Simultaneously the voices of the President and Swenson interrupted, demanding an explanation.

“I think I can explain,” General Bogan broke in. His voice was sympathetic and full of understanding. “Marshal Nevsky sent his fighters after our No. 6 plane, though I told him it carried no bombs. This final diversion let the other two planes through. But he did what any good officer would do. He followed standard safeguarding procedures. He went after all three. Our final approach tactic is based upon the assumption this will occur. Moscow will shortly receive 80 megatons. Marshal Nevsky realized this almost immediately.”

The Big Board quickly verified General Bogan’s prediction. The two remaining Vindicators went into a steep dive and fifteen seconds later they disappeared.

The Soviet fighters began to disperse again in a random pattern.

“The two Vindicators have gone off our screen,”

General Koniev said. “Do you still have them?”

“No, General, we have lost them too,” General Bogan said.

General Koniev paused. General Bogan sensed that he wanted reassurance. General Bogan also sensed that the best way to give it was to remain silent.

“Can you raise them by radio?” General Konlev asked.

“No,” said General Bogan. “The bombers resumed silence after the President’s recall attempt failed. However, we’re still trying.”

“What defensive capacity do they still have?” General Koniev asked.

General Bogan pushed a lever and the thin mechanical voice from the appropriate desk said, “We are not sure of their defensive capacity. Things got a bit confused for a few minutes there. We estimate it as no less than fifty per cent and no more than seventy-five per cent. They have almost one hundred per cent of their decoy and masking devices, but these are not very great.”

“We are unable to pick them up on radar and they are traveling so fast that visual sighting by antiaircraft cannon is almost useless,” General Koniev said slowly. “I must assume that the two planes will get through.”

“I think you are correct,” General Bogan said.

“We have only one chance left,” General Koniev said. “That is to focus all our remaining rockets in their estimated path and fire them simultaneously at the right moment in an effort to set up an impenetrable the thermonuclear barrier.”

“It has a chance,” General Bogan admitted admir. bigly. “Let us pray that it succeeds.”

“I am trying it, but I’m afraid your estimate is right. Two planes will probably get through. And then, however it goes, whether just your four bombs or our thousands of bombs and your thousands of bombs, it is all over. We will have devoted a lifetime to assuring our own destruction.”

General Bogan rocked back in his chair and looked at the empty seat that had been Colonel Cascio’s. He thought of the other room and the empty chair of Marshal Nevsky. They had both been honest and pathotic craftsmen. Each had worked with courage and determination to win. Each had lost. Everyone had lost.

“Are there surprises that you have left for us?” General Bogan asked.

“None, General Bogan,” General Koniev said. “Your people,” he paused, “have been honest with us. The simple fact is that they were also better than we thought. Six hours ago I would have guaranteed that we would have shot down one hundred per cent of a single wing of your planes. If you had sent a massive first strike, we knew our record would not have been so good. But I could not have believed that our forces would prove incapable of handling just six planes, as they seem to have been.”

There was a heavy silence between these two professional soldiers. Each roughly knew what the other was thinking. They bad never met. They had never talked. They had known of one another’s existence, but only as names in an “order of battle” schedule. But each had a sense of how identical the careers, the risks, the chances, the ambitions, the losses, the gains, and, most telling, the ignorance, on both sides had been.

“General Koniev, how many minutes do we have?” General Bogan asked.

“I should say about eighteen to twenty minutes, depending on how much decoy and masking capacity your two planes have,” General Koniev answered. “We are shooting off everything we have. Our antiaircraft rings are having a field day. One of our fighter-bombers fired a rocket into a forest and it has lit up the landscape for miles around. He fired at a short-range radar station which had not turned on its IFF and he thought it was a Vindicator although it was completely stationary. Tomorrow I will have to pass judgment upon the pilot of that plane. If there is a tomorrow.”

General Bogan mused. This was like the idle conversation that truck drivers used to exchange when he was a college undergraduate and drove trucks during his vacation. The crisis was over, the long haul made.

They were engaged in shoptalk. It was a way to pass the time until the final decision.

“General Koniev, what is your location right now?” General Bogan asked suddenly.

It had occurred to General Bogan that General Koniev might not be in the equivalent of Omaha. He felt a sense of alarm for the man on the other end of the phone.

“I am several hundred miles from Moscow,” General Koniev said. “It was not an orderly dispersion. When Premier Khrushchev left he ordered a handful of us to leave. I was among the handful.”

General Bogan was about to speak and then he fell mute. He wondered if General Koniev had left his family in Moscow. But he did not want to know.

“It is a hard day,” General Bogan said to the translator.

There was a long pause.

The word came back from the translator. General Bogan knew the response before it was translated.

“This is a hard day, General Bogan,” General Kon1ev said. “Good-bye, comrade,” General Koniev said.

“Good-bye, my friend,” General Bogan said.

The translator paused, hesitated, and then knew it was unnecessary to translate. Everyone waited.

which sent them flaming dramatically into the black night sky. Grady turned to the defense operator.

“How much more speed can you get from the Bloodhounds by putting them on fullblast?”

“Five hundred miles an hour, but it will increase the fuel consumption,” the operator said quickly. “At that angle they would probably get no higher than 120,000 feet before they ran out of fuel.”

Grady was doing his calculations by eye and intuition. He estimated that when the Soviet missiles reached 20,000 feet the two Bloodhounds would be 2,500 feet above them. He was gambling that although they had probably been set to explode at 20,000 feet there was also an “overriding command” built into them that if they perceived a target within range that they would pursue it. He knew that they would be keyed to detonate at something less than 2,000 feet from the target. If he could keep the Bloodhounds 2,500 feet above the wave of Soviet missiles, there was the possibility that they would all start to home automatically and senselessly on the Bloodhounds.

