“I don’t know aboutthat, sir,” Yeager said. “I’m no physicist or anything like that. Uh, sir, am I allowed to talk about this stuff with you? They worked real hard on keeping it a secret.”
“You’re not only allowed to, you’re ordered to-by me,” Donovan answered. “But I’m glad to see you concerned with security, Sergeant, because I’m going to tell you something you are absolutely forbidden to mention outside this room, except as I may later direct. Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said. By the way the base commandant spoke, he’d get a blindfold if he messed that one up; nobody’d bother wasting a cigarette on him.
“Okay,” Donovan repeated. “By now, you’re probably wondering what the hell is going on and why I dragged you in here. That right?” No answer seemed necessary. Donovan charged ahead: “Reason’s real simple-we just got one of these atomic bombs delivered here, and I want to know as much about it as I can find out.”
“Here,sir?” Sam stared.
“That’s what I told you. It set out from Denver before the cease-fire was announced, and after that it just kept going. Makes sense when you think about it, hey? Thing must have come on one devil of a roundabout route to get here at all. They weren’t about to stop it halfway, leave it somewhere in no-man’s-land for the Lizards to find if they got lucky. It’s our baby now.”
“Okay, sir, I see that, I guess,” Yeager answered. “But didn’t some people from Denver come with it, people who know all about it?”
“They did like hell,” Donovan said. “Security again-you don’t want people like that captured. Thing came with typed instructions on how to arm it, a timer, and a radio transmitter. That’s it. Orders boiled down to get it to a target, back away, run like hell, and fire when ready, Gridley.”
Donovan would have been just about starting to shave when that Spanish-American War slang entered the language; Sam hadn’t heard anybody use it for years. He said, “I’ll tell you whatever I can, sir, but like I said before-uh, as I said before” (which was what he got for being married to Barbara) “I don’t know everything there is to know.”
“And as I told you, Sergeant, that’smy job, not yours. So talk.” Donovan leaned forward in his chair, ready to listen intently.
Sam told him everything he knew about the theory and practice of atomic bombs. Some of that was gleaned from science articles in the regrettedAstounding from the days before the Lizards came; more came from what he remembered of interpreting for Enrico Fermi and the other Metallurgical Laboratory physicists and from what he’d picked up while they talked among themselves.
Donovan took no notes. At first, that irked Yeager. Then he realized the general didn’t want to put anything in writing anywhere. That told him how seriously Donovan was taking the whole business.
When he ran down, Donovan nodded thoughtfully and said, “Okay, Sergeant, thanks very much. That clears up one of my major worries: I don’t have to worry about the damn thing going off under my feet, any more than I do with any other piece of ordnance. I didn’tthink so, but with a weapon that new and that powerful, I wasn’t what you’d call eager to risk my neck on what might have been my own misunderstanding.”
“That makes sense to me, sir,” Yeager agreed.
“Okay. Next question: you’re in the rocket business, too, with Goddard. Can we load this thing on a rocket and shoot it where we want it to go? It weighs ten tons, give or take a little.”
“No, sir,” Sam answered at once. “Next rocket we make that’ll throw one ton’ll be the first. Dr. Goddard’s working on ways to scale up what we’ve got, but…” His voice trailed away.
“But he’s sick, and who knows how long he’ll last?” Donovan finished for him. “And who knows how long it’ll take to build a big rocket even if it gets designed, hey? Okay. Any chance of making atomic bombs small enough to go on the rockets we have? That’d be the other way to solve the problem.”
“I plain don’t know, sir. If it can be done, I bet they’re working on it back in Denver. But I have no idea whether they can do it or not.”
“Okay, Sergeant That’s a good answer,” Donovan said. “If I told you how many people try to make like bigshots and pretend they know more than they do-Well, hell, I don’t need to burden you with that. You’re dismissed. If I need to pick your brain some more about this miserable infernal device, I’ll call you again. I hope I don’t”
“I hope you don’t, too,” Sam said. “That’d mean the cease-fire broke down.” He saluted and left Donovan’s office. The major general hadn’t gigged him about his uniform after all.Pretty good fellow, he thought.
The German major at the port of Kristiansand shuffled through an enormous box of file cards. “Bagnall, George,” he said, pulling one out. “Your pay number, please.”
Bagnall rattled it off in English, then repeated it more slowly in German.
“Danke,”said the major-his name was Kapellmeister, though he had a singularly unmusical voice. “Now, Flight Engineer Bagnall, have you violated in any way the parole you furnished to Lieutenant-Colonel Hocker in Paris year before last? Have you, that is, taken up arms against the GermanReich in pursuance of the war existing between Germany and England prior to the coming of the Lizards? Speak only the truth; I have the answer before me.”
“No, I have not,” Bagnall answered. He almost believed Kapellmeister; that a Nazi officer in an out-of-the-way Norwegian town could, at the pull of a card, come up with the name of the man to whom he’d given that parole, or even the fact that he’d given such a parole, struck him as Teutonic efficiency run mad.
Apparently satisfied, the German scribbled something on the card and stuck it back in the file. Then he went through the same rigmarole with Ken Embry. Having done that, he pulled out several more cards and rattled off the names on them-the names of the Lancaster crewmen with whom Embry and Bagnall had formerly served-at Jerome Jones before asking, “Which of the above are you?”
“None of the above, sir,” Jones replied, and gave his own name and pay number.
Major Kapellmeister went through his file. “Every third Englishman is named Jones,” he muttered. After a couple of minutes, he looked up. “I do not find a Jones to match you, however. Very well. Before you may proceed to England, you must sign a parole agreeing not to oppose the GermanReich in arms at any further time. If you are captured while you violate or after you have violated the terms of the parole, it will go hard for you. Do you understand?”
“I understand what you said,” Jones answered. “I don’t understand why you said it. Aren’t we allies against the Lizards?”
“There is at present a cease-fire between theReich and the Lizards,” Kapellmeister answered. His smile was unpleasant. “There may eventually be a peace. At that time, our relations with your country will have to be defined, would you not agree?”
The three Englishmen looked at one another. Bagnall hadn’t thought about what the cease-fire might mean in purely human terms. By their expressions, neither had Embry or Jones. The more you looked at things, the more complicated they got. Jones asked, “If I don’t sign the parole, what happens?”
“You will be treated as a prisoner of war, with all courtesies and privileges extended to such prisoners,” the German major said.
Jones looked unhappier yet. Those courtesies and privileges were mighty thin on the ground. “Give me the bloody pen,” he said, and scrawled his name on the card Kapellmeister handed him.