The Lotus Eaters

'Are the plastic fillers expensive?'

Sitnikov shook his head. 'Cheaper than the concrete they displace.'

'What's the cost of a bunker?' Carrera asked.

'About five hundred legionary drachma for the base structure, exclusive of NBC filters, electrification, labor for camouflaging, and such.'

'And you want to put how many up?'

'We still haven't finished completely surveying the island for defense. Right now, my best guess is that we need about fifty-four hundred of these, plus maybe another six hundred that will cost several times more to house redundant tank turrets, plus thirteen—twelve more, plus one we've already built—underground shelters of very large size that will cost considerably more than the other six thousand, together, plus . . .'

'Show me.'

* * *

The elevator fell and fell, lifting stomachs mouthward. To reach it, Sitnikov had driven into a tunnel that led right into the side of Hill 287.

'We put up the first one,' he explained, 'in part by using the budget you gave McNamara to build a secure facility for the precious metal. He and I had a little chat and agreed that we could kill two birds with one stone. So you have your secure vault, and you also have a very deep and strong fortification.'

How many floors down is it?' Carrera asked.

'It's more than fifty meters from the surface, though still above sea level. There are twelve floors, each with about four hundred square meters of working and living space. You could house a cohort in it, more or less comfortably. Though this one is modified from the base design in order to serve as a command and control station, with service support and a small infirmary.

'We can put up to six, including this one, under this hill,' Sitnikov continued, as the elevator slowed to a stop. 'Here, they'll be safe enough from a direct hit even from the really deep penetrators the FSC is developing. Well . . . provided it's not a nuke, anyway.

'Should some enemy try the other approach, an offset hit to create a camouflet, a large hole beside the bunker to collapse the foundation, we've left a considerable space between the bunker and the rock of the hill and reinforced that space. The other locations, and those are driven by tactical considerations that we can't do a lot to change, need something else.'

As the elevator doors opened to a sparse, Spartan, concrete-walled emptiness, Sitnikov took a one drachma coin from a pants pocket, and a pen from his breast pocket. He held the coin out between thumb and forefinger, parallel to the floor.

'Imagine,' the Volgan said, 'that this is a steel, about two inches thick and a bit less than two feet around. Call it a 'shield.' ' He showed his pen held in the fingers of the other hand. 'Now imagine this is a deep penetrator.' He moved the point of the pen to the coin. 'When the penetrator hits the shield, it will either hit it so near the edge it simply rips through, or it will hit further in and pick up the shield, or it will hit more or less in the center. In the latter case, the shield, being bigger than the penetrator, will have more resistance to the rock or concrete and so reduce the depth of penetration. In the middle case, where it hits between the edge and the center, it will cause the penetrator to . . . tack, basically . . . to shift from coming straight down to coming in partially on its side. This, too, will change the cross section and reduce penetration. For the first case, where it just rips through, we need to have more than one layer of shields.'

'I recall Obras Zorilleras sending me a message telling me something about this technique,' Carrera said. 'Cost?'

'Not cheap, particularly,' Sitnikov answered, with a shrug. 'Though we are looking into using reformed and re- alloyed scrap to cut costs.

'In any case, that is how we're planning on securing the big shelters that have to go someplace else.'

'Won't work,' Carrera said. 'the explosion will rip off the layer of shields and the next bomb that comes in will go right through.'

'Might not work,' the Volgan conceded. 'But we'll have a couple of things working for us.'

'Such as?'

'Bombs like that are expensive and rare. Nobody has an excess. They're also expensive in terms of operational costs; planes, because they're doing that, can't do anything else for a while. People also have acquired a lot of faith in them, such that they're disinclined to question whether or not a hit was a kill.

'Somebody drops one of those bombs on a shelter, they're going to get all the signature, smoke, and debris that would indicate a kill. Why should they question that?'

'They still might,' Carrera insisted.

'Yes, they might,' Sitnikov conceded. 'But we can't do anything about that and this is our best shot.'

'Fair enough, then.'

'And besides, we might have some chance of replacing the shields in between a strike and a repeat.' Seeing that Carrera looked highly dubious of that, Sitnikov amended, 'Well . . . a chance, as I said.

'And I've something else to show you.'

* * *

Carrera whistled. It really was a lovely thing Sitnikov had wanted him to see.

'My boys made it in sections,' Sitnikov said, explaining the fifteen by twenty-five meter terrain model that filled up over half of the shelter's bottom deck. 'Then we moved it here and modified it.'