1000 HOURS
There was a sergeant standing at the door of the conference room. He saluted Black as he approached.
“General, they have moved the conference to the Big Board room,” the sergeant said. He shrugged before Black asked the question. “I don’t know why, General. Scuttlebutt is that the Secretary of Defense is going to be there. That draws the flies, so they needed more room.”
Black smiled at the ramrod-straight sergeant’s jazzy lingo (probably a college boy “doing his time”), turned and almost bumped into General Stark. Stark had heard the sergeant. The two men started off for the elevator which would drop them down into the suspended concrete cube hundreds of feet below the Pentagon.
“I think Swenson wants to see Wilcox in action,” Stark said. “I hear that he doesn’t think Wilcox was the best choice for SecArmy, so he may be along to roast him a bit.”
“Maybe,” Black said, but he doubted it. Swenson would size up a new man but not roast him.
The briefing was for Wilcox, the new Secretary of the Army, but beyond that Black did not try to follow Stark’s logic. Stark was a contemporary of Black’s, they were both young generals on the way up, but they were very different. Stark had made his way politically. He was quick, but he relied on the brilliance of others to form his career. Black had concluded that Stark would have made general on his own talents, but he enjoyed the Machiavellian role. He traded in gossip, inside dope, and a prescience for what would happen in the future. Stark’s being political was not because of laziness or doubts of his own ability. Indeed he worked with great energy and had ability, but he loved the intricacy of personality conflict, was fascinated with the struggle between powerful men. Had he been dull, he would have been a superb manager of prizefighters. Being brilliant, he was a manager of men with ideas. Stark had discovered Groteschele and had managed his career beautifully. As Groteschele became famous Stark became a general officer.
“I read your memo on counterforce credibility the other day,” Stark said to Black. He paused. “I don’t think Groteschele is going to discuss that today.”
Black nodded. It was Stark’s way of requesting that a subject be ruled off-limits. He was meticulous in mentioning these informal limitations. Stark played a hard and very tough game, but he played by the rules. Once when he was a chicken colonel a classmate had leaked an item to Drew Pearson. Stark, Black realized, was really morally outraged. He had systematically and with the certitude of a Torquemada broken the colonel’s career.
“O.K., but what I said in the memo about credibility still holds,” Black said. “It’s damned nonsense to spend billions of dollars to develop a ‘military posture’ which might or might not be credible to the Russians. Who needs more muscle now? Neither side. It gets down to a guess in a psychological game, Stark. This thing of piling bombs on bombs and missiles on missiles when we both have a capacity to overkill after surviving a first strike is just silly.”
“All right already, O.K., O.K.,” Stark said and laughed. “But let’s don’t argue it today.”
“Not in front of the Big Brass,” Black said bluntly.
“Oh, my God, Blackie, you’re so damned hard-nosed,” Stark said.
They smiled at one another. The ground rules for the day had been laid down.
The Big Board room was dominated by the huge illuminated board which occupied an entire wall. The room had the same information-receiving capacity as the War Room at Omaha, but it lacked the array of desk-consoles. This was a room where the Joints Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense would gather in case of war. They would make decisions which would be implemented by other centers around the world. This was a room for strategy. Omaha, and all its counterparts, was a place for tactics. This was the room where the decisions were made. They were carried out elsewhere.
The Big Board room showed its character. It was a mixture of the executive suite and a military headquarters. Stark and Black were early and the technicians were testing the Big Board. In a random casual way they ran over various systems, cut in on streams of information, threw various projections onto the screen. At the moment, it was tuned in only to the SPADATS system, a shorthand phrase for “space data analysis.” The headquarters for SPADATS was located in Colorado Springs, but the information was projected onto the Pentagon screen with a clarity that was uncanny. As General Black watched, SPADATS switched to a Samos III satellite orbiting high in the stratosphere. Words began to crawl across the bottom of the board.
“SAMOS III #15 is moving 20,000 miles an hour, 300 miles above the earth, and has just been instructed to commence photographing the transmitting pictures,” the words said. “It is making a routine scan of a part of Russia which includes a Soviet ICBM site. Selective discrimination follows.”
