As far as Charlie could tell, his role was to observe, and try not to get too severe a sunburn. Each day at dusk he had a headache, from squinting in the desert sun all day. Metalworkers erected a steel tower one hundred feet tall, carpenters built observation shelters nine thousand yards from the tower. Long spools of wire tendrilled across the sand, linking the various facilities, and a construction crew bulldozed dirt over the wires. Charlie paced and watched and twiddled his thumbs.
He could not send letters to Brenda. That far into the desert, postal service was not among the amenities. Occasionally he would join other boys in the back of a power wagon and ride all those hours back to The Hill. But the trip left him dulled and he did not write then either. Giles worked nearly around the clock now, and with Monroe gone Charlie realized how few other friends he’d made. Although the work environment had always been intense, in the desert it ratcheted several notches higher.
There was a day when the atmosphere changed in Alamogordo too. It began one morning when a trailer-truck rolled out of the desert, a giant shape under tarps on its platform. With armed jeeps ahead and behind, it came to a stop near the operations center. A crane rumbled over, while men wrapped the covered object in chains. Lowering a hook, the crane hoisted the object and set it on the ground. Immediately a crew built a tent, shading the object from the sun.
Soon after, a car arrived with its own military escort, and a man stepped out with a suitcase handcuffed to his wrist. Armed guards stood by, as he ducked into the ranch house and shut the door behind him.
“Half of world’s plutonium,” Bronsky remarked. Charlie was startled. He had not known his boss was there.
“Is that right?” Charlie said.
The division director nodded. “Cost half billion of dollars to make. Imagine if we have try twenty-four detonators, and fail, and all this money is waste. Good work, you.” He patted Charlie’s shoulder and ambled away.
That night in a nearby tent, Charlie slept among strangers. In the morning, Bronsky pulled him aside. “You must see.” Passing between guards, they ducked into the hidden object’s chilly tent.
There it was: the Gadget, revealed. A dull metal orb, eight feet around, its casing secured by thick steel bolts, with holes all around for wires. The external detonators looked like cloves on a Christmas orange. Charlie marveled to see the actual thing, this device to which he had given so much thought, but always in the abstract. Now it was as real as the ground underfoot.
A team of scientists entered, chatting amiably. Bronsky leaned over to murmur, “They are arm Gadget now. Plutonium plug are slide direct into position, very snug.”
Sure enough, two men removed the Gadget’s cap. Two more carried a wooden box up a ladder. One opened the box while the other removed the plug, held it up for all to see, like a magician preparing his trick, then slid it down the opening.
Immediately Charlie could tell something was wrong. The man pulled the plug back, and slid it down again. Again it jammed. When he tried to remove it, the plug resisted. It was stuck.
“What in world?” Bronsky asked. “They have measure this twenty times.”
The men on the ladder and the others all wore puzzled expressions. Finally one of them spoke. “Let’s go wrap our heads around this. There must be some explanation.”
“What in hell?” another man barked. “It’s a little late to say we mismeasured.”
“Please,” the first man said, gesturing toward the ranch house. “In private.”
The men filed out, Bronsky speaking to Charlie on the way. “Please to stay here.”
Charlie waited hours. Every so often a scientist would come out to climb the ladder, peer inside the Gadget, and return to the house. When the door was open Charlie could hear men arguing. Meanwhile the sun rose, and the air in the tent grew warm. It was July, and soon the heat would be unbearable.
Then the Gadget clanked. Charlie jumped. The guards made eye contact to confirm they had all heard it. A soldier trotted over to the house and knocked.
A red-faced scientist opened the door. “We’re trying to solve something here.”
The soldier hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “It thunked.”
“It thunked? What the hell?” The man jogged over, hurried up the ladder, and peered in the opening. “I’ll be damned.”
The other scientists came to see for themselves. By the time they’d each had a turn on the ladder, Bronsky had solved it. “Gadget was out in cold night, in cold tent. Passageway shrinks. Plug is in warm house, it expands. Leave them together, cold shrinks plug, down it goes. Thunk.”