“Give the Bloodhounds just enough extra boost, In little shots, so that they stay at least 2,500 feet above the enemy missiles,” Grady said.

The operator’s face swung toward Grady and the eyes were full of a savage admiration and a gleam of understanding. His long, sensitive, musicianlike fingers reached for the controls.

“They’re at 18,000, now 19,000, now 20,000,” the operator sang out. This highly unorthodox procedure seemed to fill him with delight.

Then they both fell silent and stared at the scope. The wave of missiles was now directly overhead and Grady’s hand, without thought and quite by reflex, went to the lever which controlled the lob device, if the rockets exploded in the next second, he would have

time to lob the two bombs toward Moscow-just before the Vindicator was beaten to earth by the blast.

The line of missiles came to 20,000 feet and then passed 20,000. Then the perfect line began to angle off as the outer missiles turned toward the Bloodhounds.

Instantly Grady recognized that the tactic had succeeded. ,The missiles were now chasing the two Bloodhounds and those that were the farthest away were losing some altitude as they angled toward the two decoys. The operator was whispering to himself as he watched the instruments. He reached for control, pulled it down for a moment, and the two Bloodhounds leapt up ahead. They were still responding to signal.

The Soviet missiles also automatically boosted their speed. At one end of the line there was suddenly a bright eruption of light. One of the missiles had misfired: The blast wave was picked up by the scope and it temporarily obscured several dozens of the blips around it.

Grady shook his head and yelled into the intercom.

“Pull her back! Go for altitude!” He had also pushed the button for TBS so that Turkey 2 would hear him. “Stand by for a ram.” Four seconds later the blast wave hit the Vindicator. It seemed as if the air had suddenly turned hard. The plane was pressed down as if by a giant’s steady smashing power. Grady looked at the altimeter. In the four seconds they had gained 1,200 feet of altitude and now they had been battered back down 1,000 feet. Then the blast passed. The plane shot upward, shuddering as tiny rolling waves hit it.

The operator turned and looked at Grady. He winked. His eyes were alight with success and a hard pride. Also, there was something else in the eyes, a kind of dread knowledge. He knew that the three of them would soon be bombarded by a lethal dosage of neutrons. They would die, but not before their mission was accomplished.

The scope cleared. The Bloodhounds were now at 100,000 feet and the converging pack of Soviet missiles had taken the form of a vast arrow of pursuit. A few seconds later the Bloodhounds would reach 150,000 feet.

The defense operator chuckled to himself. “They’re getting more range than I thought,” he said. “Maybe they’ll go 200,000 feet.”

In fact, they went to 220,000 feet. Then abruptly they began to slow down and the great pursuing arrow of missiles streaked toward them. Suddenly the entire scope seemed to erupt in an enormous explosion as all the Soviet rocket warheads went off simultaneously.

Without orders the navigator had fought for altitude ever since the first blast wave had passed. They were now flying at close to 10,000 feet. When the shock wave from the explosion came it was much less severe than the first one. The awful physics of time and distance had weakened its thrust. The Vindicator was shaken savagely and the wings dipped. But when the pressure passed, although an ominous groan came from where the wings joined the fuselage, they held.

“We’re making like a fat-assed bird,” Grady shouted. Through their masks the navigator and defense operator eyed him cautiously.

“How many minutes to Moscow?” Grady asked.

“Seven minutes,” the navigator replied.

There remained only one decision for Grady to make. At the present altitude, their chances of being shot down by orthodox antiaircraft were negligible. But when they dropped the bombs, even if they made an abrupt rise of 1,000 or 1,500 feet they would be destroyed by the blast. If they climbed to 25,000 or 80,000 feet, a safe altitude, they would simplify the problem for conventional antiaircraft and increase the chances of their being shot down. But in a real sense the decision had been made. Grady felt a kind of mild euphoria. His mind raced back to the old informal days of flying where pilot and crew knew, and sometimes even loved, one another. There was no reason under current procedures why he had to talk to the other two men in the plane at all. If he wanted, he could carry out the mission completely by himself. They would, he knew, not even look at him as he gave the order to drop the bombs. But every man should have tome say in the matter of how he is to die. Anyway Grady wanted to talk.

“Look,” Grady said. “We’re not just walking wounded, we’re walking dead men. That first blast must have given us enough Roentgens to shrivel the marrow in our bones. We’d have a couple of days at best. So I intend to take her in at 900 feet and then when we are over the target to climb to 5,000. The bombs are set to detonate at 5,000 so we’ll go with them.”

He glanced at the two men. The two pairs of eyes stared levelly at him. Then Thompson spoke.

“O.K., skipper,” he said. “There’s nothing to go home to anyway.” He laughed.

The American Ambassador and the Soviet delegate to the United Nations reported on the conference line before Khrushchev came on.

“Where are you, Mr. Ambassador?” the President asked.

“On the top floor of the American Embassy in Moscow in my library,” the American Ambassador said.

“Where are you, Mr. Lentov?” the President asked the Soviet delegate.

“In the UN building in New York,” Lentov replied. “Whatever happens I would like both of you to stay precisely where you are until I release you or Premier

Khrushchev releases you,” the President said. Then, slowly and calmly, he told them what had happened. When he had finished both of the men were silent for a moment. Buck glanced at the President. He knew what all of the men on the line were thinking:

the American Ambassador was exposed, without protection if the Vindicators got through. All of the men on the line except Buck were experienced diplomats. They had run risks before. They were calm.

