science asserted had been extinct in these very waters of Limuria for millions of years. Today the coelacanth still swims among the drowned peaks of Limuria. Man came from the sea. He must find his salvation again-in the sea. The ultimate weapon in his hand must be-from the sea.'
Peace, saw what I was thinking. SNAP was to power the ultimate weapon.'
That is what MKG and his team had been working on,' observed the DNI. The ultimate weapon. It was to be fired from the sea.'
' And,' I said slowly. Congress threw it out.'
There was a rasp in his voice. The Pentagon has a Military Liaison Committee which works with the Atomic Energy Commission. They were all for it. But it was the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, drawn from the Senate and the House, which put paid to it. They, like their experts, were blinded by the moon landing. They hold the purse-strings. It wasn't Congress, but this joint committee which killed it. They threw away the ultimate weapon which MKG and his team had developed in favour of a modified Sirius rocket. SNAP-a small, magnificently ingenious machine, was to have provided the power for the new weapon. The power plant was the one thing in which American genius had not quite succeeded. SNAP, the Briton, was to be married to the American, Little Bear'
Little Bear!'
The DNI smiled thinly. Yes, that's its name-Little Bear. You would have thought the Americans would have learned from their past experience over the nuclear submarine and the Polaris missile, both of which in a previous epoch nearly underwent the same fate as Little Bear. The most underrated and under-publicized breakthrough in the whole history of modern armaments was the Polaris missile. The Americans, for all their publicity-consciousness, did it less than justice. The first crude Polaris, fired from a submarine submerged hundreds of feet down, introduced a completely new concept into war.' The voice became schoolmasterish. Up to then, all war had been a battle of refinements. But Polaris was the untraceable missile fired from an untraceable source, a submerged submarine, a minute pinpoint in the ocean deeps beyond the power of any tracking device to locate! Polaris was crude, but the concept was right.'
Crude!' I exclaimed. Jesus Christ!' I gulped down my brandy.
I don't mean the weapon itself,' went on the DNI. There were fantastic refinements of guidance, pioneer work on solid fuel, blast-off in the confined space of a sub's hull-I mean the principle was crude. Polaris was dependent on extraneous factors: the vulnerability and complexity of the submarine, the human factor of the men in her-no, the concept needed simplifying to be fully effective.'
The Sirius rocket-' I began.
The DNI picked up his punch and tiny hammer and inched it round a sliver of bone.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It was as inexorable as Chinese watertorture. The DNI became more emphatic. ' Sirius, a liquid-fuelled rocket, put two men on the moon. It is useless for anything else. It has no strategic concept. Tactical, yes. But it is simply an old artillery-piece, super-refined.'
I looked at Peace as the DNI returned to his tapping. Peace said, About two years ago we-that is, the sNaP team-evolved what we considered a first-class miniaturized power plant for missiles. I naturally informed the DNI. I then went to Washington where I met MKG for the first time'
I knew Geoffrey Peace. That would be fertile soil for a friendship.'
He smiled, easing the tension, and Adele flicked a grateful look at me.
When MKG heard about SNAP, he indicated that they themselves were working on an exciting new weapon.'
I, too, met MKG in the United States-a very remarkable man,' said the DNI. At our first meeting I had the temerity to suggest that Polaris-the new Polaris as I conceived it-would rule the world. With me, it was purely an idea, but MKG 46 revealed that he and his team were, in fact, working in a practical way on just such an ultimate weapon. I offered them SNAP. From that 'moment there was no question but that we would go along with them. You know, the President has delegated so much of his authority in all things atomic to MKG-and rightly so-that the say-so is virtually his in the maze of committees clustered round all nuclear projects.'
Except,' Peace put in, in the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy.'
The DNI frowned and went on, MKG'S missile had only a code number, but we three, `MKG, Geoffrey and I, decided to keep the generic name Polaris. So we called the new weapon Little Bear, for Polaris, the Pole Star, is the brightest star of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear constellation.' He smiled with grim satisfaction. Little Bear is all hell.'
I felt the DNI had been carried away. I shrugged. Little Bear is still only a refined Polaris, fired from a nuclear submarine.'
It is not fired from a submarine,' he replied. ' Little Bear is completely self-contained. It is like a big submersible mine
– the missile proper fits inside a casing. It is sunk hundreds of feet beneath the sea and is virtually untraceable, since its radio antenna sticks up only a foot or two. It is fired by ultra long-wave radio from thousands of miles away. Like
Polaris, though, a shot of compressed air lifts it to the surface, after which the solid-fuel motor takes over.'
The ultimate weapon-almost,' I conceded. But it's still not wholly independent.'
Little Bear's inertial guidance system is pre-set on its target,' continued the DNI. Once the missile is down, it cannot be changed until the whole thing is brought to the surface again. It's enough, though-Little Bear is fully independent of gantries, crews, tracker teams and all the complicated paraphernalia of the Sirius moon-rocket. It guides itself like the old Polaris. Little Bear is compact, reliable-a killer in the truest sense.'
The Prime Minister promised full British support for the Little Bear project,' said Peace. You can see what it means to the Navy. It puts us up alongside the Americans.'