send you back the way we brought you, because there is the risk that you might materialize inside a wall or something. Then, when my life-mate’s brain is functioning normally again, we’ll have to decide what to do about the First.”
“I understand,” the doctor said. “If I can assist you with local information or advice, I shall be pleased to do so. As for my other patient, she and her newborn will live, which I would not if I were to return to the First just now. I am content to wait here.”
The blotches had disappeared from his face and he was staring raptly through the direct vision port at the whole of his scarred but still beautiful world.
“Indefinitely,” he added.
Beth laughed quietly. “Surely you are in no serious danger from the First? He told us himself that the Keidi do not kill.”
It was plain that the doctor was taking his obligation to provide information very seriously as he said, “In spite of the blood-family and nation-family wars fought throughout our history, it is true that no Keidi will directly take the life of another, and will try very hard to avoid direct injury. That is why our war casualties have always been relatively light. But quite subtle methods have been devised for blaming an enemy’s death on his own stupidity. For not removing himself from an area of risk where weapons are being discharged, for example, or for not surrendering or evacuating his cities when they are under threat of bombing or, in short, for not doing exactly what his opponent wants him to do.
“And there is the self-defense strategem,” the Keidi went on, “by which the opponent defends himself before he is attacked. The First has been particularly unsubtle about defending his Estate from smaller and weaker attackers, and makes a hollow pretense of obeying the Prime Rule. Would you like me to give specific examples?”
“Thank you, not now,” Beth said, looking at Martin. “We believed that our lives, at least, were safe on Keida. But the diagnostic computer is waiting. Will the patient live long enough to make it to the treatment room?”
“Certainly,” Martin said, not feeling certain at all.
When he returned from the treatment room nearly four hours later he felt fit, clear-headed, and ready for anything. The problem was that his mind seemed also to have been cleared of ideas. The doctor’s attention remained fixed on the direct vision panel.
“I’m bringing up the lander now,” Beth said. “The First’s people have been trying to undermine the meteor shield with chemical explosives, and sooner or later someone will get himself killed. Is there anything else you want me to do right now?”
“No,” Martin said. “Not until we’ve had a long, careful think about this situation and…”
He broke off as the heavy, near opaque filters clicked on across the direct vision panel and the high-pitched, warbling sound of the nuclear weapon launch warning roared from the speaker. Before they could react, the viewport blazed with light so dazzling that they had to cover their eyes in spite of the niters. They counted three flashes with less than a minute between them, followed by five more in rapid succession. Then the warning signal ceased and the filters shut off to reveal a wide area of Keida’s smooth, white cloud blanket that was growing eight enormous, dirty gray blisters.
“I don’t believe this!” Beth said, her face gray with shock. She swung around to the computer terminal. “Voice input-output mode, long-range sensors, report!”
The main computer’s speaking voice was precise and unemotional as it replied, “One minute and forty-eight seconds after the unmanned lander took off, a long-range ballistic missile with multiple nuclear warheads was launched against it. All eight of the devices exploded prematurely in the upper atmosphere, in widely scattered locations distributed evenly throughout the land mass, at altitudes between fifty-three and sixty-seven miles. None of the detonations were close enough for the lander to sustain structural damage or radioactive contamination, and it is due to dock in seven minutes and thirty-one seconds.”
Martin stared incredulously at the unnatural cloud-scape framed by the viewport. In a tortured voice he said, “I think we are partly responsible for this. When the lander took off, the First naturally assumed we were on board, that we had gone there after disappearing from our cell. He had to stop us getting back to the mother ship so he radioed the launching site to fire on us. But there must have been a misunderstanding or accident, and the wrong type of missile was launched. That, or the First is so afraid of what we might do that he would risk the contamination to be sure of killing us, while at the same time demonstrating his ultimate power to the uncommitted Keidi.”
The doctor’s focusing muscles twitched but he did not speak. Beth looked as sick as Martin had felt a short time ago. To the computer she said, “Give me a fall out report. And detail possible methods of radiation neutralization or reduction by weather control.”
“The data is too complex for the voice channel,” it replied. “Mathematical and graphics displays are necessary if full information is to be relayed.”
That would mean cutting off the doctor from the information. ‘Then summarize,” she snapped.
The summary, by its very simplicity, painted a more horrifying picture of the situation than any projection of figures and charts could have done. Dependent on local meterological factors, the computer told them, surface contamination under the air burst would occur within periods varying from a few hours to five days. The effects on unprotected organic material in these areas would result in termination of life within the half-year. In fringe areas the contamination effects would take longer, but the bursts had been so evenly distributed over the populated land mass that there were few areas which were not at short-term risk. The long-term effects would not become apparent until the next generation, when the larger life forms would have only a eight point nine percent probability of reproducing viable offspring. By that time all of the smaller and shorter-lived wild or domesticated animals would have been mutated to extinction, and there would be progressive difficulties encountered in the cultivation of edible vegetation.
Weather control could be used on five of the eight volumes of contaminated atmosphere, but the force of the artificially generated weather system necessary to remove them completely before the fallout reached the surface would require minimum wind velocities of one hundred and eighty miles per hour. Wide spread destruction of unprotected surface life forms, dwellings, the larger forms of vegetation and standing crops would result. But the contamination would not be neutralized, it would be deposited on other and more sparsely inhabited areas with identical effects.
“And,” Beth said furiously, “the First’s mess would be dumped on the Keidi who had no pan in creating it, people who wouldn’t join him. But what do we do? Clear most of the Estate of contaminated air while leveling it to the ground with a super hurricane, or leave the First’s people to stew in their own radioactive juice to buy the others a little more time?…”
She broke off as the nuclear launch warning noisily returned to life, but this time the glare niters remained in place.
“Not another one,” she whispered.
Chapter 26
THE calm, unhurried voice of the computer resumed, “The sensors indicate a premature nuclear detonation which took place just below ground level in the crater site. For this reason local blast damage was confined to a three-mile radius, but the detonation caused nonexplosive vaporization of the fissionable material comprising a large but unspecified number of stored missiles. The debris thrown up is too densely seeded with radioactive materials, and will not attain sufficient altitude, for removal by weather control methods. The area of short-term lethal contamination will spread quickly and will cover approximately one-quarter of the land mass in three days.
“Computer insertion. This method of supplying data is imprecise and time-wasting. May I support it with graphics?”
“Yes,” Beth said.
A good picture, Martin heard it said, was worth a thousand words. These were very bad pictures indeed: visual sensor blowups of the existing conditions and equally realistic and frightful projections of what lay in the near
