A rumour, traced to a Brooklyn storekeeper, that salami was the only food acknowledged to be proof against atomic contamination produced such a demand for the sausage that within twenty-four hours there was not a pound of salami to be had in the whole of New York City. A case was reported from the Bronx of a man who had sold his house for two hundred pounds of salami. A food-store proprietor on Staten Island told police that a widow with eight children had offered him her baby for only five pounds of the meat. Eventually, the New York Times was compelled to interview half a dozen well-known physicists and obtain from each of them a statement that salami had no special virtues as a food in case of atomic attack. The reporter who obtained the interviews was recommended for a Pulitzer prize.
Hardly had the salami furore died down than another, concerning alcohol, arose. Someone recalled that the United States Navy, in an experiment carried out on mice, had made the fascinating discovery that mice, fed enough alcohol to make them paralytic drunk, and then subjected to gamma rays in lethal concentrations, had come through the experience without as much as a hangover. The navy had arrived at two cautious conclusions as a result of the experiment. The first, that mice could hold, by comparison, twice as much alcohol as man without becoming intoxicated. The second, that a high percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream of mammals seemed to provide an uncertain but definite degree of immunity from the radiation released by atomic or other nuclear explosions.
The run on bars and liquor stores, when the story gained circulation, exceeded even that which took place following the repeal of prohibition. A form of drunkenness christened “blitz plotz” by a copy-reader on the New York Daily News became acceptable in even the most rigid social circles. Millions took to carrying hip flasks as they had during prohibition. Elderly ladies and high-school students held it prudent to carry a snort of rye, bourbon, Scotch, gin, or vodka in their handbags, and “Have a life-saver on me” became a familiar and kindly greeting in business circles.
The Herald Tribune, jealous of the salami service of the Times, undertook to expose the “blitz plotz” fallacy, but ran into unexpected and humiliating difficulties. In the first instance the public, once convinced that it was a patriotic and personally wise precaution to keep a pleasant buzz on all day and night, was loath to be persuaded otherwise. They liked the idea, and circulation of the Tribune commenced to fall off from the opening of the anti-blitz plotz campaign. Then the attempt to obtain forthright statements from scientists to the effect that alcohol provided no protection at all from atomic radiation was only partially successful. The scientists themselves were convinced that it was not so. The evidence of the mice was irrefutable, so far as mice were concerned, they pointed out. While this did not necessarily apply to man, the possibility that it did could not be ruled out. A close parallel between mice and men had been demonstrated in a number of other conditions. Not a scientist could be found who would go on record with a flat statement that intoxication provided no immunity for gamma radiation.
In desperation, the editor of the Tribune himself called on Dr. Kokintz in the special laboratory established for him on the second floor of the administration building of Columbia University, and asked him bluntly, “Dr. Kokintz, would you yourself recommend being drunk during an attack by nuclear weapons?”
Kokintz peered at him through his thick glasses and said, “What else? What else?”
“But,” persisted the editor, “are chances of survival greater for the individual if he is intoxicated?”
“With the weapons we have at the present time,” Kokintz replied gravely, “neither sobriety nor intoxication will make any difference. There are no chances of survival.”
After thinking this statement over, the editor decided to wind up the campaign with a series of statements from the clergy and prominent social workers.
That evening, he dropped in at the St. Regis and had one of their giant martinis in the King Cole Bar. It was, he reflected as he drank it, a completely subconscious reaction--the same kind of unreasoned and primitive urge that drives men to duck their heads when a building falls on them. He decided he would have another while he thought about the matter.
Gradually, but definitely, what had been intended as warning of a mere practice alert, though on an unprecedented scale, evolved, as a result of the mass publicity, the insistent and inescapable repetitions, the emphasis on the omnipotence of the weapon which had inspired the exercise, into a warning of an actual alert in the public mind. The attempts to put down the salami rumour and the alcohol rumour were taken as positive proof that the real thing was to be expected. The belief grew that the United States Government had received secret information that a genuine attack with atomic weapons or even worse was to be launched on the east coast. And then, from a mild hysteria, a form of panic developed.
It started with a demand by parents that schools be closed lest, when the alarm was sounded, mothers and fathers be separated from their children. The school authorities, not wishing to be responsible for the care of hosts of children during an alarm of uncertain duration, readily acquiesced in this demand.
Then city workers began to avoid travelling by subway or by bus, lest they be caught in these conveyances during the alarm. Three days after the warning of the practice alert was issued, subways were carrying less than half their usual quota of commuters. Buses reported their traffic had fallen off sixty per cent. Later, though not much later, wives demanded that their husbands stay at home, and as the conviction grew that a real attack was impending, there was a rush at railway and airline terminals to get out of New York. Businesses closed down, streets and playgrounds were left deserted, and the panic was on.
The full power of all the communication media was again called upon, this time to get over the message that no actual attack was expected. The exercise was to be merely one of preparedness. The international situation was healthy-healthier than it had been at any time since the close of the war. Diplomats attested to this and were supported by generals and admirals. One general, who but ten days previously had advocated an immediate attack upon those nations, which, he said, were intent upon bleeding the United States to death, announced that there was no reason at all why the two sides could not sort out their difference peaceably.
