detail of the action that was within access
of a camera.
McKnight did not bother to occupy the booth until the nuclear bombardment was over, knowing well enough that the immense amount
of ionization it would produce would make non-cable television reception impossible for quite some time. (The fallout was
going to be hell, too-but almost all of it would miss Denver, the East Coast was dead, and the fish and the Europeans would
have to look out for themselves.) When he finally took over, the conventional bombardment was just beginning. With him were
Baines, Buelg, Chief Hay and Šatvje; Jack Ginsberg had expressed no particular interest in watching, and since Baines did
not need him here, he had been excused to go below, presumably to resume his lubricous pursuit of Chief Hay’s comely runner.
Vision on the great master screen was just beginning to clear as they took their seats, although there was still considerable
static. Weather Control reported that it was a clear, brightly moonlit night over all of the Southwest, but in point of fact
the top of the great multiple nuclear mushroom, shot through withconstant lightning, now completely covered the southern third of California and all of the two states immediately to the east
of it. The units and crews crouching in their bivouacs and emplacements along the sides of the mountains facing away from
the valley clung grimly to the rocks against hurricane updrafts in temperatures that began at a hundred and fifty degrees
and went on up from there. No unit which had been staked out on any of the inside faces of any of the ranges reported anything,
then or ever; even the first missiles and shells to come screaming in towards Dis exploded incontinently in mid-air the moment
they rose above the sheltering shadows of the mountain peaks. No thermo-couple existed which would express in degrees the
temperature at the heart of the target itself; spectographs taken from the air showed it to be cooling from a level of about
two and a half million electron volts, a figure as utterly impossible to relate to human experiences as are the distances
in miles between the stars.
Nevertheless, the valley cooled with astonishing rapidity, and once visibility was restored, it was easy to see why. More
than two hundred square miles of it had been baked and annealed into a shallow, even dish, still glowing whitely but shot
through with the gorgeous colours of impurities, like a borax bead in the flame of a blowpipe; and this was acting like the
reflector of a searchlight, throwing the heat outward through the atmosphere into space in an almost solidly visible column.
At its centre, as at the Cassegranian focus of a telescope mirror, was a circular black hole.
McKnight leaned forward, grasping the arms of his chair in a death grip, and shouted for a close-up. Had the job been done
already? Perhaps Buelg had been right about there being a possible limit to the number of transformations the enemy could
go through before final dissolution. After all, Badwater had just received a nuclear saturation which had previously been
contemplatedd only in terms of the overkill of whole countries–
But as the glass darkened, the citadel brightened, until at last it showed once more as a red-hot ring. Nothing could be seen
inside it but a roiling mass of explosions – the conventional bombardment was now getting home, and with greataccuracy – from which a mushroom stem continued to rise in the very centre of the millennial updraft; but the walls – the
walls, the walls, the walls were still there.
‘Give it up, General.’ Buelg said, his voice gravelly. ‘No matter what the spectroscope shows, if those walk were really iron
–’ He paused and swallowed heavily. ‘They must be only symbologically iron, perhaps in some alchemical sense. Otherwise the
atoms would not only have been scattered to the four winds, but would have had all the electron shells
of a camera.
McKnight did not bother to occupy the booth until the nuclear bombardment was over, knowing well enough that the immense amount
of ionization it would produce would make non-cable television reception impossible for quite some time. (The fallout was
going to be hell, too-but almost all of it would miss Denver, the East Coast was dead, and the fish and the Europeans would
have to look out for themselves.) When he finally took over, the conventional bombardment was just beginning. With him were
Baines, Buelg, Chief Hay and Šatvje; Jack Ginsberg had expressed no particular interest in watching, and since Baines did
not need him here, he had been excused to go below, presumably to resume his lubricous pursuit of Chief Hay’s comely runner.
Vision on the great master screen was just beginning to clear as they took their seats, although there was still considerable
static. Weather Control reported that it was a clear, brightly moonlit night over all of the Southwest, but in point of fact
the top of the great multiple nuclear mushroom, shot through withconstant lightning, now completely covered the southern third of California and all of the two states immediately to the east
of it. The units and crews crouching in their bivouacs and emplacements along the sides of the mountains facing away from
the valley clung grimly to the rocks against hurricane updrafts in temperatures that began at a hundred and fifty degrees
and went on up from there. No unit which had been staked out on any of the inside faces of any of the ranges reported anything,
then or ever; even the first missiles and shells to come screaming in towards Dis exploded incontinently in mid-air the moment
they rose above the sheltering shadows of the mountain peaks. No thermo-couple existed which would express in degrees the
temperature at the heart of the target itself; spectographs taken from the air showed it to be cooling from a level of about
two and a half million electron volts, a figure as utterly impossible to relate to human experiences as are the distances
in miles between the stars.
Nevertheless, the valley cooled with astonishing rapidity, and once visibility was restored, it was easy to see why. More
than two hundred square miles of it had been baked and annealed into a shallow, even dish, still glowing whitely but shot
through with the gorgeous colours of impurities, like a borax bead in the flame of a blowpipe; and this was acting like the
reflector of a searchlight, throwing the heat outward through the atmosphere into space in an almost solidly visible column.
At its centre, as at the Cassegranian focus of a telescope mirror, was a circular black hole.
McKnight leaned forward, grasping the arms of his chair in a death grip, and shouted for a close-up. Had the job been done
already? Perhaps Buelg had been right about there being a possible limit to the number of transformations the enemy could
go through before final dissolution. After all, Badwater had just received a nuclear saturation which had previously been
contemplatedd only in terms of the overkill of whole countries–
But as the glass darkened, the citadel brightened, until at last it showed once more as a red-hot ring. Nothing could be seen
inside it but a roiling mass of explosions – the conventional bombardment was now getting home, and with greataccuracy – from which a mushroom stem continued to rise in the very centre of the millennial updraft; but the walls – the
walls, the walls, the walls were still there.
‘Give it up, General.’ Buelg said, his voice gravelly. ‘No matter what the spectroscope shows, if those walk were really iron
–’ He paused and swallowed heavily. ‘They must be only symbologically iron, perhaps in some alchemical sense. Otherwise the
atoms would not only have been scattered to the four winds, but would have had all the electron shells
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