The screen dissolved and then hardened up. The picture was different from the ordinary Mercator projection. This was an actual picture of a vast reach of land and lacked the hard lines of longitude and latitude. There was a range of mountains, black on one side, for it was dusk and the eastern side of the range was in shadow. There was the great twisting course of a river and the countless smaller tributaries that flowed into it. The rest of the landscape, seen from so high up, was brown and featureless, bathed in the soft magenta of sunset. In some parts of the screen there were great white clouds and Black estimated that the largest of them was actually a storm front over two hundred miles long.
“The picture will now come to maximum close-up,” the words on the bottom of the screen said.
General Black always enjoyed this particular process. It was marvelous, intricate, and it was dizzying. He always had to remind himself that the Samos pictures were being transmitted instantly. What he saw was happening halfway around the world a split second previously. By a combination of processes done at Colorado Springs and in the Samos III itself the picture grew as if the Samos III had turned and were rushing toward the earth.
The picture took on definition with a speed that was terrifying. Water suddenly showed in the great river and the next second it glinted in the tributaries. Villages popped into view as small rectangles and an instant later individual houses could be identified. Huge forests came into focus and then copses and then single trees. The picture centered on a cleared area pocked with the unmistakable circles of rocket silos. Scattered behind revetments were trucks. Casually, for this was only a drill, the picture bore down on one of the trucks. The rest of the ICBM reservation was squeezed out of the picture.
The technician operating Samos #15 was pushing the equipment to its limit. It was a marvel to observe, an almost unbelievable scientific spectacle. It sent Black’s mind spinning ahead into the future. He had heard scientists discussing the ultimate possibilities of such long-range technical espionage. One day there would be more than a vague outline of a truck, its details would be clear and sharp. Black’s thoughts, captivated by the prospect, filled in the fuzzy picture now on the screen before him…. Two men were leaning against the truck. They wore leather boots, Red Army uniforms, and their caps were pushed back on their heads. One of them held out something to the other. The definition became sharper, zoomed in closer, focused on the exchange. Gradually the huge screen was filled by four enormous hands, hair on the back of them, the fingernails dirty. Two fingers of one of the hands held a picture of a girl. The details were contrasty, not clear, but she had a round Slavic face, was smiling, and had her head twisted to one side in a coquettish manner…. At this point the picture on the Big Board dissolved and with it Black’s fanciful enlargement.
The truck he had just seen on the Big Board was real, though, Black reminded himself. Its driver was completely unaware that his mission had been caught by a camera 300 miles in the sky, transmitted 8,000 miles to an information center, and then projected another 2,500 miles and viewed on this screen with an interval of no more than one second between the action and its depiction on the screen. For the first time the Samos III, its marvelous camera and its future portent made Black restless. It seemed somehow an invasion of privacy, this subtle and soundless observation of anything on the surface of the world. Blackie, he said to himself, for a man who supported the U-2 flights, all versions of the Samos and a dozen other ventures, you are getting soft. He turned to Stark, determined to make small talk.
“What do you hear about Wilcox?” Black asked.
“The usual stuff, but he pulled a smartie two days ago,” Stark said and laughed. “Someone sent him a two-page memo for circulation to the entire staff. Wilcox stuffed a sixty-page essay by Emerson between the two pages and approved it for circulation. It came back all duly initialed, but not one damn comment or question about contents. Wilcox called everyone in for a chewing-out session. They say the blood was ankle deep before he finished.”
Black laughed. The story fit well with his mood. Wilcox sounded like he might liven things up a little. No wonder Stark was a little on edge over today’s briefing session.
Black glanced idly around the room. It was filling up now. One group had gathered at the opposite side of the room around the red telephone which connected directly to the President at all times. It was like a fire-insurance policy. Your main hope was that it never would be used.