“We are,” he said, “on the very verge of peace--a peace which, if cool judgments are allowed to prevail, must last through our lifetimes and those of our children.”
All this, however--the unwavering insistence that this was to be but a practice in preparedness, the unqualified statements of diplomats, generals, and admirals that no war was in sight, even a Press conference in which the President assured the nation that there was no danger of attack by any foreign nation or combination of foreign nations--all this had little effect. One question remained unanswered in the public mind: Why have such a large-scale practice if there is no possibility of war breaking out immediately?
Then the one thing happened which, even if the attempt to allay the panic had made any headway, would have cancelled all the progress achieved.
Senator Griffin, seriously disturbed by a thousand letters a day from people all over the country, demanding to know whether the United States had any adequate weapons with which to defend itself, decided to announce that the quadium bomb had been perfected. He did so only after consulting with the President, the Secretary of Defence, and other members of the cabinet. He urged on them that the only way to allay the panic was to assure the public that the United States was in possession of a weapon of such tremendous destructive capacity that no other nation would dare to attack it.
As chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, he called a Press conference and gave the details of the bomb to the reporters who crowded into the Senate committee room.
“The Q-bomb, which has been perfected by Dr. Kokintz,” he said, “gives us the ability, as it were, to summon the naming sun down upon our enemies. It will, in its present size, devastate an area of two million square miles. There is no limi
t to the power of destruction which is now in our hands.
“Needless to say,” he added, “we will never use the Q-bomb unless we are compelled to do so.”
“What would compel us to use it?” a reporter asked.
“I can conceive of no circumstance other than its use first by some other nation,” the Senator replied. And immediately he realized he was guilty of a gross error.
“Does that mean that other nations have the Q-bomb?” the reporter asked.
“Not to our knowledge,” the Senator parried, and he had hardly uttered the reply than he realized that he had now sown the suspicion that other nations might have this weapon. He hurriedly closed the Press conference before any more damage was done. He did so with the reiteration that with the Q-bomb in its possession, no one would dare attack the
United States. But he was uncomfortably conscious that the point had not gone over and the Press conference had been a failure. His suspicions proved correct.
In the midst of the reports, printed over the nation’s front pages, that the United States was the possessor of the frightful weapon, was the hint that others either had the same weapon or were likely to develop it shortly. And hardly had this news been absorbed by the public, than the great alert was sounded.
It commenced at six in the morning of May 13 with a wail from a thousand sirens in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington. The wail rose to such a crescendo that it seemed all the potentialities of mere sound had been exhausted and some new kind of sensation, a combination of sound, pain, and physical pressure, had been developed. Then the sirens slipped dolefully from their peak down and down and then up again, and then down again. And when they were quiet, they left behind such a silence that it seemed as if there were not in the whole of America as much noise as would be caused by the snapping of a twig. It was as if the sirens themselves had slain all living matter.
In every part of the east coast, those in the streets, at the first moan of the alert, had stood paralysed by fright, and then flung themselves into doorways and into houses, down cellar steps and into subways and air-raid shelters; some sobbing, some laughing, some with their breath coming in hard little gasps, and others quite incapable of breathing for the while.
On the New York waterfront, there was a scurrying from ships as longshoremen, stevedores, and crews deserted vessels which had no steam up, and scampered to safety. One ship alone cleared the docks and that under her own power. The R.M.S. Queen Mary swung slowly out to midstream, turned around and headed down the Hudson.
The captain, after describing the time of the air-raid alarm and the sailing of his vessel, made the following notation in his log:
Sighted 300-ton brig Endeavour ten miles off Ambrose light. Called her on loud hailer and told her to put about as vessels were forbidden to enter Port of New York. No reply to first message. On repeating warning second time was met with flight of arrows from brig. Vessel undamaged. Continued on course.
CHAPTER VII
The brig Endeavour, the double-headed eagle banner of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick broken out at her main peak, swept up the deserted Hudson before a brisk easterly. Tully Bascomb and the captain were the only men aboard who knew precisely where they were and both were puzzled that they had not, since firing upon the Queen Mary and hoisting their colours, sighted as much as a tug or a coast-guard cutter. It was a dancing May morning, the sun sparkling on the greenish water, glanced off the skyscrapers that stood like the spears of a vast host gathered on the island of Manhattan. The air was so clear that Tully felt it might be drunk as well as breathed. And yet over all there lay an appalling and ghostly silence, as though this were not a real city but only a painting of one, done upon a vast canvas and representing some metropolis, deserted by its inhabitants centuries before.
“This is New York,” Tully said to Will Tatum, his lieutenant. “But I don’t understand why there is not an enemy in sight. We have the whole river and harbour to ourselves. Usually it is as thick with craft as a flypaper with flies.”