Buck could hardly believe what he heard next. The Soviet delegate began to discuss baseball scores. He was surprisingly knowledgeable. He confessed that his favorite team was the New York Yankees.

“I know that it is somewhat like rooting for the aristocracy,” he said with a laugh. “But I cannot resist them. The first year I was here was the year that Mantle and Maris tried to beat Babe Ruth’s homerun record. It is a question of the power and the grace. I admire both qualities.”

“In that case if you had been an American you would have become a Wall Street lawyer,” the President said.

“Oh, now, Mr. President,” the Soviet delegate answered, “remember I said power and grace. Your Wall Street people have the power, but they are still lacking in grace. No, if I had been an American, I would have been a designer, probably of cars. The only thing in America which equals our Communist party in naked power, grace, and the ability to take adversity is the American car. Its exterior is often hideous, as is our Communist party, but inside it is rugged and durable.”

“I agree with you, Ambassador Lentov, about power and grace.” It was the American Ambassador speaking.

A voice from the grave, Buck thought, casual remarks from a man about to be burned alive. A clear and steady voice, not a tremor in it. Buck’s hand began to shake violently as it denched the phone. He could not bring himself to look into the President’s face. The voice went on. “It is a combination of power and grace which makes for top success in baseball as in politics. In both games the very best are a class apart. You can tell them from the first day in a training camp. Their objective is beautifully simple. It is the top. Once they have made the decision, their energies, their intelligence, their muscles, everything, give their naked power the additional virtue of grace. The multitude of the second-best often have as much power drive, but they lack the thing that Mr. Lentov calls grace.”

“But no, Mr. Ambassador, it has little to do with natural endowment,” the Soviet delegate said. “I once served in Mexico and came to love the bullfights. Often the best torero would be a scrawny, chicken-breasted fellow. But once in the ring, there he would possess what you call grace.”

There was a long silence. The American Ambassador was well-bred, wealthy, married to a beautiful woman, was reputed to be a good father, and a tremendously hard worker. But it was not until this moment that Buck realized he lacked a single quality, “grace.”

“There is a grandeur about such a life,” the President said. “But there is also a desolation about it. Take Babe Ruth. I never saw him in action but I saw him after he had retired. He was like the husk of a man. Once the husk had been filled with a desire and a will and a pride of accomplishment. When I saw him there was a dullness to the eyes, a flacddness to the muscles.

I remember my father had a collection of pictures of people like Herbert Hoover, John Nance Garner, Bernard Baruch, Eisenhower, and Truman, which he kept in fine oak frames in his study. He regarded them as tragedies. Men cut off from power while they still had the grace and the desire to exercise it. They were somehow like puzzled old bulls.”

“Maybe our way is better,” the Soviet delegate said dryly. “In my country there are old cows and there are old steers, but there are no old bulls who still have potency. As long as the old bull has power he fights, he is useful. There is only one kind of retirement for the virile old bull: death. In a way it is better.”

The connection with Khrushchev was made in utter silence. Buck jumped when he heard the voice come up on the conference line.

“Comrade Lentov, you have become a philosopher,” Khrushchev said. Instantly all of Buck’s mind and intuition went into alert. There was a marked difference in the voice.

“Mr. Premier, this is a time for philosophy,” the Soviet delegate said.

They all waited. Khrushchev did not respond. Then he spoke on a different matter.

“I was told that you had invited your Ambassador to Moscow and my delegate to the UN to join us,” Khrushchev said. “I assume there is a reason.”

Buck found the word he wanted to describe Khrushchev’s tone-finality. He reached over and scrawled on the President’s pad: “Finality. Tone heavy, final. K. has decided.”

The President read the message without change of expression.

“There is a reason,” the President said. “First let us know how it is going with the Vindicators.”

“My experts tell me that two of them will probably get through and will bomb Moscow,” Khrushchev said heavily. “Your estimate was correct, Mr. President.”

“I take no pleasure in it, Premier Khrushchev,” the President said.

Buck thought suddenly of Khrushchev’s family, the daughter and the wife with her baggy clothes and plain face who had somehow endeared herself to Americans when the Khrushchevs had visited years before. Were they in Moscow?

“Let’s get on with it,” Khrushchev said roughly. “In a few minutes the bombs will be falling. I have brought my whole retaliatory apparatus to full readiness. If we cannot satisfy one another in the next few minutes I must release that apparatus. What do you propose, Mr. President?”

The President sat straight in his chair. With his left hand he held the phone to his ear. With his right hand he drew a straight black slash of a line down the precise center of the note pad in front of him.

“First I will tell you what will happen, Mr. Premier,” the President said firmly. Suddenly the flesh around his mouth turned white, but his voice did-not falter. “Then I will tell you what I intend to do to demonstrate our sincerity.”

“Proceed, Mr. President,” Mr. Khrushchev said. “But make it as brief as possible, if you please.”

“The two planes will drop four 20-megaton bombs on Moscow; There is a possibility that our Ambassador will hear the sound of jet engines a moment or two before the bombs drop,” the President said. “In any case, he will be aware of antiaircraft fire from your guns and, perhaps, the sound of your defensive missiles blasting off. A few seconds after be hears this noise, the bombs will explode. When they do, even if our Ambassador cannot say anything, his telephone will give off a distinctive shrill sound as it melts from the heat of the fireball. We know; we have tested.

When we hear that sound we will know that the American Ambassador to Moscow is dead.”