Black walked toward the long conference table in the center of the room. It was an impressive slab, as if the designers had tried to combine a large board of directors’ table with a university graduate-seminar table. Around the long table, neatly placed, were high-backed leather armchairs. In front of each chair was a precise blotter layout, a fat, large new scratch pad, and two pencils, precisely arranged and guarding either side of the scratch pad. At intervals, in the center of the table, were sterling thermos jugs and official tumblers. Beyond the table on the other side along the wall was “the reservation.” There were two rows of slightly less impressive armchairs, carefully designed to show that their occupants, while significant, were the less important staff assistants. The barrier was invisible. Someone could, if he wanted and there was a vacancy, sit at the big table. But no “reservation Indian” ever made that mistake. He might hunger to sit at that table, but he would know precisely when he was qualified.
By now the room contained about twenty men, over half of them in uniform. They had a sameness of look: graying, middle-aged, ruddy, powerful-looking men. Did men look this way because they were the power types, Black wondered, or were they chosen for power because they looked this way? Black watched Stark making his way from group to group. Stark was obviously pleased today, pleased with himself. He was assured that Black would not bring up disturbing doubts about credibility. It would be a Groteschele-Stark day.
These briefings, necessary and valuable, were becoming increasingly unpleasant to Black. The disagreements were difficult to state, but once stated they had to be pursued and they were impossible to resolve. As much as Black loved SAC and the men he worked with in and out of the Air Force, for five years he had had the growing sensation that “things” were slipping out of control.
The calculations of Soviet intention and capability had started as a straightforward and direct exercise in logic. But at some point the logic had become so intricate, so many elements were involved, so many novelties flowed into the system, that for Black it had blurred into a surrealistic world.
We matched and surpassed their capability and then guessed at their intentions. They then ran a series of tests and surpassed our capability and guessed at our intentions. And then we guessed what they guessed we were guessing. Meanwhile years ago each side had developed the capacity to destroy the other even after suffering a massive surprise first strike.
Black often had the sensation in a meeting that they had all lost contact with reality, were free-floating in some exotic world of their own. It was not just SAC or the Pentagon, Black thought. It was the White House, the Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, de Gaulle, Red China, pacifists, wild-eyed right-wingers, smug left-wingers, NATO, UN, bland television commentators, marchers for peace, demonstrators for war… everyone. They were caught in a fantastic web of logic and illogic, fact and emotion. No one seemed completely whole. No one could talk complete sense. And everyone was quite sincere.
Black remembered when the sense of unreality had started. It was a few years before when Groteschele had brought up the Kahn example of what would happen if an American Polaris submarine accidentally discharged a missile at us. The submarine commander would have time to make radio contact and explain what had happened so that SAC would know the missile was an accident. Everyone at the briefing had nodded, thinking that ended the discussion. But Groteschele had persisted. The Soviets would detect the missile in flight, would know it was our accident and would detect the explosion. But they would worry about our reaction. How could they be sure that we knew it was our own missile? Might they not fear our “retaliation” and, prompted by this fear, attack us in the confusion? So might not the best Soviet tactic be to strike at once? Indeed, might not the best strategy of each side, even if both knew it was an accident and both knew whose accident, be to strike at once?
They had, Black thought, slipped by that one cheaply. They had decided that all possible steps should be taken to assure against accidental discharge of a missile.
Maybe he should resign his commission. It hit him again. It had been coming to a head within him for a long time. Curious, he thought: he could live with his conscience and with his beliefs in almost any other arm of the service but the one he loved. But SAC and especially his own role in SAC (the link he furnished between operations and the Strategy Analysis and Evaluation Section) made his private thoughts seem like rank heresy. But why did it torment him so much more than it did the others? From the outside they looked happy in their jobs, but who could tell? He supposed he looked as untroubled as they.
A stir on the other side of the room caught his eye. There he was. Groteschele. It was as if he had opened a door from last night’s party and walked right into the Pentagon: the same confident, aggressive, jutting thrust. The same stride. In company with Groteschele came Wilcox, Carruthers, the Navy Chief of Staff, and Allen, of the National Security Council.
Everyone in the room had observed the entry of the big brass at the same time. The room “knew” it. An instant before it had been a room with one personality, relaxed and informal. Now it had become a room which had snapped to attention in all sorts of little ways hard to detect. It was the effort everyone was making to seem to behave as if the brass were not there that made the difference.