“They have realized at last that we were in earnest,” said Will glumly, “and have probably set an ambush for us. We must go carefully. Those buildings are the biggest I’ve ever seen and will take a lot of storming. I wonder why the Americans build such big castles. I had not heard that they were often attacked.”
Will, a man built on the proportions of an ox, was noted rather for his physical than mental strength. He pulled a one hundred and twenty-pound bow, stood six feet three inches and had never been out of Grand Fenwick in his life. A man of more imagination would have been awed by the size of the city that lay before him to be taken. Indeed, the rest of the expeditionary force, lined along the bulwarks of the Endeavour, were looking at the Manhattan skyline in grim and desperate silence. But Will saw in the task merely a job which was to be done, in which blows would be given and taken, but which, none the less, would be successfully completed in the end.
The expeditionary force, which on the voyage over had worn civilian dress, was now uniformed in all the equipage of war. The twenty bowmen had their pot helmets upon their heads. Their hauberks of chain mail, worn over leather shirts, covered neck, chest, and back. Each had six bowstrings of deer sinew tied around his waist and each a small shield on his left arm, a short sword slung beside it, and a longbow across his back. Tully looked them over, and told himself that they would do well for him and their nation. The three men-at-arms--Will being among them--wore white surcoats over their armour, blazoned with the eagle crest. They carried besides longbows, maces with wicked spiked heads.
“Pedro”--Tully called to the captain of the brig, who had come to the conclusion since the chartering of his vessel in Marseilles that this was all something connected with the movies and maybe he ought to treble the price--“Pedro, bring me into the Cunard dock at the bottom of Forty-fourth Street. We will make our assault there.”
“They’ll make the devil of a fuss if I do,” said Pedro. “The first thing you know, there’ll be customs officials, harbourmaster’s men, policemen, and shipping clerks all waving me away and they’ll probably levy a fine more than the brig is worth. I don’t know why nobody has come to give me permission to dock. The health department should have met us off the harbour. Maybe they all had a big week-end and they’re sleeping late. It’s Monday morning.”
“This,” said Tully, “is war.”
“Okay. It’s war,” said Pedro, like someone humouring a child. “But I don’t see any cameramen about to take publicity shots. Maybe we ought to hang around a bit until they turn up.”
“Dock,” roared Tully. “Dock, before I have off your ears.”
“Aye, Aye,” said Pedro. “Stand by the main braces there.” His crew of five scrambled aft. Pedro put his helm over, the main yards swung round until the sails were backed and the Endeavour slipped prettily under her own way into the Cunard dock, where the crew made her fast fore and aft to bollards.
“Men of Grand Fenwick,” cried Tully, as soon as the ship was secured. “I have led you to the heart-land of the enemy. Follow to victory.” He threw a rope with a grappling hook at the end of it, on to the dock overhead. Three other ropes followed and the men swarmed up them to form ranks on the quay.
“Hey,” called Pedro, from down below. “What about me? What do you want me to do?”
“Stand by to make sail on our return,” said Tully.
“Do you expect to be long?”
Tully looked up the street and around at the vast, but deserted city that seemed to be waiting for him and his little army like some trap of steel and concrete, which at any moment would be sprung to destroy them.
“I cannot say,” he said. And then to his men, “Banners advance in the cause of Grand Fenwick.”
Now that he was in New York City, Tully had no very clear idea of what to do next, though he was careful to hide his lack of plan from his men. He had intended a landing on the coast with his force in civilian clothing, then marching upon Washington, or p
erhaps taking a train, and storming the White House. A quick and determined blow, struck with surprise, he felt would give him as a hostage for terms of peace, the President of the United States himself. But the plan had met with surprising opposition from among his own lieutenants, and Will Tatum, who before their departure had had a private interview with Gloriana, would not be moved to agree with it.
“We must wage honourable war,” Will had said, “under arms and meeting the enemy in the open. If we fight by guile we will be more footpads than soldiers.”
Tully, thinking the thing over, had had to agree, and since it was he who in the first instance had insisted upon honour in the matter, was a little ashamed of having deviated from his principles. The trouble was that here he was in New York with his army, but there wasn’t anyone to fight. He had expected to have to exchange some hard knocks even to gain a landing. He had expected that they might be set upon at sea, which was the reason he had ordered the volley of arrows loosed at the Queen Mary. But there was not as much as a corporal’s guard to oppose him. He decided to march down Forty-fourth Street to Times Square, in the hope of meeting the enemy.
The deserted street, the mute buildings, the silent air, the empty doorways, the corners and ledges and chinks and buttresses of the city resounded strangely to the sound of the marching of the army of Grand Fenwick, as it strode towards the centre of New York City. It was a sound never before heard in the New World--a sound so strange to the Old that the very leaves of the forest would have turned to listen to it--the sound of mailed feet clinking upon the road. The lone banner of the double-headed eagle fluttered in the breeze, the white surcoats of the men-at-arms made brave splashes in the sunlight, the helmets of the bowmen gleamed, but only birds witnessed the pageant.
The Mouse That Roared Page 6