A grunt came over the line, as if someone had taken a hard blow in the stomach. Buck thought it came from Khrushchev but then he was not sure. For a moment there was silence on the conference line.

“Do you understand, Mr. Ambassador, that you are to stay precisely where you are?” the President asked.

“Yes, sir,” came the Ambassador’s voice.

“Mr. President!” Khrushchev’s voice fairly exploded over the telephone. Involuntarily Buck winced and looked at the President. There was neither sorrow nor sympathy in the voice now, only rage. “Is this your grand plan? To sacrifice one American—the good Ambassador—for five million Moscovites?” The voice literally choked with anger, then rumbled on. Buck wrote the word “rage” on the President’s pad and watched his hand shake as he did so. A simple scene swam into Buck’s mind and it was captioned “End of the World.” It was, he realized, the way he had always pictured it. There were rows of buttons on a board-blue, green, and red buttons-and a thick peasant hand with stubby fingers hovered over them, seemingly about to plunge. At that moment, with Khrushchev’s voice babbling now incomprehensibly in his ear, the hand started on its final murderous downward arc. A terror, pure and simple as anything Buck had ever felt, clawed at his guts.

The President’s voice, high-pitched and urgent and barely under control, snapped him out of it. Buck’s translation rode over Khrushchev’s voice and he found he was shouting, repeating phrases, banging the table with his fist. “No, no, Mr. Premier. That is not what I had in mind. You must listen to me, listen to me. At the moment that we hear the shriek of the melting telephone in Moscow, I will order a SAC squadron which is at this moment flying over New York City to drop four 20-megaton bombs on that city in precisely the pattern and altitude in which our planes have been ordered to bomb Moscow. They will use the Em. pire State Building for ground zero. When we hear the second shriek over the conference line we will know that your delegate to the United Nations is gone and along with him, New York.”

“Holy Mother of God,” Khrushchev said. His voice seemed almost like a pant.

Then there was a deep silence. Suddenly, like a mechanical mockery, there was a flare-up of static on the line. It sounded like some macabre laugh, something torn from the soul of the mechanical system.

“There is no other way, Mr. Premier, that I could think to demonstrate to you our sincerity,” the President said softly. “We will each have lost our largest city. But most of our people and our wealth and our property and our social fabric will remain. It is an awful calculation. I could think of no other.” He paused and his voice dropped low. “Unless, unless you think it unnecessary. Unless you feel the offer itself is enough. Showing our intentions-” He stopped in mid-sentence and Buck saw cross his face a look of physical pain, of some kind of extreme agony, and in his eyes the last flickering hope.

There was silence on the line for a full ten seconds. “I would like to say that this is unnecessary,” Khrushchev finally said. “I cannot. We have worked ourselves into a position of suspicion and hatred so great that the only way out is to proceed with what you suggest. My people would liquidate any leader who allowed the destruction of Moscow to go unavenged. My successor would be forced to take a greater vengeance. More than just New York would be destroyed. Then you would retaliate… No, this is tragic, but it must be so.”

“We must sacrifice some so that the others can survive,” the President said and his voice was weary. “I do not know how the Americans will take my action. It may be my last. I hope they will understand.”

There was another pause. Each of the men on the conference line realized the weird inappropriateness of mere words. Also, each was in his own particular kind of shock. They sat quietly.

“Jay, I am grateful,” the President said to the American Ambassador. “I am also grateful to you, Mr. Lentov.”

“I thank you both,” Khrushchev said. He paused,

“I also admire you.”

“Thank you,” the Ambassador and-the delegate said almost simultaneously.

They waited quietly.

“I must tell my people at the Pentagon and Omaha of my decision,” the President said finally. “I will speak so that you can hear what I say.”

It took only a few seconds for the White House switchboard to make the phone connections. When the President spoke, the War Room in Omaha and the Big Board room in the Pentagon had been added to the conference line. In those two rooms the President’s voice came over the loudspeaker system.

“Gentlemen, I have had to make a terrible decision,” the President said. “It is the hardest I have ever made. I have not asked your advice because this is not a decision on which one needs or can use advice. I want the responsibility to be entirely mine.”

General Bogan listened to the words with his body tensed. He knew fatigue in every bone, but he also knew that in the next moment he might have to direct the attack of hundreds of SAC bombers against the Soviet Union. He felt a basic and immense confusion. He could not conceive of how general war could be avoided. Yet in all of the hundreds of conferences he had attended no situation just like this one had ever been anticipated. He felt crippled, oddly disabled.

In the Pentagon Groteschele whispered to Stark as the President paused.

“He’s going to send in a full strike,” Groteschele said. “He has to. There is nothing else he can do.”

Stark looked at Groteschele and then he licked his lips, cleared his throat. Groteschele realized that Stark was frightened. The fact amazed him. It also started a tiny root of fear twitching in Groteschele. Suddenly it was no longer an elegant and logical game. Real men in real bombers and real missiles carrying real thermonuclear warheads would soon be in motion. Their targets would be millions of unprotected people. Long ago Groteschele had stopped thinking of war in terms of flesh and blood and death and wounds. He thought in terms of neat strategies and impeccable rules. Now, quite suddenly, in a physical way, he understood what might happen. His mind resisted, but his body trembled with a series of small shocks.

“Two of the Vindicators will, apparently, get through to Moscow and will deliver four 20-megaton bombs on that city,” the President said. “Moscow has not been alerted. Premier Khrushchev estimates that it would cause panic and would not save lives in any case. When the bombs fall on Moscow we will know that fact because our Ambassador’s phone will give off a distinctive sound as it is burned by the explosion.”

