The Day After Judgement by James Blish Page B

stripped off them.
     You can do nothing more but lose more lives.’
    ‘The bombardment is till going on.’ McKnight pointed out stiffly, ‘and we’ve had no report yet of what it’s done to the enemy’s
     organization and manpower. For all we know, there’s nobody left down that hole at all – and the laser squadrons haven’t even
     arrived yet, let alone the Hess torpedoes.’
    ‘Neither of which are going to work a damn,’ Baines said brutally. ‘I know what the Hess torpedo will do. Have you forgotten
     that they were invented by my own chief scientist? Who just incidentally was taken by P UT S ATANACHI I this Easter, so that the demons now know all about the gadget, if they didn’t before. And after what’s been dropped on that
     town already, expecting anything of it is like Eying to kill a dinosaur by kissing it.’
    ‘It is in the American tradition,’ McKnight said, ‘to do things the hard way if there is no other way. Phase Four is a last-ditch
     measure, and it is good generalship – which I do not expect you to understand – to remain flexible until the last moment.
     As Clausewitz remarks, most battles are lost by generals who failed to have the courage of their own convictions in the clutch.’
    Baines, who had read extensively in both military and political theoreticians in five languages, and had sampled them in several
     more, as a necessary adjunct to his business, knew very well that Clausewitz had never said any such damn fool thing, and
     that McKnight was only covering with an invented quotation a hope which was last-ditch indeed. But even had elementary Machiavellianism
     given him any reason to suppose that charging McKnight with this would change the General mind in the slightest, he could
     see from the master screen that it wasalready too late. While they had been talking, the armoured divisions had been charging down into the valley, their diesel-electric
     engines snarling and snorting, the cleats of their treads cracking the slippery glass and leaving sluggishly glowing, still
     quasi-molten trails behind. Watching them in the small screens, Baines began to think that he must be wrong. He knew these
     monsters well – they were part of his stock in trade – and to believe that they were resistible went against the selling habits
     of an entire adult lifetime.
    Yet some of them were bogging down already; as they descended deeper into the valley, with the small rockets whistling over
     their hunched heads, the hot glass under their treads worked into the joints like glue, and then, carried by the groaning
     engines up over the top trunnions, cooled and fell into the bearings in a shower of many-sized abrasive granules. The monsters
     slewed and sidled, losing traction and with it, steerage; and then the lead half-track with the laser cannon jammed immovably
     and began to sink like the
Titanic
into the glass, the screams of its boiling crew tearing the cool air of the command booth like a ripsaw until McKnight impatiently
     cut the sound off.
    The other beasts lumbered on regardless – they had no orders to do otherwise – and a view from the air showed that three or
     four units of the laser squadron were now within striking distance of the gates of Dis. Like driver ants, black streams of
     infantry were crawling down the inner sides of the mountains behind the last wave of the armoured divisions. They too had
     had no orders to turn back. Even in their immensely clumsy asbestos firemen’s suits and helmets, they were already fainting
     and falling over each other in the foothills, their carefully oiled automatic weapons falling into the sand, the tanks of
     their flame throwers slitting and dumping jellied gasoline on the hot rocks, the very air of the valley sucking all of the
     moisture out of their lungs through the tiniest cracks in their uniforms.
    Baines was not easily horrified – that would have been bad for business – but also he had never before seen any actual