by Max Ehrlich
"I know," said David. "I went down into Dago with the Old Man when he delivered a speech before the San Diego-California Club, complaining about the new neon and electric signs they were putting up. Asked them for an ordinance to stop it."
"And what did they say?"
"Oh, they were very polite about it. But they said the Old Man was asking too much, he was trying to stop progress."
"And what did the Old Man say?" asked Morgan.
David grinned. "You should have been there, Joe. It was wonderful. The Old Man really laid into 'em. Told them that if they were more interested in advertising sausages and soap and the latest movie epic than in finding out the secrets of the universe, then they could have it. If that was progress, he told them, he was going back to his mountain, where the air was clean, and never step off it again. Then he walked out."
"Well," said Morgan thoughtfully, "the Old Man got his wish about the lights. They've gone out here, and everywhere else, and God knows if anyone'll ever get a chance to turn 'em on again. And if that's progress," he added a little bitterly, "we'd better start retreating backward, damned quick!"
The phone rang, and David answered. It was Francis, the steward, calling from the observatory.
"Dr. Dawson wants you in his office right away. Dr. Hughes."
David frowned. It was only eleven-thirty in the morning, an unusual hour to get a call from the Old Man.
"What's up, Francis?"
"I don't know, sir." The steward sounded excited. "General Hawthorne is due here at any moment. He's flown in from the East, and it's some kind of extraordinary conference. I've never seen Dr. Dawson so agitated."
"And you're sure he wants me there?"
"Yes, Dr. Hughes. At once!"
Francis hung up, and David, puzzled, told his roommate briefly what had happened.
Morgan was impressed. "Sounds like big stuff, Dave. Hawthorne's head of military intelligence and the key figure in this whole cold war setup right now. If he says the Russians are about to let us have it, then we'll try to beat them to the punch. One word from him, one opinion, and the dynamite goes off, all hell breaks loose. And he wouldn't be traveling to Palomar, right in the middle of this witch's brew, just to pass the time of day."
David agreed soberly. "But this is high-echelon stuff. Why does the Old Man want me there?"
Morgan shrugged. "You're his first assistant -- number one boy. And the Old Man must have his reasons. All I'm sure of is that this meeting isn't going to be a love feast. You know how the Old Man feels about Hawthorne and the rest of the brass. And that goes, vice versa."
A half-hour later David was closeted with the general and Dr. Dawson in the Old Man's study.
The general was a big, hulking man with the face and look of a bulldog. His ice-blue eyes were set deep in his square face, and they snapped whenever he spoke. He had made his reputation as a young colonel in G-2 during the last World War, the one they called World War H, back in the forties. In 1955, under the growing tension of the cold war, Congress had broken up the Civilian Commission for the Control of Atomic Energy, originally headed by David Lilienthal, and turned it over to the military.
It was then that Matt Hawthorne had been given four stars, and with it control not only of the whole atomic program, but of every scientist connected with it. In the next five years, because of the obvious integration of this function with the intelligence branch of the military, he had been authorized to mobilize and use, at his own discretion, the scientific brains of the United States in every field of endeavor.
David sat there, fascinated, and watched the two men, General Hawthorne and Dr. Dawson. The Old Man was sitting back in his chair behind the desk, watching the general clamp a cigar in his teeth as he paced up and down the room. Dr. Dawson looked small and almost frail behind the big desk, a man of sixty-five with a finely chiseled face cast almost in an ascetic mold and topped by a shock of tousled white hair. Now, in the light of the hooded lamp on the desk, David saw how gaunt the Old Man's face had become, how deep the shadows under his eyes, and how sharply etched the lines around his mouth. He's tired, thought David; he's got the look of a man almost unbearably weary, a man stretched taut and close to the breaking point. Only his eyes seemed to be very much alive against the pallor of his face. They were unnaturally bright, almost feverish and crackling in their intensity, and as they followed the general they were wary and hostile.
They're a couple of heavyweights, thought David, champions in their line, the best in the business. And they had already squared off; the very air in that quiet room was electric with their hostility. They had clashed brusquely, from the moment the general strode into Dr. Dawson's study, over the question of David's presence there.
"I told you over the phone that this was to be a private meeting over an extremely confidential matter," the general had snapped, glancing at David. "I don't think we want any third party present."
"Dr. Hughes is my assistant," Dr. Dawson said quietly. "He is here at my request, he knows the details of my work for the military, and he has my entire confidence. I think you can count on his discretion, General."
The general started to say something in protest. Then, with an impatient wave of the hand, he forfeited the point. It was plain that he had some larger matter of argument on his mind.
"Dr. Dawson," he began, "we have just established a new defense headquarters at an underground location not far from New York City. At eleven o'clock tomorrow morning there will be an extraordinary meeting of the General Staff and a select group of scientists. This meeting will be of the highest importance, and I want you to be there."