The President paused. Buck felt that he should look away, but he could not. The President was about to outline the most sweeping and incredible decision that any man had ever made, and it was a decision which he hated. But he was boxed in, cornered by some accident of history, trapped by some combination of mechanical errors not even fully understood.

“I have attempted to persuade Premier Khrushchev that this was a mistake, a tragic error,” the President said. “I have made available to him all of the classified information which his defensive forces required. Premier Khrushchev has not launched his retaliatory forces but he will unless he receives some dramatic evidence of our sincerity. The scales must be balanced—and right away. The discussion we had is not important. The result is. If Moscow is bombed by our bombers, I must order a group of Vindicator bombers now circling over New York to deliver four 20-megaton bombs on that city. That is all, gentlemen.”

Congressman Raskob was the first person at Omaha to respond. For a long moment he was as rigidly uncomprehending as the rest of the men in the room. Like them he stared at the loudspeakers, not sure that he had heard correctly. Then Raskob got to his feet and walked over to General Bogan. He still had the walk like La Guardia, but the cockiness had gone.

“He can’t do it, General,” Raskob said in a quiet voice. His eyes were blank, like something painted on marble. “You can stop him. Even if they call it mutiny you can stop him.” He paused and seemed to be talking to himself. “Emma, the kids, the house, all gone. The whole 46th Congressional District. All gone.” Raskob’s voice took on a lilting, persuasive, hectoring tone. It was the voice he used in the House. “Congress will support you to the hilt, General. You will go down as the most famous patriot of all time.”

General Bogan sensed that by some peculiar psychological quirk the shock had simply turned Raskob’s inner thoughts into words. He was talking to save his sanity.

“I’m sorry, Congressman Raskob,” General Bogan said. “My God, I’m sorry! I know tour family lives in New York. But eighty or ninety or a hundred million lives in America and as many more in Russia are at stake, Congressman Raskob,” and General Bogan realized he was using the title deliberately to bring Raskob back to reality. “Congressman Raskob, think of that. And even if I did not understand his decision, I would not disobey the President.”

Raskob’s eyes came back to life and the look in them made General Bogan turn away. It was a look of pure desolation.

“I can understand the decision if I forget it’s my home, if I just think of politics. The power balance must be reestablished or the world will explode-I can see that. An eye for an eye, a city for a city. It is the way justice works when it rests on power. We sacrifice a city to save the nation,” Raskob said and his voice was gentle and rational. “But my city… my home… my family… mine… mine…” Raskob lowered his head to the table. Both hands were palm up and he buried his face in them. It was a brief reversion to a gesture of sorrow as old as man himselL But Raskob raised his head quickly. His face was composed. “It must be done,” he said simply. “An eye for an eye. There should be some other way, but there isn’t.” His eyes, that had been marble-dead a moment before, were filling with tears, but his voice was controlled. “Politics is filled with hard decisions, but this is the hardest one ever made. And it is correct.”

“I think it is correct, sir,” General Bogan said.

“General, would there be time for me to fly to New York?” Raskob said. “I would like to be with my family.”

“No, sir, there would not be time,” General Bogan said. “And even if there were I would not allow you to leave this room until the situation was resolved.”

Raskob nodded understanding. He walked over and sat down at a desk.

“The machines and the men and the decisions got out of phase,” Knapp told General Bogan. “We knew that something like this could happen in theory, but no one wanted to take it past that. No one knew how to turn it into diplomatic terms without seeming to be dealing from weakness.”

General Bogan listened, but aside from a sense of respect for Knapp, he did not follow Knapp’s words. He was thinking of Raskob.

He sensed somehow the disbelief that must be gripping Raskob. It was almost beyond grasping that all of the skyscrapers, the scores of office buildings, the tenements, the housing developments, the bridges, and the millions of people would, in a few minutes, be gone. It would be a place of fire, dust, great winds, and a landscape of black mounds of melted steel, carbonized flesh.

Would Raskob ever go back to New York, General Bogan wondered? For no apparent reason he was sure that Raskob would. Not out of morbidity, but out of curiosity as to what the ruins would look like. And out of love for what had been. The ancient image of the Wandering Jew came to Bogan’s mind and under it a kind of caption: politician without a constituency.

The General shook his head to clear it of another man’s sorrow, only to find that it was his own.

In the Pentagon the heads swung toward Swenson when the President had finished speaking. Most of the people around the table knew that Swenson’s family lived in New York and that the headquarters of his business was also located there. Swenson’s face did not change expression.

“Are there any papers or documents in New York which are absolutely essential to the running of the United States?” Swenson asked. “And would there be time to get them out of New York, General Stark?”

“No-no, sir, there would not be time,” Stark said. He was having trouble with his voice. “There are a nuniber of irreplaceable documents in New York, but none of them are absolutely crucial for the running of the country. Of course, the records of a large number of private companies—”

“They will be able to rebuild without those papers,” Swenson interrupted. He looked sharply around the table for signs of revolt, cracking nerve, a break in the diain. What he saw he found reassuring.

Because time must be passed and the group might be called upon for further decisions, Swenson forced a discussion of steps that would be taken by companies to reconstruct the records that would be destroyed in New York. The conversation was bizarre. It was led by a man whose entire family might be burnt to death in a very few minutes and carried on by men who had not the slightest interest in the subject matter. But Swenson forced them to it, snapped roughly at the CIA man once, caught Stark in an error in logic.