Groteschele proceeded to the head end of the long conference table. As he did so everyone else began finding seats around the table. It was clear that the Secretary of Defense was either not coming or would arrive late and had sent word for the briefing to start.
Stark handled the opening remarks easily and deftly. Then Groteschele began talking in his positive, slightly patronizing way. He announced the subject: accidental war. The subject had been cropping up in the news lately. There had been a few articles in magazines. The military people had, of course, been working on the problem for years and in detail.
“In the old days, six months ago,” Groteschele said with a chuckle, “most of the talk about accidental war was what we now call the madman theory.” He went on about the possibility of SAC squadron commanders going berserk and trying to save the world from the Communists.
It hadn’t been a joke, as Black knew well. Groteschele’s reference was to the special psychological screening system which the Air Force had inaugurated in 1962 to assure that no “mentally unfit persons” would have contact with the preparation or discharge of atomic weapons. Black had been among the first within the Air Force to propose and support the program. He was not sure even now that the problem could be disposed of summarily. The men in SAC were trained for destruction. They were “preprogrammed” to attack Russia.
“What frightened us was not so much the madman problem,” Groteschele was saying, “but its opposite: at the last moment someone might refuse to drop the bombs. A single act of revulsion could foil the whole policy of graduated deterrents. Say, for example, that some PFC at a transmitter simply decided not to carry out the order for an attack. That could ruin us right there.”
It was behavior in a showdown that the whole SAC training program was designed to prepare for. The tests, the indoctrinations, the training—all were designed to convert normal American boys into automatons.
“Automatons. That’s what some of our critics call them,” Groteschele said evenly. “But they are also patriots and they are courageous. And haven’t we always honored the Marines simply because they did exactly what they were ordered to do?”
To hell with Stark, Black thought.
“Professor Groteschele, one moment,” he said. “Isn’t it true that the ‘go’ reflex, the will to attack, is so deeply indoctrinated in our SAC people that even those who pass our psychological screening are more likely to err on the side of ‘go,’ rather than on withdrawal?”
“At one point, General Black, maybe,” Groteschele said. He controlled his impatience with the interruption. “But we analyzed the possibility and built in some protections. Even if you had a madman in command of a wing—even, General, if he had several colleagues who shared his madness, they could not carry out their will.”
Groteschele glanced at SecArmy. Wilcox was bent forward attentively. Groteschele then launched into a description of the elaborate checks, decoding systems, and other devices designed to assure that war could not happen through human error.
“It is impossible, quite impossible,” Groteschele concluded. “The statistical odds are so remote that it is impossible. Or as impossible as anything can be. The ‘go’ process will not operate until the President orders it. Even then the Positive Control routine requires a double check.”
Black hesitated. He knew Groteschele wanted to move on. But he also knew that Groteschele was skirting a real problem.
“What if the President went mad?” Black asked abruptly. “He is a man under considerable pressure.”
Black, as some in the room knew, was the single person there who could, because of his friendship with the President, raise such a question. But Groteschele, with a pang of envy, also knew that Black would have said it even if he had never seen the President.
The shock in the room was palpable. The SecArmy frowned at Black. Groteschele glanced quickly at the SecArmy, then around the table. He knew he did not have to answer Black directly.
“Then we would have trouble,” Groteschele said with a laugh. He shrugged, held his hands up as if imploring for common sense. “But it is not likely.”
The room relaxed. Black was still unsatisfied, but he knew when to stop. Still, he thought, it was possible. Woodrow Wilson had been President for two years after a stroke. High officials have cracked under the strain. Forrestal had jumped out a window. It was possible for the President to come down with paranoid schizophrenia, Black thought. Not likely, for American politics ruthlessly screened out the unstable personalities, but a possibility.
Maybe, Black thought, the whole damned game is taking me apart. He felt the diminutive terror start somewhere in his guts. It was something to do with the Dream. At sessions like this the individual stripes of hide were sliced off his skin, each one leaving him less intact, more pained. And yet, he thought desperately, this is where I belong, where I am needed, where I can contribute. He allowed his mind to wander, searching for the moment when the real face of the matador would be revealed, for the instant when the real sword would slice in between his shoulders and end his indecision.