The Old Man stiffened. "May I ask what this meeting will be about. General?"
The general stopped his pacing. He flicked the ashes from his cigar, very deliberately, into an ash tray. Then he turned to the Old Man and looked him squarely in the eyes.
"We shall make a rather important decision," he said. "By noon we shall decide whether we will strike at the Soviet Union immediately, with every weapon in our arsenal -- or wait for a few more days."
The room was quiet. David sat there, stunned, watching the Old Man sitting immobile behind his desk, the general staring at him. Suddenly David heard the grandfather clock in the corner of the study. It seemed to grow louder as he listened. Now it was abnormally loud; it seemed to tick faster and faster, with an accelerated metronomic beat. David resisted a crazy impulse to rise, to smash the glass face of the clock, to rip the hands off, to stop that loud and obscene beat, the thing it was saying, war or peace, war or peace, war or peace.
War or peace. They or we. Strike or wait. War or peace.
The Old Man stirred. Finally he spoke, quietly, almost inaudibly.
"General Hawthorne, why are we forcing this decision? Our policy is, and has been, not to strike in an undeclared war without moral justification. The President himself, the State Department, has promised the people that -- "
"Bunk!" The general swung around the desk, leaned down, stared belligerently at the Old Man. "Moral justification! Ethics! Do you think the Soviets care a damn about nonsense like that?" He stopped, and then said slowly and deliberately, "Besides, we have plenty of moral justification -- self-defense. What would you say if I told you the Russians have already attacked us?"
The general paused dramatically. But if he expected a reaction from the Old Man, he was disappointed. As for David, he had half risen from his chair, fascinated with horror, watching General Hawthorne.
"I have heard no evidence of any attack," the Old Man said.
"No," snapped the general. "No, you wouldn't. Not up here on this mountaintop, maybe. But down in the cities, my dear Doctor, down where people live, it's different. They're going crazy with rumors, and some of these rumors are true. We're holding them together by discipline, in some areas by martial law, and faced by the threat of a national panic if the people really find out the truth."
"What truth, General?"
"I'll give it to yo
u straight, Dr. Dawson. The fact is that the Soviets have a secret weapon, some kind of new super weapon. We don't know what it is, we have no countermeasures against it, all we know is that they're throwing it against us in controlled doses and have been doing so for the past month. They're using it as a technique of cold war, trying to smash our morale, to demoralize us and break us down, so that we'll listen to a deal -- their deal!" The general spat out the word. "But they may be in for a little surprise. After we finish this East Coast meeting tomorrow, the whole thing may boomerang back into their damned Red faces. We've learned a few tricks of our own!"
He's good, thought David, watching the general. He's hard, and he's ruthless, and he doesn't scare easily, and he knows his way around. The Soviet propaganda had built up the Red soldier to scarehead proportions, a man of physical might with a fanatic contempt of death. But watching General Hawthorne, under the circumstances, was strangely comforting. If there had to be a final holocaust, thought David, it was the Hawthornes who would save the country, or die trying, and the United States was lucky to have them.
Dr. Dawson stuck to his point. "How do you know there is a new Soviet weapon. General?" he said, almost dryly, as though he were posing a question to some student in a lecture class. "What facts do you have, what evidence?"
The general started to pace the floor again. "Dr. Dawson, in the past month we have undergone a series of phenomena -- unexplained phenomena, without any scientific rhyme or reason -- freak disasters. The earthquakes in various sections of the United States where no tremors have ever been experienced before. The tidal wave that rose out of the sea without warning, swamping Havana.
"These erratic changes in the internal pressures of the earth's surface suggested something possibly astronomical, or cosmic, in nature. We know that the top men in the Soviet, scientists like Kavenoff and Malvik, have been working on this type of grand-scale weapon for some time. They've drawn on the best brains of their satellites, in addition -- Ferenz of Hungary, Dubois of France, Migliore of Italy, Peterson of Sweden, and Dietz of Germany." General Hawthorne paused, looked steadily at the Old Man, and then said with gentle irony: "And as you know, Doctor, we have been conducting the same line of cosmic research ourselves, with your own enthusiastic participation."
David glanced quickly at Dr. Dawson and remembered. First, the New Mexico job, and later, Maryland. Over the Old Man's violent protests they had dragged him off Palomar Mountain and bludgeoned him into the top post with the Ballistics Research Laboratory where his knowledge of measuring the speeds of galaxies had been applied to measuring the speeds of projectiles. David had gone along on both trips. He had participated in all details, and he knew how much the Old Man hated the whole setup.
But Dr. Dawson ignored the general's thrust and asked:
"About these phenomena. General. Do you know whether similar ones have taken place in the Soviet Union?"