Groteschele when he had heard the President’s words thought first of his family, but only briefly. Chiefly he thought of them because he had always heard that in emergencies men thought of their families. In Scarsdale they would probably escape the effects of the fireball and direct blast. If they survived that they would be able to go to the bomb shelter which Groteschele had bad built in their back yard.

Then, having done his duty toward family, Groteschele thought of his future. If both Moscow and New York were destroyed it would be the end of his present career. After such a catastrophe, triggered by an error which no one could identify, the world would not tolerate further discussion and preparation for nuclear war. Surely the great powers would disarm to a point below the level where such an accident could be repeated.

For a moment he felt a pang of theoretical regret. He really would have liked to see the thermonuclear war fought out along the lines which he had debated, expounded, and contemplated. It was not true, he told himself, that one fears death more than anything. One might be willing to die to see one’s ideas proven.

Then Groteschele swung his attention to what his future work would be. If there were drastic cutbacks in military expenditures many businesses would be seriously affected; some of them would even be ruined. A man who understood government and big political movements could make a comfortable living advising the threatened industries. It was a sound idea, and Groteschele tucked it away in his mind with a sense of reassurance.

He threw himself into the discussion about the reconstruction of records with zest. Swenson eyed him carefully and guessed almost exactly what had gone through Groteschele’s mind.

“Mr. Secretary, will there be any effort to warn the people in New York about the bombs?” Wilcox said.

Swenson looked sharply at Wilcox. When he spoke his voice was cold.

“That is the President’s decision, Wilcox,” Swenson said. “I assume he has discussed it with Premier Khrushchev and taken whatever action he considers appropriate.”

Stark looked at the Big Board. At one side of it there was a line of buttons, all of them glowing green. One of those buttons would have turned red if an air-raid alarm had been signaled or the Civilian Defense agencies had been alerted. Stark knew that Swenson also knew that, but that Wilcox probably did not.

“A lot of lives could be saved if people had even a few moments to take cover,” Wilcox said stubbornly. He was not a man who frightened easily. His voice was controlled and Swenson knew that he had nothing to fear on the score of Wilcox becoming hysterical. But the mood of the room was becoming what Swenson had anticipated but not found a few minutes before-that of an unbelievable tension, an eerie overcontrol.

Wilcox reached in his brief case and took out that day’s copy of The New York Times. He threw it on the table so that it slid to a stop in front of Swenson. Squarely in the center of the front page was a picture of the President’s wife. She was in New York for the opening of a new art center.

Everyone at the table except Swenson stared rigidly at the picture. The President’s wife was a beautiful woman who had captured the imagination of the American public as few other women in public life before her. With a simple elegance, she did a great many things: painted, dedicated children’s hospitals, wore handsome clothes, entertained the great and the powerful, traveled around the world representing her husband, and cared for her children.

Swenson looked sharply at Wilcox, then at the other men around the table. He had read a great deal about how people behaved under stress. One thing emerged from the studies: a group could stand a very high level of tension, of terror even, if they were certain that everyone in the group was equally exposed. Allow even the suggestion of preferential treatment and a composed group would disintegrate into a chaotic melee of desperate individuals.

Was Wilcox trying to suggest that the President’s wife would or should receive some sort of preferential treatment? Even officers as magnificently trained as those gathered in this room could be shattered if they thought that the President might be calling New York to get his wife out of the city.

“I don’t quite understand you, Wilcox,” Swenson said. “Make yourself clear and quickly.”

Wilcox’s finger went past the picture of the President’s wife and pointed at a story in the left-hand column of the Times. “CIVIL DEFENSE CHIEF STATES SURVIVAL RATE WOULD GO UP GEOMETRICALLY WITH TIME OF WARNING.” It was an article in which the Civilian Defense Director had issued a reassuring statement that with a few hours warning casualties in an all-out war could be cut drastically.

Swenson realized that Wilcox had not even considered the fate of the President’s wife. It had never occurred to him that the President would do such a thing as give prior warning to his own family.

Groteschele, Stark, and the CIA man all laughed simultaneously. It was a short, mirthless but relieving laugh. Swenson looked at them and smiled. Wilcox looked at the others in astonishment, then growing irritation.

“On very short notice an alert to a big city would probably do more harm than good,” Swenson said. “A couple of hours and people can be dispersed and moved. But with a couple of minutes warning all you would do is produce an enormous amount of panic, crowding of the streets, a frantic searching of parents for children, and the rest. Statistically, more people are in protected spots just before the alarm than they are right after it.”

Stark started to say something and Swenson looked at him and shook his head silently.

He knew what Stark was going to say: if four 20-megaton bombs are dropped on Manhattan no one is going to survive even if they are in the strongest bomb shelter made for civilian use. Of course, there would be a few exceptions-some technician at a hospital who happened to be in a room supplied with oxygen and surrounded by stout walls, some janitor in a deeply buried basement in which by some quirk he could suck in the sewer air and subsist on that for a few hours. But it would not be more than twenty or thirty people, Swenson felt sure.

Some old reflexive control kept Swenson from thinking of his own family. It could do no good. And at the core of his personality was an almost fierce love and sentimentality about his family. Once exposed, once allowed to express itself, this torrent of love and anguish would render him worthless as a leader. So his cool mind reminded him over and over in an endless subconscious chant: there is nothing you can do, nothing you can do, nothing.

His job was to keep this group of men intact, in command of the situation, ready to move in whatever direction the President ordered. It was still possible that the Vindicators would not get through, it was possible that the Soviets might not believe that New York was actually destroyed, it was possible that some third power might panic and start to launch nuclear weapons.

Swenson’s neat prudential mind sorted out the alternatives, weighed them, thought ahead to which man should be entrusted with what tasks in the alternative situations.