Groteschele was now proceeding to the possibilities of machine error. This was new stuff. Nobody really knew anything about it. Groteschele was always the statistical type. It was odd how flesh-and-blood human events disappeared into numbers. Groteschele was explaining that of course there was a remote mathematical possibility of machine error. He had calculated the error. In any year the odds were 50 to 1 against accidental war. This, Black remembered, had already been made public in the Hershon Report. But the report was several years old and the people at Ohio State who put it together made it clear that they did not have access to confidential information. The situation was much worse than they had reported because everything had gotten more complicated.
“Putting it another way,” said Groteschele, “and with the present rate of alerts and the present computerized equipment, the odds are such that one accidental war might occur in fifty years.”
“Does not the increasing intricacy of the electronic systems and the greater speed of missiles make that figure worse each year?” Black asked. He had in mind the public warning, several years previously, by Admiral L. D. Coates, the Chief of Naval Research, which admitted what all insiders knew: electronic gear was becoming so complex that it was outstripping the ability of men to control it; complexity of new generations of machines was increasing the danger of accidents faster than safeguards could be devised. The statement had never been countered but simply ignored.
Groteschele paused, smiled tolerantly at Black. The SecArmy leaned toward one of his aides and asked a question. The aide looked at Black, smiled as he talked quickly in SecArmy’s ear. Black knew what he was saying: General Black is the professional heretic.
“In theory, yes,” Groteschele said. “But we completely pre-test every component and every system is checked by another. The chance of war by mechanical failure is next to zero.”
This was not true, but Black did not choose to contest it. He forced his anger down and deliberately looked at the Big Board. It was like a vast moving mosaic, decorative rather than functional. Blips appeared, grew bright, traveled short distances, then vanished. The Big Board was not taken seriously until the light over it indicated that someone had decided to come to some degree of alert.
How many places in the world, Black mused, were there just such strategy boards run by just such computer systems, picking up, identifying, and discarding just such radar signals? Our big operation at Omaha, of course. Probably at least one other stand-by “Omaha” at some other part of the country. Then there was the President’s bomb shelter: probably another computerized strategy board layout there. Maybe there was more than one Presidential bomb shelter. Maybe one at Camp David, or the summer White House, or who knows where else.
Then, in addition, he knew there was always, every minute of every day, a converted KC-135 aloft: a miniature, emergency “Omaha,” in case everything else should blow. Probably another one on some super aircraft carrier somewhere. Still another on one of the nuclear submarines. How many others? Several in England, certainly, France, perhaps, and West Germany. Russia? Yes, surely there would be almost as many as there are in the United States.
Black knew that four KC-135s were reserved exclusively for Presidential use as a flying command post in case of emergency. Since 1962 they had been scattered about the country so that the President was never far from one. Whenever the President flew overseas one of these planes was quietly and unobtrusively included in his escort.
Surely each one of them in every country was similar. And the men in them, too. Today, throughout the world in each one of the Big Board rooms, staffed by busy, competent, dedicated men, probably the same signals were being received, analyzed, and projected. The big brass everywhere was watching similar strategy boards, studying the same blips, thinking out, or talking out, the same strategic puzzles Groteschele was now discussing.
Black plugged back into the discussion. Groteschele was now classifying various types of possible machine errors. Accidental war caused by some machine failure. Miscalculation by the computers, misinterpretation by the staff of human interpreters (the “overriders” as the computer boys call them). And then the big one, electronic failure.
Big, Black thought, because no one knows anything about it. We just know that in any system so complex and so dependent upon intricate electronic equipment, the possibility of electronic failure or error must always be borne in mind.
“But the Positive Control Fail-Safe system is the ultimate protection against mechanical failure,” Groteschele was saying his voice heavily persuasive. This was the ultimate safety factor in the whole system. This was where it all rested. So, we were all reassured. And indeed, Groteschele was very reassuring today, except that his nervous chuckle kept getting in the way. Black understood why. Groteschele knew more than he was saying.
