“Very well.” Carew shrugged. “That fissure has been well and truly crammed in the last few days. Crammed to capacity with nuclear devices of various types. As a matter of fact, Alison, by the time the stowing operations are completed tomorrow afternoon it will have been packed with nuclear material to the extent of well over two thousand million tons T.N.T. equivalent. Two thousand million tons. All the sections will have been fully prepared for nuclear detonation and the whole lot will be fired by an electrical impulse from a control-room in the tower. By this time, of course, the Moltsk end will have been very heavily sealed off, so you see the explosion will take place behind locked doors as it were, in a very confined space — confined, I should say, until it spreads along the fissure, which in fact it will do very quickly. This area will not be damaged at all. Data from the recent series of tests, underground tests on Novaya Zemlya, with bigger and bigger bombs being exploded, helped to determine the load the fissure would carry without erupting this end. The released forces will simply seek the line of least resistance and travel along that natural cavity in the earth’s crust until they reach that point in Hampshire—”
“By which time they’ll be well and truly spent! Look at the length of the fissure!”
Carew smiled. “Wishful thinking, Alison! There are other forces… I’ll come back to that in a moment. Now, the explosion is expected to deviate a little en route, through various side-fissures, and cause some nuclear upheavals in the Scandinavian countries. But the main effect will still be felt in Britain.” There was no shame in Carew even though he was speaking to a fellow-countryman. Shaw realized that in his heart the man must always have been a convinced communist, must have been indoctrinated years ago, even probably in his student days. “There, at Winchester, the various forces will hit against the end of the fissure and recoil back along that thin-ceilinged north-south line — and split England like a sausage in a frying-pan!”
Shaw scoffed. “Sheer exaggeration. As I said, the forces’ll be spent. The blast from a hydrogen explosion isn’t all that terrific… nothing like what people imagine, anyway. It’s more a question of fallout — and that’ll be trapped underground.”
“I dare say you like to think so.” Carew shrugged, full of confidence. “You’re underestimating H-bomb blast. I agree that an H-bomb dropped on the surface is more dangerous, in the wider sense, from the point of view of fallout than an explosion erupting from beneath the earth’s surface, but an underground explosion of the kind and size we’ve planned is a different thing from anything that’s ever happened before — and it’ll be very devastating when it’s channelled towards a thin earth-ceiling. And remember this as welclass="underline" two thousand million tons of T.N.T. equivalent is approximately equal to one thousand times the explosive force of all the bombs dropped on Germany and the occupied countries during the whole of the last war. Put it another way: all the conventional bombs that could be dropped in a war lasting six thousand years will go off in that fissure tomorrow afternoon. That lot has to come out somewhere, and, as I said, most of it will hit England. Now, take the places along that north-south fissure… Winchester itself, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and many more. They’ll simply vanish in a nuclear earthquake, an earthquake which according to Kazenadze will spread to east and west of the line of fracture.”
“Did you say… an earthquake?”
Carew nodded. “I did. That’s something England hasn’t had before, isn’t it? There’s another thing, too. According to Kazenadze — and this was what I meant when I mentioned ‘other forces’ just a while back — according to him the fissure dips sharply en route before it rises again towards the British Isles. Taking the curvature of the earth into account as well, it dips far enough to bring it fairly close to certain thin-skinned strata not so far from the earth’s centre… do you see what I’m getting at?”
Shaw’s face was grey. “Volcanic forces…”
“Yes, that’s right,” Carew said. “It’s perfectly possible, and indeed probable, that the explosion will mix with so-far-dormant natural forces, volcanic forces as you say, also gases and other turbulences. These forces, once released, will in effect push the fallout before them so that it is funnelled up over the British Isles. You can imagine the result. A nuclear-volcanic eruption, a nuclear earthquake of phenomenal proportions, won’t be easily dealt with, Alison. Your nuclear stockpiles, your missile-sites, your airfields and power-stations — they’ll almost all be destroyed along with a good deal else… factories, ports, water-reservoirs, roads, and communications… need I go on? The Continent is sure to get some of the fallout—”
“So will Russia, ultimately.”
Carew shrugged. “We accept the risk. It will be heavily diluted by the time it reaches here, and we’ve made great strides in protecting our people from the effects of fallout. There are deep shelters, with stored food — pre-cooked and packed and deep-frozen. It’s all on an enormous scale. There’s even underground reservoirs for drinking water. We’ve also made some really big advances on the medical side, the treatment of people affected by fallout—”
Shaw called, “Is that right, Triska?”
She nodded as she stared out ahead at the road leaping up into the headlights. “Yes, Peter, we have made progress."’
“I see. Go on, Carew.”
Carew said, “I think I’ve given you the whole picture. This explosion’ll be touched off while I myself am welcoming the Admiral aboard those ships of yours. It’s all quite foolproof — they don’t even need me to carry out the firing.
All the work has been done and the actual firing procedure is… well, lengthy for reasons of safety checks, but really very easy. I’m nothing but window-dressing at this stage, though of course the whole thing has been carried out under my personal direction. So, you see, no one’s going to get m that panic you talked of, when they find I’m missing. At least, not enough to make them postpone any plans.” He smiled. “You’ve miscalculated, Alison. If it were possible, they would even advance the plans now!”
Shaw said savagely, “I rather think not! You’re forgetting it’s all supposed to look like an accident. I’m shortly going to call up our Embassy and get a message through to London. Once that goes out, the whole world’s going to know about this. I doubt if even your extremist friends are mad enough to go ahead after that happens!”
Carew laughed. “My dear Alison… aren’t you being a little naive? You’ll never get word through to London now — the Embassy will have been forced off the air already. I don’t know, but I expect our people have put guards on all their transmitters, or at least put them out of action for the time being, until the new Government is firmly established. No, no — it’ll still look like an accident. An accident of fate, something which we couldn’t possibly have controlled or foreseen, an upsurge of natural forces suddenly released, in which our own delegation to the London Conference will suffer with the rest. The only possible accusation that can be brought against us is that we triggered something off unintentionally by underground tests on Novaya Zemlya, and even that’s stretching it a bit. Why, even the control-room in the tower will be dismantled within an hour after it’s gone into action! It’s absolutely self-contained inside the tower, and it was rather hastily rushed together anyway, because we had to bear in mind that the Kremlin wasn’t to know what was going on, and we didn’t want to give them any ideas. It’ll be easy to take apart, and when that goes, so does all the evidence.” Suddenly Carew laughed. “Why, even your