The conference line connecting Moscow, Khrushchev, the United Nations, and the White House was open, but there was very little conversation.

Buck no longer felt confusion or embarrassment. He merely felt that during the course of the last few hours he had been greatly toughened. The pressure and tension, so sudden and immense as to be incalculable, had first bewildered him, turned him soft with contradictory moods. But now he felt weathered and sure. Without looking ahead he knew that his life would be different after this day.

He found himself looking at the President and running over different ways of approaching the situation.

If the situation had been reversed, if Soviet planes had accidentally been launched toward the United States, would the President have demanded the sacrifice of a Soviet city?

Probably, Buck thought to himself, although a part of the American tradition and political character would have allowed for time to see if the Soviet attack had been accidental. But how else could it be proved to be an accident? No way, he thought. The Soviet mentality, however, steeped in its own version of Maraist toughness, would not afford the time to wait, must always make its interpretation on the basis of utmost suspicion of its opponents.

“Mr. President, the activity here in Moscow seems quite ordinary, just like any other day,” the American Ambassador said.

Buck sensed that the Ambassador wanted to say something and was asking for permission. The President leaned forward, understanding in his eyes.

“A general alert would be useless, Jay,” the President said. “With the amount of time left it would only cause a mass hysteria and probably not save a single life.”

“That is correct, Mr. Ambassador,” Khrushchev said.

His voice was quiet “I have activated only those parts of our defense that have a chance of shooting down the Vindicators. Our ICBMs have already begun to stand down from the alert. I want no chance of some harebrained lieutenant getting excited and taking things into his own hands.”

It was the opening that the Ambassador wanted.

“What steps will you take to make sure that this most terrible of tragedies is not repeated, Premier Khrushchev?” the Ambassador asked.

“This is not the most terrible of tragedies,” Khrushchev said, but his voice was not belligerent. “In World War Ii we lost more people than we will lose if the two planes get through and Moscow dies. But what makes this intolerable is that so many will be killed so quickly and to no purpose"-he paused, took a breath, and then went on-"and by an accident. The last few hours have not been easy for me, Mr. Ambassador. They are not made easier by the fact that I am talking with you and Ambassador Lentov who will probably be dead in a few minutes. I have learned some things, but I do not have the time to tell them all to you. One thing I can say: at some point in the last ten years we went beyond rationality in politics. We became prisoners of our machines, our suspicions, and our belief in logic. I am willing to come to the United States and to agree to disarmament. Before I leave I will take steps that will make it impossible for our armed forces to repeat what has happened today.”

“Premier Khrushchev, I will welcome you and I shall also take the same steps that you have mentioned in regard to our armed forces,” the President said. “You have put your finger on something that has been gnawing at my mind during these last few moments.”

The President paused. A calm fell on the line.

“Premier Khrushchev?” There was a tentative note to the President’s voice.

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“This crisis of ours-this accident, as you say…. In one way it’s no man’s fault, No human being made any mistake, and there’s no point in trying to place the blame on anyone.” The President paused.

“I agree, Mr. President.”

Buck noticed the President nod, receiving the agreement as if both men were in the same room talking together. The President continued, in part thinking aloud: “This disappearance of human responsibility is one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole thing. It’s as if human beings had evaporated, and their places were taken by computers. And all day you and I have sat here, fighting, not each other, but rather this big rebellious computerized system, struggling to keep it from blowing up the world,”

“It is true, Mr. President. Today the whole world could have burned without any man being given a chance to have a say in it.”

“in one way,” continued the President, “we didn’t even make the decision to have the computerized systems in the first place. These automated systems became technologically possible, so we built them. Then it became possible to turn more and more control decisions over to them, so we did that. And before we knew it, we had gone so far that the systems were able to put us in the situation we are in today.”

“Yes, we both trusted these systems too much.” A new grimness crept into Khrushchev’s voice. “You can never trust any system, Mr. President, whether it is made of computers, or of people—” He seemed lost in his own thoughts and his voice faded.

“But we did trust them,” said the President. “We, and you too, trusted our beautiful Fail-Safe system, arid that’s what made us both helpless when it broke down.”

Buck was translating quickly. The President’s thoughts came tumbling out, were arrested for a moment, then started again. He had been speaking as if long-pent-up worries were suddenly being released. A thought flashed through Buck’s mind. These two men seemed to understand each other now even before their words were translated. Out of the crisis shared they were developing an intuitive bond. Buck watched the President’s face as he was thinking, searching for his next words, and Buck realized a strange fact. There were some things, some profoundly important problems, that the President could communicate to only one other man in the world: Premier Khrushchev. Buck sensed that both men felt this and were grateful for the empty moments now available to them, It let them make a breach in the awful isolation of their positions.

The President was still talking. “Today what we had was a machine-made calamity. And I’m thinking that today you and I got a preview of the future. We damn well better learn carefully from it. More and more of our lives will be determined by these computerized systems.”

“It is true,” Khrushchev said simply. “I wonder what role will be left to man in the future. Maybe we must think of man differently: ‘The computer proposes; man disposes.’”

“Yes, that may be the best we can hope for, but we can’t even be sure of that today. Somehow these computerized systems have got to be brought under control. They represent a new kind of power-despotism even-and we’ve got to learn how to constitutionalize it.”

“Mr. President, that would be a kind of constitutionalism I could approve. But this is a problem for politicians, not for scientists.” He laughed. “Computers are too important to be left to the mathematicians,”

There was another silence, lasting no more than twenty seconds. The President stirred in his chair.