It just was not that simple. Everyone knew it who had anything to do with the black boxes of the Positive Control system. Their components were 100 percent double-checked on regular rotation schedules. Every possible condition to which the equipment might be subjected in operation was simulated. It was simulated in actual duplication systems and it was also simulated on computers with meticulously devised mathematical formulas expressing every possible way the equipment might fail. On computers the bombers were “flown” and the “go” signals were “given.”
Variable atmospheric conditions could be predicted, operational deterioration of the equipment could be estimated, vibration characteristics of the Vindicator bombers could be factored in. Stress variables could be translated into mathematical formulas, and with these formulas the computers could test out the black boxes.
But the whole system had one big flaw in it. Nobody could ever be certain that the black boxes would actually work properly in a showdown. The reason was simple. There had never been a showdown, and there could never be a sure test showdown.
A showdown meant war. The whole Positive Control system really depended on equipment that could never really be tested until the time came for its first use, and because of this nobody could ever really know in advance whether or not it would work right. The Fail-Safe machines could be truly tested only once: the single time they were used.
There was ample evidence from the experience of the Electra planes and the now obsolete DC-6s that a serious flaw in an elaborate machine could survive every experimental situation—and then in real practice come completely unstuck.
This was material for the grim inside humor which went the rounds of SAC gossip. The DC-6 had been a beautiful drawing-board plane, except that the first ones to go into service caught fire in flight. Then it was discovered that the one thing they hadn’t calculated was what flight wind currents would do to fuel overflow spillage. The fuel was deflected by an invisible band of air to a point directly behind the engines where the air-intake vents sucked in the gas spillage, converting the plane’s storage compartment into a quite unplanned fire chamber.
Great corporations can also be injured when their computerized positive control systems break down. Black remembered the consternation a few years back when Fortune had demonstrated this point about General Dynamics. The Convair 990 was a 200 million-dollar demonstration of the fallibility of computerized simulation. Convair designed a drawing-board airplane that checked out to be the fastest commercial jet in the computer “flight tests,” so they decided to save money, skip the costly prototype stage, and go directly into production. Only the 990 didn’t perform as designed. Nobody knew why, and the enigmatic computers that had been so reassuring could not be charged with malfeasance.
General Black also knew that Groteschele was sliding past another important factor. Each machine had to be adjusted and installed by men. And men, regardless of their training, suffered from fatigue and boredom. Many was the time that General Black had seen a tired and irritated mechanic turn a screwdriver a half turn too far, fail to make one last check, ignore a negative reading on a testing instrument. On a plane, such errors would mean only that an expensive piece of machinery and a few men would be lost. On a Fail-Safe black box—and the men who adjusted and installed them had not the remotest notion of what they were—the slightest accident could trigger the final disaster.
Black glanced around the table. Stark was watching the strategy board. New blips had just appeared and Stark was toying nervously with his pencil as he followed their progress. Black looked at Wilcox. He sensed that Wilcox was mentally rejecting the possibility of accidental war. It depressed Black, and he felt that he should do more, but he knew he could not.
Groteschele’s patronizing voice reached back into Black’s consciousness. Now the voice was talking about what if there should be an accident. An “interesting” problem, it was saying.
“Suppose the Russians caused an accident,” suggested Groteschele. “Suppose it were a true accident. Suppose it was a 50-megaton missile aimed for New York or Washington, what could be done? How could we really know it was an accident? How could they prove it? Would it make any difference if they could? Even if we believed it to be an accident, should we not retaliate with everything we had?”
Good questions, Black agreed, but no answers were offered. It didn’t seem to be a real discussion about real problems. Black remembered the flurry of excitement a few years before when some scholar had published a paper on the strategy of surrender. The argument had been simple. If either side strikes first, is not surrender the only possible strategy for the other side? What is to be gained by retaliation? There had been a series of Congressional hearings, and then no one heard any more about the strategy of surrender.
Black’s thoughts were interrupted. Groteschele had stopped talking. Everyone was looking at the Big Board.
