After X point things changed, and they were as near X point now as made no difference. Soon they would turn, and each pulse of power from the engines would be another few yards on the road to home. It made no difference whether home was North Africa, or Britain, or wherever else in the world SAC had decided to send them. Home was where they could touch down after a mission with the two unimaginable bombs that hung in the long bomb bay of the B-52 still safely in place.
To ride a few feet above an explosive power so potent that five or six B-52’s could have settled World War Two decisively for either side, did not worry them. There was little risk of accidental detonation. But all of them, as part of their indoctrination, had seen the films of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All of them had been shown the comparative strength of the puny twenty kiloton bomb dropped then, against the fifteen megaton monsters which they carried.
Sometimes they did not carry the actual bombs, but concrete replicas of the same size, shape, and weight. Then the pressure was off. The mission was a happy one. But when the wing rotated overseas, carrying of the actual weapons was mandatory, as it was on any of the training missions which took the individual aircraft to their X points. And at those times fear was an inseparable companion on the flight. Not fear for themselves but for the world.
They felt it a little less perhaps because they were single men. But still they felt it. The Air Force was perfectly aware of this. A tighter individual check was kept on SAC aircrews than on any body of men in history. And when the strain became too much, when there were signs that the human spirit could endure no more of the hideous responsibility, men were quietly relieved and re-assigned to duty where their minds could slowly come back to normal under the healing warmth of the knowledge that, for a time at least, they would not be called on to destroy upwards of five million human beings at the press of a button.
The SAC crews accepted these things as reality. They believed they guarded the peace of the world as surely as they knew the price they must pay within themselves to do it. If they had been ignorant, unintelligent men it would have been easier for them. But ignorant, unintelligent men could not have flown a jet bomber. The aircrew were highly trained men of good educational background. They could think for themselves. The Air Force preferred it that way, even if it put a limit on the number of missions and years a SAC crew might be expected to operate efficiently.
So now, as Andersen called, "Three minutes to run," and Brown set the new course on the gyro, the crew were happy. There is a peculiar intimacy which grows up between members of a bomber crew. After a few months together there is established between them an almost telepathic understanding. There was no need for anyone to ask Sergeant Garcia to break out two Thermos jugs of coffee. He knew as soon as they started on the home leg the rest of the boys, like himself, would want coffee. He reached up to the rack, and took down two jugs and a set of disposable containers. He was whistling quietly.
In the same way Garcia knew about the coffee, Lieutenant Goldsmith, the gunnery officer, knew it was time to make the introductory remarks which would set the stage for his story. Goldsmith was the established comic of the crew. He was a small, lively, intelligent-eyed man, with a devastating gift of mimicry. His stories were invariably long, involved, amatory, and very funny. He rationed them strictly to one per mission. Now he said, "Say Captain, you remember the last time we hit London?"
Brown grinned. Whatever his reply, he knew that Goldsmith’s story would not concern London. It would deal with the home town or home state of one of the crew. But Goldsmith always liked to approach his story obliquely, through a series of conversational gambits as formal and as meaningless as the introductory movements of a minuet. He said, "I remember we hit London. Guess I don’t remember a heck of a lot of what we did there. Why?"
The crew listened attentively. They all recognised the preliminaries. Soon they would turn, Garcia would pass the coffee round, and Goldsmith would begin the story proper. "Well," he continued, "you remember we went to that joint called the Celebrité? Just off Bond Street?"
"Sure." This was a dialogue confined to Brown and Goldsmith the crew realised, which indicated that Brown would be the target of the story. They relaxed as comfortably as they could in their seats.
"Well, you remember we met a dame there?"
"Lots of dames," Brown said affably.
"Yeah, but this particular dame. That figure, wow! That red hair, the real, deep, copper-red kind. That up from under look she kept giving me. Remember?"
"Sorry to break in," Andersen said. "Thirty seconds to run."
"Roger." Brown stretched his left hand forward ready to select the turn control on the autopilot. "Well, I think I remember her."
"Reason I asked," Goldsmith said, but this time in an accent which was pure Alabama, the kind of accent the crew were always kidding Brown he should have, "was because she put me in mind of a lil’ ole gal I encountered in Dothan, Alabama. You-all know that place, Cap’n, sir?"
The crew exchanged pleased grins. With an operator like Goldsmith to entertain them for the next fifteen minutes or so, the last leg of the mission wouldn’t seem long. In a few minutes they’d be having coffee. And maybe this weekend there’d be a pass to London. Life in SAC was pretty good, all right.
So now they were almost at the X point, and once again nothing had happened. They had been briefed to turn at the X, but even if their briefing had been to carry on in to the attack, they would have turned. That was the Failsafe procedure, the system SAC had dreamed up to prevent any accidental attack sparking off a third world war. Unless positive attack orders were received in the air, SAC aircrews were under the strictest orders to go no further than the X point. They were only too glad to obey those orders.
"Ten seconds," Andersen said. There would be nothing for him to do for a while after they turned. He settled himself comfortably to enjoy Goldsmith’s story.
"Well now, Herman, seems to me I heard of it some place." Brown’s voice was carefree as he poised his finger over the turn control.
Garcia began to unscrew the top of a Thermos.
Brown’s finger started to move down.
There was a short clatter of morse. It lasted only ten seconds or so. Brown delayed the movement of his finger
until the message had finished.
Sergeant Mellows, the radioman, said shortly, "Message from base, Captain. Wing to hold at X points."
Chapter 2
Brigadier General Quinten, Commanding Officer of Sonora Air Force Base, looked out through the armoured glass of his office window at the brilliantly lit, empty flight lines. His 839th Wing had gone off two hours before on a series of simulated raids designed to test the efficiency of the North American Air Defence system — NORAD as it was generally called. The 843rd, on rotation overseas from Sonora, were a few minutes from their X points on the other side of the world. Only a few lame ducks and light airplanes were left.
Quinten, a tall, spare, grey-haired man, slightly stooped and with the barely discernible beginnings of a small pot belly, turned away abruptly, and walked quickly to his desk. He sank into the padded chair which he seldom left when his crews were airborne, picked up a pencil, and made a few shapeless, meaningless marks on the note pad in front of him.