Then it happened very quickly.

“Mr. President, I can hear the sound of explosions coming from the northeast,” the American Ambassador said. “They seem to be air bursts. The sky is very bright, like a long row of very big sky rockets. It is almost beautiful, like a Fourth of July—”

And then his voice was cut off. It was drowned in a screech that had an animal-like quality to it. The screech rose sharply, lasted perhaps five seconds, and then was followed by an abrupt silence.

Buck’s ears could hear the silence broken by a strange sound. It was, he guessed, made by the throats of approximately fifty men who simultaneously remembered that they must breathe. Somewhere there was the sound, discreet and isolated and perfectly audible, of a single sob.

“Gentlemen, we can assume that Moscow has been destroyed,” the President said, He paused, looked at Buck, seemed to be waiting for a miracle, unable to talk. Then he spoke. “I will contact General Black, who is now orbiting over New York City.”

It was a beautiful flying day. Black was flying his “hold” pattern, an effortless oval 46,000 feet above Manhattan. At 15,000 feet there was some small puffy cumulus which gave the firm lines of the Hudson and the East River silvery contrast. Manhattan stood out in clear-cut blocks and rectangles. Even from this height one could make out the soft greenness of Central Park, the odd enclave of grass in a forest of cement. Black had taken the boys there recently with ball and bat- abruptly his mind pulled away from the whole subject. He completed his final check. Everything was in order. The bombs were armed, the crew had been briefed. He had done that first in a very preliminary way over the squadron intercom net,

Black liked the operation of the aircraft, the moving of levers, the pull of the yoke and the sense of control over tons of intricate machinery. There had, he acknowledged to himself, even been a thrill of power when thermonuclear bombs were added to the plane. It was some primordial sense of strength, some childish love of a powerful toy. But above this, and justifying it, was some superior notion of duty. For years Black had thought he was defending his country and he had been right, Again and again he had been assured that either the bombs would not be dropped or they would be dropped only after an aggression against the United

States had commenced. In either case Black would have flown toward the enemy with all the skill and confidence and intelligence he possessed and without a qualm. And he had been assured that there was no third alternative: war by accident was impossible. It was here that Black was in torment. For he had known that it was possible and he had done nothing about it, Now he was being used as the instrument to right the balance. There was a kind of ironic justice in it that appealed to Black…

All was quiet readiness. He turned on the squadron intercom net, asked for and received a check-back signal from each member of the crew. He began speaking quietly and slowly.

“I may not have a chance to finish this, I don’t know. But I have to say a few things. You have been briefed on the mission. But I want to add a few personal comments, I think you all know that I’m from New York. My family is down there now.” The leader to the last, Black mocked himself. He had told them of his family only to make sure that no one held back, that all knew that he was making the biggest sacrifice and was willing to go ahead,

“I have one last simple order for you. That order is that no one else is in any way to have anything to do with the release, I have set this thing up so that I can handle it entirely by myself.”

Black paused. He felt a dullness creep over part of his mind, or perhaps it was his soul or heart. It was an anesthetic sensation. His impressions and memories of New York and of his family were blunted, then almost extinguished. It was a relief. With part of his mind he realized that this was the way the human animal protects itself.

“To repeat. I will fly the plane and launch the bombs,” Black said. “No other person will touch an instrument during the release. You may look up or you may close your eyes. You are accomplices and I would be dishonest with you if I said otherwise. But the ultimate act is mine. I think it is worth it, for it is a chance, the only chance, for peace. Please confirm by stations.”

He waited for the confirmations before resuming. As they came in he looked down for the last time at the great magnificent sweep of familiar landscape. It seemed more beautiful because of its utter innocence. The millions of people went about their tasks and pleasures unaware. It’s better this way, Black thought.

Another voice broke in. it was the President’s.

“Blackie, this is it. The bombs have just fallen on Moscow. Release four bombs according to our predetermined pattern. Report back in three minutes.”

Black turned, looked at the men around him. Slowly they raised their eyes toward the heavens. He wheeled around into the final course, checked his sights, opened the control panel in front of him, moved his index finger steadily toward the button by the numeral 1, pressed it firmly for three seconds, removed his finger, moved it down to the button by the numeral 2, pressed it firmly for three seconds and straightened up. His left hand found its way to his side pocket. He knew now who the matador was, what the final sword would he like. The Dream was over. Carefully his hand felt out a small object nestled in his pocket. The hand jerked sharply. At the same instant his right hand grasped the left arm of the copilot beside him. Black slumped forward in his seat.

Major James Callahan was startled out of his prayer as his left arm was grabbed by General Black seated beside him. He looked to his left to see Black slump down in his seat.

Black’s eyeballs rolled in his head, deep in their pits and pure white. The strong unfinished head rolled back on a loose neck.

Major Callahan knew without thinking what had happened. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He reached over, took Black’s lifeless right hand in his own, bowed his head, held it tight to his tearstained cheek, then placed it on Black’s lap. He composed himself, straightened, looked steadily ahead, and reached forward to turn the bright red key which controlled communications with the White House.

“Mr. President, this is Major Callahan. The mission has been accomplished. The four bombs have exploded 5,000 feet over New York. General Black has killed himself with his suicide kit.”

“Thank you, Major, it is something I expected.”

The President’s voice was still audible but he had apparently turned to an aide by his side.

“Prepare immediately for the consideration of Congress the Medal of Honor in the name of Warren Abraham Black, Brigadier General, United States Air Force. Have the citation read simply: for the highest act of courage and the most supreme conception of duty to his country and to mankind.”