Robert Heinlein - Expanded Universe

There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split - second intensity of imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was using the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two face - to - face television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President spoke German fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to the warring peoples themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the Continent were able to listen, the police regulations there being what they were.

The Ambassador from the Reich was given a special demonstration of the effect of the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western prairie and I slowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of steers. It should have impressed him and I thought that it did - nobody could ignore a visual demonstration! - but what report he made to his leader we never knew.

The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing attacks as heavy as any of the war was safe enough but I heard about them, and I could see the effect on the morale of the officers with who I associated. Not that it frightened them - it made them coldly angry. The raids were not directed mainly at dockyards or factories, but were ruthless destruction of anything, particularly villages.

"I don't see what you chaps are waiting for," a fig commander complained to me. "What the Jerry need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a lesson their own Aryan culture."

I shook my head. "We'll have to do it our own way He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and F brother officers felt. They had a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: "Remember Coventry! Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. w not to bomb during the period of negotiation, but the bombers were busy nevertheless. The continent w showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared by our own propaganda agents. The first of the called on the people of the Reich to stop a useless w and promised that the terms of peace would not vindictive. The second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that herd of steers. The third was a direct warning to get out of cities and to stay out. As Manning put it, we were calling "Halt!" three times before firing. I do not think that he or the Pre dent expected it to work, but we were morally ob gated to try.

The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds - Yarley nonintercept type, the sort where the receiver must "trigger" the transmitter in order for the transmission to take place at all. It made assurance of privacy in diplomatic communication for the first time in history, and was a real help in the crisis. I had brought along my own technician, one of the F. B. I.'s new corps of specialists, to handle the scrambler and the trigger.

He called to me one afternoon. "Washington signaling.

I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar floor, wondering if it were another false alarm.

It was the President. His lips were white. "Carry out your basic instructions, Mr. DeFries."

"Yes, Mr. President!"

The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were finished. But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers from every independent nation and from the several provisional governments of occupied nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at the request of Manning.

Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least, reaching its destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than Ridpath calculated would be needed for the mission and my last job was to see to it that every canister actually went on board a plane of the flight. The extremely small weight of dust used was emphasized to each of the military observers.

We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty - five thousand feet, refueled in the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled thirty minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut the thin air for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and hiked up to permit the utmost maximum of speed and altitude.

Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act as a diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the intention to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few planes actually engaged in the serious war might well escape attention entirely, flying so high in the stratosphere.

The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions, planning to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night was appreciably clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin: not a hard city to locate, since it has the largest square mile area of any modern city and is located on a broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out the River Spree a we approached it, and the Havel. The city was blacked out, but a city makes a different sort of black from open country. Parachute flares hung over the city in many places, showing that the R. A. F. had been bus before we got there and the A. A. batteries on the ground helped to pick out the city.

There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our altitude as nearly as I could judge. The pilot reported to the captain, "On line of bearing!" The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse pots of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of black powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter to dust at a time after release predetermined by the fu5 pot setting. The method used was no more than an efficient expedient. The dust would have been almost a effective had it simply been dumped out in paper bag although not as well distributed.

The Captain hung over the navigator's board, slight frown on his thin sallow face. "Ready one!" r ported the bomber.

"Release!"

"Ready two!"

The Captain studied his wristwatch. "Release!" "Ready three!"

"Release!"

When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail and ran for home.

No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about it. But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did not feel much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his courage and undergone a serious operation; it's over now, he is still numb from shock but his mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home.

The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my ship at once and gave me an escort for the offshore war zone. It was an expensive way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended some millions of lives in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a money expense? He gave the necessary orders absentmindedly.

I took a double dose of Nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some news while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had. The government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly after the raid, sneering at the much vaunted "secret weapon" of the British and stating that a major air attack had been made on Berlin and several other cities, but that the raiders had been driven off with only minor damage. The current Lord Haw - Haw started one of his sarcastic speeches but was unable to continue it. The announcer said that he had been seized with a heart attack, and substituted some recordings of patriotic music. The station cut off in the middle of the "Horst Wessel" song. After that there was silence.

I managed to promote an Army car and a driver at the Baltimore field which made short work of the Annapolis speedway. We almost overran the turnoff to the laboratory.