The men laughed, scientists sealed the Gadget with more steel bolts, and the crane returned to carry it the nine thousand yards to the tower. Bronsky beamed as the crane inched away across the sand, the studded Gadget dangling.
“Looks like one of those medieval weapons, you know?” one soldier said. “The spiked ball at the end of a chain?”
“Or an egg,” Charlie replied. A giant egg, the most dangerous egg of all time.
“First atomic bomb, Fishk.” Marveling, Bronsky shook his head. “Is now arm.”
Ordered to keep an eye on the Gadget, Charlie followed the crane toward the tower. It was nearly five miles away, but he had walked only a mile or so when a jeep picked him up. By the time he reached the tower, the crane had deposited its load and started back. Soldiers attached another hook, this one connected to a cable dangling down the center of the tower. None of the boys were scientists—Charlie knew because of the uniforms—it was all military, with one man very much in charge. Charlie considered it a failing that he could not tell the man’s rank by the stripes on his sleeves. The motor on the tower lift was loud, so the boys’ voices sounded like dogs barking.
The officer in charge yapped an order, the engine roared, and the winch overhead began to lift the Gadget. But it stopped after a few seconds. Even over the motor, Charlie and the others had heard the groan of bending metal. He backed away, craning his neck to examine the tower, and cupped his hands to yell to the officer.
“What did you say?” he shouted.
“The top girders are bent.” Charlie pointed up. “The Gadget is too heavy.”
The officer glared. “How about you keep your nose out of army business?”
Charlie stood there, flummoxed. He could see the iron pillars with his own eyes. They curved inward, toward the center of the tower. Meanwhile, the Gadget dangled fifteen feet off the ground. He inched closer again, debating whether to insist.
“Hey, Murphy,” the officer yelled upward. “What did you build this thing to hold?”
“As ordered, sir. Four tons.”
He turned to Charlie. “Hey, smart-ass, what’s this thing weigh?”
“Ten thousand, eight hundred pounds, sir.”
“If it falls, will it go off?”
“I wouldn’t want to find out, sir.”
“God damn it.” The officer stomped away. In a matter of seconds, though, he had whirled on his heel to stride back. “Mattresses. You, you, and you.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of various soldiers. “Requisition all the mattresses from the tents.”
One soldier squared his shoulders. “Sir, regular army only has cots.”
“So what?”
“Mattresses are for officers only, sir.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” he said. “I want them piled here pronto.”
“Yes, sir.” The soldiers ran off toward a line of parked trucks.
“Hey, smart-ass,” he said to Charlie, “I can’t spare the hands here. You go too.”
Fortunately it was midmorning by then, the officers attending to their duties. No one was around to object as the soldiers bundled sheets, pillows, and blankets, and left them on bare bed frames. The mattresses were thin, government issue, and dusty. One baby-faced soldier could not stop sneezing.
But they loaded the mattresses into the trucks. It was hot work, no wind and the sun beating down, their shirts dark with swe
at. They climbed into the truck’s cab, but the sergeant—Charlie knew his rank because the others called him that—announced that there would be a detour on the way back.
“Seaver can hold his damn horses, if you ask me,” he said, driving over to the mess tent and sending them in to drink all the water they could hold. Charlie put his face under a spigot and gulped greedily. It didn’t matter that the water was warm. He let it spill on his face, then wiped it around his sweaty neck and up into his hair.
Air pouring in the truck window dried and cooled them on the drive back out to the tower, and Charlie wondered if being in the military would have been so terrible after all.
The sergeant drove faster for the last mile. “Now let’s double-time the unloading, guys, so we look extra sharp.”
Seaver stood with his feet wide, frowning as they piled mattresses under the Gadget. The baby-faced soldier nudged Charlie. “Think this will help if it falls?”
He shook his head. “Not a bit.”
But they unloaded all of the mattresses, making a stack almost ten feet high.