The general grunted. "If they have, I haven't heard anything about it. Neither have our agents. Anyway, a field mouse couldn't get through the Iron Curtain these days. But aside from that, my dear Doctor, the question is academic. Why should these disasters happen in Russia? If the Russians have this new weapon, they obviously wouldn't be using it on themselves."
"Obviously not, assuming that your arbitrary assumption is correct, assuming that they do have some kind of weapon."
General Hawthorne exploded. "There's no doubt about it! You can indulge in the luxury of scientific skepticism all you want. Doctor, but I'm a realist, and I know what I'm talking about. And the last two weeks have proved me right."
The general's jaw set in a hard block as he went on: "In the last two weeks, Doctor, the Reds have stepped up their damned offensive. They've begun to hit us in the belly, where it hurts, in ways that the public doesn't know about yet, thank God. Last Monday a flight of long-range jets set out for a routine flight over the North Pole. Their instruments suddenly went out, they lost communication with their base, and we never heard from them again."
The Old Man leaned forward now. He became tense, interested in what General Hawthorne had to say; he seemed to hang on every word.
"This weapon of theirs, we have discovered, can deflect and sabotage magnetic instruments," continued the general. "We've noted fluctuations in our own magnetic equipment from time to time. Our air navigators and pilots have been losing their directional beams, they've been going far off their course, their radar has ceased to function." The general paused. "You can see what effect that would have on our A-projectiles, my dear Doctor, on our rockets, on our air force. Apparently the Reds have found a way to deflect them at will."
The Old Man was silent, but his bright eyes betrayed his interest. Finally he said:
"And this meeting on the East Coast tomorrow morning, General?"
"We're going to pool our brains and try to figure out just what the Russians have. If you and the other scientists there can't figure it out, can't put it down to any naturalistic phenomena, then we have only one conclusion. The Reds have got something, and we've got to beat them to the punch." The general's face grew brick red, and he flung his cigar in the wastebasket. "If it was up to the General Staff and myself, we'd be throwing everything we have at the Soviet right now. But no! The President doesn't want to make any overt move. Neither does State. For the record," General Hawthorne snarled. "For the record. What the hell good is any record going to be in a couple of more days?"
David watched the Old Man as he rose from the desk. He seemed perplexed, as though trying to come to some inner decision. The general picked up his hat.
"That's all, Dr. Dawson. When you reach New York City tomorrow morning, phone military headquarters, R-Section. They'll pick you up and drive you to the meeting place."
The Old Man turned and then said slowly, "I'm sorry. General, but I'm not going."
"You're not what?"
"I'm not going," Dr. Dawson said levelly. "In the first place, I cannot morally be a party to any arrangement that may set off a world war. And in the second place, I am in the midst of a tremendously important piece of research here at Palomar."
"Research be damned!" blazed the general. He slammed his hat down on the table. "Look here, Dawson, I've had enough of this nonsense from you and from those other fools you call your colleagues. You've sabotaged me every step of the way, like a pack of Reds."
The Old Man suddenly blazed back. "You know what I think of the Soviet system of government. General. You know how I despise it, what it's done to its men of science, how it's bent them to the will of the state. I hate anything that smacks of a totalitarian society. I am still technically a free citizen in a free democracy and not yet a member of the military. And I resent your inference that my colleagues and I "
"Listen, Doctor, I'm not going to argue with you," Hawthorne interrupted. He pounded the table with his fist. "You're going to stop your stargazing for a few days, and you're going to get back down to earth and Hy East and be at that meeting tomorrow morning. And those are orders!"
"I'm sorry, General," said the Old Man stubbornly. "I am willing to compromise and send my assistant. Dr. Hughes, here, in my place, provided he is willing to go. But I repeat, I cannot go myself -- not now."
The general saw there was no moving the Old Man and changed his approach. His voice was suddenly very quiet.
"I warn you. Doctor, this is treason."
"A matter of definition. General. It's your concept of treason."
"Suppose I told you that under the present military law it is conceivable that you could be shot for this."
"It would not change my mind, I assure you," the Old Man said calmly.
For a long time they stared at each other. Then finally General Hawthorne turned his cold blue eyes on David.
"We'll expect you at that meeting tomorrow morning, Hughes," he said curtly.
He put on his hat, turned, and walked from the room without looking back at the Old Man.
At Sixty-fifth Street a taxi swerved arou
nd the corner.
David hailed it, and it came to a stop with brakes squealing.
"One Hundred and Tenth Street, between Broadway and the Drive," he said, settling back. The driver made no attempt to operate his meter.
"That'll cost you ten bucks."
The man behind the wheel caught David's incredulous look through the reflector and turned.
"Ain't you heard, buddy? There's a war on. Now, is it a deal or ain't it?"