The large alert signal at the top of the board had flashed on. The board still showed the blips Black had just seen Stark watching. The six blips were six bomber groups in the air almost at their Fail-Safe points. There was also an unidentified blip somewhere between Greenland and Canada. Black noted that the clock above the Big Board showed 10:28. Groteschele paused to look around at the Big Board. He turned back to his audience, saying, “Well, we’re in luck. A nicely arranged alert for our discussion. You can’t count on these for a Pentagon lecture any more. The equipment has become so much more accurate that they only occur about six times a month now.”
Groteschele tried to recapture the attention of his audience by delving into an explanation of the need for maximum reaction times in evaluating an alert. Even though more and more ICBMs were becoming operational every day, he explained, they would not be used immediately in a crisis. They had the defects of their virtues. They were too quick. They allowed too little time for thought and the detection of error. This had led to a return to manned bombers for a first-strike retaliation rather than immediate reliance on the newer long-range rockets. The bombers provided hours of revaluation and analysis, the rockets only thirty minutes. Besides, regardless of the outcome, even if the entire country were devastated the rockets could always be thrown in at the end.
The Big Board was proving more seductive than Groteschele. His voice rose slightly.
“Now if the Soviets really have a high-level satellite which carries a rocket, then we are in danger,” he said and paused, his voice heavy. “Real danger. For then the reaction time would be down to fifty or sixty seconds. Not even enough time to call the President.”
But Groteschele had lost his audience. All eyes remained glued on the Big Board. Soon the foreign unidentified blip would get identified, and fade off the board… a Canadian airliner off course, a heavily compacted flight of birds, and so on. Then the SAC groups would veer off their lines of flight and disappear from the board. Yes, Black could see, it was happening now.
The foreign unidentified blip was fading out. The room, which had grown quietly tense, now relaxed. Cigarettes were lit and pencils returned to doodling exercises as men tried to shed their nervousness in their private ways. Soon a messenger would come in with SPADATS’ explanation of what the blip had been. Then Groteschele could resume, happily monopolizing the attention of his audience again.
One by one, five SAC groups began in turn to veer off. Only one group was left on the board. Then as Black watched unbelievingly it flew past its Fail-Safe point. He glanced at Stark. Stark was erect in his chair. Wilcox was oblivious of what had happened. Most of the other officers had turned back to Groteschele. Stark stared at Black. He raised his eyebrows.
Black looked at Groteschele. What happened to Groteschele came and went so quickly that Black was not certain he had seen correctly: Groteschele’s eyes glittered and he shuddered. To Black it seemed an expression composed of apprehension, excitement, delight, and opportunity. Then it was gone. Groteschele stood absolutely still, staring at the board. Black realized that only three men in the room fully understood what had just happened.
Then the whole board went black. Apparently the operator did not think the action of Group 6 to be important. Maybe he had just not noticed it. Stark scribbled a note to Black. It said, “Ever see a group go past Fail-Safe before?” Black shook his head. Stark started to get up from his chair. Black knew he was going to check with the tactical officers in another office. Stark froze halfway up.
A phone had rung. It did not ring loud, but it did ring distinctively. A steady persistent unbroken ring. It was the red phone. None of the men in the room had heard it before. Wilcox was not aware of the import of the ring, but he sensed the tension around him. He came to rigid attention. An Army general ran across the room to the red phone. It did not look at all unseemly for a general to be dashing to answer a phone. In fact it seemed to be done in nightmarish slow motion.
The general listened for a moment. He turned back to the room woodenly. Looking at Wilcox he said with excessive clarity: “Mr. Secretary, the President is calling from the White House bomb shelter. He wants to speak to the senior person present. That is you. I am directed to see that the Joint Chiefs and the Secretaries convene here immediately.” He laid the receiver beside the phone and dashed from the room.
Wilcox stumbled around out of his chair and virtually fell toward the phone, stealing a look at the Big Board as he did so.
The Big Board had lit up again. And now it projected just two things; the Fail-Safe point of Group 6 and the blip of Group 6. They were already inches apart. Group 6 was headed toward Russia.