“Now we’ll see what’s what,” Seaver said.
He ordered Murphy to restart the motor, and it bellowed and roared. Then inch by inch it hoisted the Gadget up into the center of the tower. Drawn back thirty yards or so, Charlie kept an eye on the upper girders. They did not seem to bend any farther. When the Gadget reached the platform, soldiers swung it away from the opening, the motor set it down, and Seaver turned back to his boys.
“Now. Let’s get those mattresses back where they belong.”
As Charlie helped again, a group of men on the detonator team came forward. They moved like links on a chain, each one’s right hand holding the strap of a steamer trunk ahead, and left hand holding the strap of a steamer trunk behind. The last man was carrying a toolbox, which he swung up on his shoulder before starting up the tower steps. Charlie saw that it was David Horn, who marched past without noticing him.
For three days they wired the Gadget, inside an army tent atop the tower. Charlie wondered if the tent was intended to keep them cool, or to conceal their work. Meanwhile he waited outside the ranch’s house with the growing crowd of technicians. Periodically the old windmill made half a turn in the breeze. But it was rusted, and moaned loudly enough that Giles covered his ears. “Sounds like a lovesick cow.”
On July 13, Berthe came forward with calculations from Theoretical Division, and a prophecy. The chain reaction would not be limited to the bomb’s materials. It would set the entire atmosphere on fire, annihilating the planet. Bronsky insisted that Horn’s wiring team continue working, while senior physicists from other divisions met for a debate that kept lights on in the ranch house long after all the tents had gone dark.
On July 14, Berthe retracted his prediction. There had been a mathematical error.
Meanwhile a bulldozer inadvertently drove over the control wires, severing the connections between facilities. Glad to have something to do, Charlie took shovels and two soldiers and they unearthed the broken links. Under a scorching sun, he spliced and secured the wires, then helped the soldiers bury everything again.
“See there?” Bronsky crowed to the other division heads. “Science and army are cooperate.”
On July 15, word came down: The test code-named Trinity would occur that night, at midnight. No one was permitted to leave or arrive. Charlie returned to his bunk and started a letter.
Dear Brenda,
I do not know what it means to be a man in wartime. No one is shooting at me. But hundreds of thousands of people are shooting at one another. What is my job? Am I simply a soldier, following orders? What has become of my conscience?
He put the paper facedown, as he had with his calculations back in Chicago, and went back outside to wait with the others. The humidity thickened all afternoon. At dusk, the wind picked up. Heat lightning glimmered behind the mountain range. Charlie stood outside the mess tent and Giles joined him. “Did you eat anything?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Me either,” Giles said. “What if we actually have a storm?”
“It’s July in New Mexico,” Charlie answered. “Nobody imagined it could happen.”
A long convoy of army trucks drove past, noisy behemoths trailing plumes of gritty dust. They were headed back to The Hill.
“Only three hundred are staying,” Giles explained. “The official reason is to protect us, but I suspect it’s actually to prevent sabotage.” He scratched his arm. “Did you hear about the press releases?”
Charlie glanced at him sideways. “Do I want to hear?”
“There are three, already time-stamped for tomorrow. The communications chief showed me this afternoon. One, assuming the test makes a large noise and bright light, says an ammunition dump exploded, the fire is under control. The second one adds that gas canisters blew as well, so nearby communities had to be evacuated. The last one says there has been loss of life. I asked the officer what the blank space at the bottom was for, and he said that’s where they’ll put the names of the dead.”
Charlie held his stomach and said nothing.
“He also told me they’ve informed the governor of New Mexico about the test. In case things go extremely wrong, and the army needs to declare martial law.”
Charlie nodded. “You are my friend, Giles, and a good, smart guy. But you need to shut up now.” He staggered away across the sand.
“If I don’t tell you, Charlie,” Giles called after him, “who can I tell?”
