Peter dialed.
Somehow, Gregor made it to the table itself. It surprised him not to be dead. Now, however, he had the problem of rising to it. His two wounds bled profusely. He’d left a liquid trail upon the floor, and his pants were damp and baggy with blood. An odd noise rose to his ears, in syncopation with the diminishing raggedness of his breathing. It sounded like an accordionist whose instrument had been perforated. Then he realized it was his own body that issued the groaning sound: he had a sucking chest wound, and the air was leaking out of the ruptured bladder of his lungs with a pitiful squeak. He tasted blood in the base of his throat, swallowed it.
Then he rose. Where the strength came from he could not fathom. It was just there, in his fat, chalky, clumsy body. He fought through oceans of pain to get up off the floor until he tottered shakily over the infernal machine. He breathed in sobs, his chest bubbling greedily. His head ached and pounded. Most of his body was numb. His fingers were clumsy. He didn’t trust them to do what he ordered. His tongue felt like a dry lizard in his mouth. His lips had turned to limestone.
He put a paw on the machine. It simply lay there, though he fancied he could feel just the faintest thrum of vibration.
2358:35
2358:36
2358:37
The numbers flickered by. No power on earth could stop them. He stared, almost mesmerized as they dove toward the ultimate, the 2400, when the bomb would detonate and the world would become midnight.
Gregor started to weep.
What chance had a mere man against such magic?
His thick and sad fingers made an awkward stab at the gibberish of buttons atop the machine, but he couldn’t even coordinate their movements and get them to touch where he directed them, not that he really understood where they belonged. He almost passed out.
A tear fell upon the black, blank surface of the bomb console. It lay there, picking up the flicking red of the rushing numbers. Other than the timing device, there was only the arming button, its safety pin long since removed. It had been pushed, and sat, recessed, in its little receptacle.
He imagined what would happen. It was an implosion device. A sphere of high explosive packed around a sphere of plutonium around a core of beryllium as its neutron source. The explosive would detonate, all its force impelling the plutonium onto the beryllium in the crucible of the nanosecond, achieving critical mass and chain reaction.
What can I fight it with?
2358:56
2358:57
2358:58
The phone rang.
Walls looked at it in shock, then picked it up.
“Yo?”
“Walls,” it was a shriek, “you there?”
“Shit, yes.”
“We’ve only got a few, oh — ah! Oh, sorry, I just — oh, shit, that hurts, my leg, oh, Christ, look out, get — okay, you okay? It’s kind of hairy here.”
“Go on, man,” said Walls.
“Okay, listen to me. You find the columns yet?”
“No sweat, man.”
“Great, okay, great. From the left, count over to the third one, okay.”
Walls did it.
“Got that motherfucker.”
“Okay, now lean forward, I want you to look at the first letter on each label, okay. Just the letter.”
“No sweat.”
“Find the one that starts with a P.”
Walls fingered each one until he came on P, for Practical Electrical Guidance Check.
“Yo.”
“Press it.”
Walls pushed it.
“Now find the one for A.”
Walls’s eyes passed over the letters.
A. For Advanced Circuitry Mechanics.
“Yo.”
“Punch it — oh, shit. Oh, Lord, punch it, God, they just hit this guy. Christ, punch it!”
Walls hit it.
“Now an I.”
Walls found an I, for Inertial Navigation Circuitry Check.
He pushed it.
“God, great, almost there. Oh! Oh, fuck, God, that was close.”
Walls could hear noises and screams in the background.
“The M. Find the M, man.”
Walls found it easy. M. M, for Manual Recharge Override.
He pushed it.
“Done!”
Walls read the letters on the labels. His eyes flew down the column, panicked. He felt a stab of pain. His eyes flooded with tears, blurring and spangling what he saw.
“Find it? Find it, goddammit, you’ve just got that one button, come on now, it’s about halfway down.”
Walls was sobbing.
“Ain’t no fucking B here.”
“Goddamn, find it.
Walls went over it again.
“Ain’t no B here,” he cried, hating himself for his inability to change the hulking reality of the actual, “ain’t no B here.”
“Final launch sequence commencing,” said Betty reasonably.
Puller was hunched up near the shaft doors, listening as one of the Delta men narrated the events. He could hear the rush of the gunfire as it filtered up the long tunnel. It sounded like the surf.
“Okay, Delta Six, the doc is on the phone, he seems to have made contact, the Soviet fire is picking up around them. Oh, Jesus, he just hit that guy near him.”
“Give them covering fire!” Puller snapped.
“We’re giving it everything we’ve got, Delta Six, I can see the doc on the phone, he’s veiling and — oh, shit —”
“Hit?”
“No, it’s the voice, she’s saying they’re going into terminal countdown, oh, shit, I don’t think—”
Puller could hardly breathe. His chest felt as if he were about to have a heart attack, stony and constricted. He looked away, into the cold darkness, and suddenly there was an explosion off to the left. Its force, even from here, was considerable. Puller fell back, momentarily stunned, and the men around him recoiled against the sudden pressure of the blast. But it wasn’t a bomb.
“The silo door just blew,” someone said. “The bird is going to fly.”
