Nevil Shute - On The Beach

Peter stirred uneasily. "That’s historical," he said. "It ought to go on record somewhere, oughtn’t it? Is anybody writing any kind of history about these times?"

John Osborne said, "I haven’t heard of one. I’ll find out about that. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much point in writing stuff that nobody will read."

"There should be something written, all the same," said the American. "Even if it’s only going to be read in the next few months." He paused. "I’d like to read a history of this last war," he said. "I was in it for a little while, but I don’t know a thing about it. Hasn’t anybody written anything?"

"Not as a history," John Osborne said. "Not that I know of, anyway. The information that we’ve got is all available, of course, but not as a coherent story. I think there’d be too many gaps—the things we just don’t know."

"I’d settle for the things we do know," the captain remarked.

"What sort of things, sir?"

"Well, as a start, how many bombs were dropped? Nuclear bombs, I mean."

"The seismic records show about four thousand seven hundred. Some of the records were pretty weak, so there were probably more than that."

"How many of those were big ones—fusion bombs, hydrogen bombs, or whatever you call them?"

"I couldn’t tell you. Probably most of them. All the bombs dropped in the Russian-Chinese war were hydrogen bombs, I think—most of them with a cobalt element."

"Why did they do that? Use cobalt, I mean?" Peter asked.

The scientist shrugged his shoulders. "Radiological warfare. I can’t tell you any more than that."

"I think I can," said the American. "I attended a commanding officers’ course at Yerba Buena, San Francisco, the month before the war. They told us what they thought might happen between Russia and China. Whether they told us what did happen six weeks later—well, your guess is as good as mine."

John Osborne asked quietly, "What did they tell you?"

The captain considered for a minute. Then he said, "It was all tied up with the warm water ports. Russia hasn’t got a port that doesn’t freeze up in the winter except Odessa, and that’s on the Black Sea. To get out of Odessa on to the high seas the traffic has to pass two narrow straits both commanded by NATO in time of war—the Bosporus and Gibraltar. Murmansk and Vladivostok can be kept open by icebreakers in the winter, but they’re a mighty long way from any place in Russia that makes things to export." He paused. "This guy from Intelligence said that what Russia really wanted was Shanghai."

The scientist asked, "Is that handy for their Siberian industries?"

The captain nodded. "That’s exactly it. During the Second War they moved a great many industries way back along the Trans-Siberian railway east of the Urals, back as far as Lake Baikal. They built new towns and everything. Well, it’s a long, long way from those places to a port like Odessa. It’s only about half the distance to Shanghai."

He paused. "There was another thing he told us," he said thoughtfully. "China had three times the population of Russia, all desperately overcrowded in their country. Russia, next door to the north of them, had millions and millions of square miles of land she didn’t use at all because she didn’t have the people to populate it. This guy said that as the Chinese industries increased over the last twenty years, Russia got to be afraid of an attack by China. She’d have been a great deal happier if there had been two hundred million fewer Chinese, and she wanted Shanghai. And that adds up to radiological warfare..."

Peter said, "But using cobalt, she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai."

"That’s true. But she could make North China uninhabitable for quite a number of years by spacing the bombs right. If they put them down in the right places the fall-out would cover China to the sea. Any left over would go around the world eastwards across the Pacific; if a little got to the United States I don’t suppose the Russians would have wept salt tears. If they planned it right, there would be very little left when it got around the world again to Europe and to western Russia. Certainly she couldn’t follow up and take Shanghai for quite a number of years, but she’d get it in the end."

Peter turned to the scientist. "How long would it be before people could work in Shanghai?"

"With cobalt fall-out? I wouldn’t even guess. It depends on so many things. You’d have to send in exploratory teams. More than five years, I should think—that’s the half-life. Less than twenty. But you just can’t say."

Dwight nodded. "By the time anyone could get there, Chinese or anyone else, they’d find the Russians there already."

John Osborne turned to him. "What did the Chinese think about all this?"

"Oh, they had another angle altogether. They didn’t specially want to kill Russians. What they wanted to do was to turn the Russians back into an agricultural people that wouldn’t want Shanghai or any other port. The Chinese aimed to blanket the Russian industrial regions with a cobalt fall-out, city by city, put there with their intercontinental rockets. What they wanted was to stop any Russian from using a machine tool for the next ten years or so. They planned a limited fall-out of heavy particles, not going very far around the world. They probably didn’t plan to hit the city, even—just to burst maybe ten miles west of it, and let the wind do the rest." He paused. "With no Russian industry left, the Chinese could have walked in any time they liked and occupied the safe parts of the country, any that they fancied. Then, as the radiation eased, they’d occupy the towns."

"Find the lathes a bit rusty," Peter said.

"I’d say they might be. But they’d have had an easy war."

John Osborne asked, "Do you think that’s what happened?"

"I wouldn’t know," said the American. "Maybe no one knows. That’s just what this officer from the Pentagon told us at the commanding officers’ course." He paused. "One thing was in Russia’s favour," he said thoughtfully. "China hadn’t any friends or allies, except Russia. When Russia went for China, nobody else would make much trouble—start war on another front, or anything like that."

They sat smoking in silence for a few minutes. "You think that’s what flared up finally?" Peter said at last. "I mean, after the original attacks the Russians made on Washington and London?"

John Osborne and the captain stared at him. "The Russians never bombed Washington," Dwight said. "They proved that in the end."

He stared back at them. "I mean, the very first attack of all."

"That’s right. The very first attack. They were Russian long-range bombers, II 626’s, but they were Egyptian manned. They flew from Cairo."

"Are you sure that’s true?"

"It’s true enough. They got the one that landed at Puerto Rico on the way home. They only found out it was Egyptian after we’d bombed Leningrad and Odessa and the nuclear establishments at Kharkov, Kuibyshev, and Molotov. Things must have happened kind of quick that day."

"Do you mean to say, we bombed Russia by mistake?" It was so horrible a thought as to be incredible.

John Osborne said, "That’s true, Peter. It’s never been admitted publicly, but it’s quite true. The first one was the bomb on Naples. That was the Albanians, of course. Then there was the bomb on Tel Aviv. Nobody knows who dropped that one, not that I’ve heard, anyway. Then the British and Americans intervened and made that demonstration flight over Cairo. Next day the Egyptians sent out all the serviceable bombers that they’d got, six to Washington and seven to London. One got through to Washington, and two to London. After that there weren’t many American or British statesmen left alive."