Charlie remembered with affection the thunderstorms of his New England childhood. Whether over the Fourth of July weekend up at Lake Winnipesaukee, or in late August back in Boston, the humidity would gather for days, building, until the scale tipped and the skies opened. If it happened during the day, the winds would strengthen, the leaves show their undersides, and the rain would deliver a deluge for half an hour or so, after which steam rose from the roads. At night, he’d wake to thunder rumbling in the dark and listen as the storm approached. Then the downpour unleashed, with lightning every few seconds until one bolt flashed simultaneously with the thunder, a great crash overhead, right above the house, and then the storm passed on, the flashes winked out, the rumbling faded, leaving the air washed and cool.
That night in New Mexico, the storm flickered with menace on the horizon, but drew no nearer. Rumbles came like muted drums, and the wind arrived in bursts of stinging sand, followed by ominous calm. Charlie sat at the tent opening, watching in perfect stillness.
Passing by, Giles pointed at the paper in his lap. “Another epistle to your girl?”
“I write to Brenda the way some people go to church.”
“I’d like to meet her someday.”
“I would not be here.” Charlie waved one hand in a circle, as if to take in the tent, the desert, everything. “Hell, our nation would not be here, if not for Brenda.”
A flash of lightning illuminated their faces, unmasked them to each other. Giles scuffed his shoe in the dirt. “You will tell me, won’t you, when I need to be terrified?”
Charlie scratched his forehead with the pen. “You should have started being terrified two years ago.”
By nine o’clock, Project Y leaders sent a message that countdown would be delayed till two a.m. By ten the wind had steadied out of the west, a light rain teemed across the desert, and the detonation was put on indefinite hold. By midnight the storm had intensified, sheets of rain slashing across the rows of tents.
Out of the darkness came Bronsky, holding an umbrella over his head though it had been inverted by the wind. Charlie observed the urgency in his stride, like a man on his way to a fistfight. He moved aside so his boss could enter the tent.
Bronsky held up a hand while catching his breath. Water dripped from his earlobes. “We are not find Horn anywhere.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Charlie said. “I don’t even know which tent he’s in.”
“Not important now.” He wiped his eyes with fi
ngers that Charlie noticed, for the first time, were long and graceful. The man would have made a good violinist. “We need to know danger level. If we have lightning strike, device will detonate, yes or no?”
“Hard to say, sir.”
A flash lit the ground around the tent opening, puddles in the dirt.
“Do you see this?”
“I did, sir. Of course.”
“What in hell? Are we safe?”
Charlie stood shoulder to shoulder with Bronsky, observing the rain. “How do you define ‘safe,’ sir?”
“Fishk, you have build detonators. Can lightning start them?”
“We never tested for external electricity, sir. We assumed the juice would be coming from us.”
“Chert voz’mi.” Bronsky rubbed his eyes again, and Charlie noticed there were sores on the man’s brow—made, perhaps, by anxious rubbing. Could the unflappable Detonation Division director be afraid? “So many geniuses,” his boss said, “and here is thing we do not anticipate. What else are we forget to plan for? And what are we do now?”
“There are hundreds of yards of wire on the Gadget, and that platform is the tallest thing for twenty miles.” Charlie squared his stance. “My advice would be to treat it like a lightning rod.”
Bronsky hesitated, trying to tell if Charlie was joking. He opened and closed his broken umbrella. “Do you know they are have betting pool, up at command?”
Charlie raised his eyebrows in surprise. “They do not.”
“One dollar each. Oppenheimer have bet on output of three hundred tons of TNT. Teller bet forty-five thousand tons. Ramsey says zero, total dud.”
“Ramsey. Hasn’t he always been a doubter?”
The sky flashed, the accompanying thunder coming five or six seconds later. Perhaps the rain had let up slightly, but Charlie was not sure. “What did you bet, sir?”
“I do not have dollar with me.”
Somehow knowing his boss was worried gave Charlie a measure of calm. It meant that his emotions were reasonable. He put his hands in his pockets. “I’d imagine an enterprise as exacting as this one would have considered a variable like weather.”
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