The numbers flickered by. No power on earth could stop them. He stared, almost mesmerized as they dove toward the ultimate, the 2400, when the bomb would detonate and the world would become midnight.
Gregor started to weep.
What chance had a mere man against such magic?
His thick and sad fingers made an awkward stab at the gibberish of buttons atop the machine, but he couldn’t even coordinate their movements and get them to touch where he directed them, not that he really understood where they belonged. He almost passed out.
A tear fell upon the black, blank surface of the bomb console. It lay there, picking up the flicking red of the rushing numbers. Other than the timing device, there was only the arming button, its safety pin long since removed. It had been pushed, and sat, recessed, in its little receptacle.
He imagined what would happen. It was an implosion device. A sphere of high explosive packed around a sphere of plutonium around a core of beryllium as its neutron source. The explosive would detonate, all its force impelling the plutonium onto the beryllium in the crucible of the nanosecond, achieving critical mass and chain reaction.
What can I fight it with?
2358:56
2358:57
2358:58
The phone rang.
Walls looked at it in shock, then picked it up.
“Yo?”
“Walls,” it was a shriek, “you there?”
“Shit, yes.”
“We’ve only got a few, oh — ah! Oh, sorry, I just — oh, shit, that hurts, my leg, oh, Christ, look out, get — okay, you okay? It’s kind of hairy here.”
“Go on, man,” said Walls.
“Okay, listen to me. You find the columns yet?”
“No sweat, man.”
“Great, okay, great. From the left, count over to the third one, okay.”
Walls did it.
“Got that motherfucker.”
“Okay, now lean forward, I want you to look at the first letter on each label, okay. Just the letter.”
“No sweat.”
“Find the one that starts with a P.”
Walls fingered each one until he came on P, for Practical Electrical Guidance Check.
“Yo.”
“Press it.”
Walls pushed it.
“Now find the one for A.”
Walls’s eyes passed over the letters.
A. For Advanced Circuitry Mechanics.
“Yo.”
“Punch it — oh, shit. Oh, Lord, punch it, God, they just hit this guy. Christ, punch it!”
Walls hit it.
“Now an I.”
Walls found an I, for Inertial Navigation Circuitry Check.
He pushed it.
“God, great, almost there. Oh! Oh, fuck, God, that was close.”
Walls could hear noises and screams in the background.
“The M. Find the M, man.”
Walls found it easy. M. M, for Manual Recharge Override.
He pushed it.
“Done!”
“Great, now a B. Find the B and we’re done.”
Walls read the letters on the labels. His eyes flew down the column, panicked. He felt a stab of pain. His eyes flooded with tears, blurring and spangling what he saw.
“Find it? Find it, goddammit, you’ve just got that one button, come on now, it’s about halfway down.”
Walls was sobbing.
“Ain’t no fucking B here.”
“Goddamn, find it. Find it! A B, goddamn you, find it!”
Walls went over it again.
“Ain’t no B here,” he cried, hating himself for his inability to change the hulking reality of the actual, “ain’t no B here.”
“Final launch sequence commencing,” said Betty reasonably.
Puller was hunched up near the shaft doors, listening as one of the Delta men narrated the events. He could hear the rush of the gunfire as it filtered up the long tunnel. It sounded like the surf.
“Okay, Delta Six, the doc is on the phone, he seems to have made contact, the Soviet fire is picking up around them. Oh, Jesus, he just hit that guy near him.”
“Give them covering fire!” Puller snapped.
“We’re giving it everything we’ve got, Delta Six, I can see the doc on the phone, he’s veiling and — oh, shit—”
“Hit?”
“No, it’s the voice, she’s saying they’re going into terminal countdown, oh, shit, I don’t think—”
Puller could hardly breathe. His chest felt as if he were about to have a heart attack, stony and constricted. He looked away, into the cold darkness, and suddenly there was an explosion off to the left. Its force, even from here, was considerable. Puller fell back, momentarily stunned, and the men around him recoiled against the sudden pressure of the blast. But it wasn’t a bomb.
“The silo door just blew,” someone said. “The bird is going to fly.”
Indeed, the heavy silo door had just detonated itself into a shower of rubble. That meant thirty seconds until launch.
From the silo itself there now issued a shaft of light, high and straight, like a sword blade, narrowing as it climbed in the dark night sky, laying out the course of the missile that would follow.
“Shit,” somebody said. “We didn’t make it.”
Men were running from the light, scurrying over the ragged face of the mountain. Now came the roar as primary ignition began; from the exhaust vanes, four plumes of boiling white smoke billowed out into the night.
“She’s going, she’s going, she’s going,” rose the cry.
Puller wondered what it would look like, saw in his deepest brain’s eye the thing emerge, driven skyward by the bright flare at the tail, knew that it would first be majestic, stately almost, and then would gather speed and climb skyward with psychotic urgency, rising, its brightness diminished, until it was gone and the sky was black again.
“We didn’t make it,” said someone with a ludicrous giggle that Puller realized was a sob. “We didn’t make it. They beat us, the motherfuckers.”
“All right,” yelled Peter, squashed in darkness under the body of Uckley, Uckley’s blood dripping down into his face, “now I want you to read me the first letters on the column. We can make it, Walls, read them.”
“S,” came the voice.
Software Integrating Interface Check.
“Yes.”
A bullet hit near Peter’s arm.
Practical Electrical Guidance Check.
“Yes.”
“A.”
Advanced Circuitry Mechanics.
“Yes.”
“I.”
He could hear the Delta automatic weapons rattling away. Guns were so loud. When they fired, he felt the hot push of the exploding gases. And they were firing all around him. Another Delta team had worked its way down the hall and clustered about him. Their spent brass shells cascaded down upon him and he thought they looked like raindrops as they bounced on the floor.
“No, I think that’s an L. Look closely.”
“Fuck. An L, yeah.”
Launch Gantry Retraction Mechanism.
“Yes.”
“I.”
Inertial Navigational Circuitry Check.
“Yes.”
“S.”
One of the Delta team was hit and fell with a thud in front of Peter.
Shroud Ejection Mechanism Check.
“Yes.”
“A.”
Peter tried to think of the next A.
A?
A bullet hit two inches from his head, its spray lacerating his face. The pain was sharp. Jesus! He winced.
What the fuck was this A?
“Read me the letters.”
He heard the voice move so slowly through them.
A-N. D-H-E-E. E-E-R. E-S-M. I-R-V.”
Now, what the fuck was that?
Gregor felt like a fool. He was fighting an atom bomb with a Swiss army knife. His mind wandered in and out. He looked at the rushing numbers. He wondered if he’d feel a thing when the bomb detonated.