There were only two targets in this war—the Chambers.
Jeffrey released his trump—thirty-five hundred flying robot tanks.
They rocketed through the Marseilles screen and came on the city from the land side, firing eight-inch rockets and shooting flames out half a mile ahead.
But this was a feint, too. From the sea now rose a great armada of robot submarine carriers that spewed out tanks that were little more than armored tank-cars filled with jellied X.P.R., which exploded always down, toward the center of gravitation. They poured out the jelly on the surface around Marseilles for a distance of twenty miles until according to Jeffrey’s figures the ground was covered a foot thick. The flamethrowers roared into it and Jeffrey stopped them there.
Then he fired his last salvo of atom-bombs from the Bahamas.
In the meantime, Forgacs’ tanks had overrun Boston, searching for the American Chamber.
The lights began to wink out, and Hoshawk knew that Boston was being destroyed.
Orange lights, indicating bombers, were heading for Chicago, and Hoshawk knew that if Jeffrey’s guess on Marseilles was bad, he had not much longer to live.
He looked at the Map. The atom-bombs were at Marseilles. A glow showed around the twenty-mile circle that he had covered with jelly, and Hoshawk knew the atom-bombs had landed.
He knew that on the other continent, the most tremendous explosion in man’s history was taking place. And when it was over there would be a mile-deep crater where Marseilles had been, and anything, no matter how deep it was buried, would be destroyed by concussion.
Jeffrey still played the keys, but his eyes were on the orange lights approaching Chicago.
They reached Chicago, perhaps directly over their heads, but Hoshawk felt no bombs. A moment later the planes were still going westward.
Jeffrey called the Starter. “Does Forgacs concede?” he asked.
There was a moment’s delay, then, “Forgacs does not answer.”
The President let out an undignified whoop. He tore off the straps that held him in the chair, threw his helmet across the Chamber. “We won!”
The Hemispheric diplomats were gathering excitedly in the corridor. Jeffrey unsealed the Chamber.
Hoshawk shook hands with him. “You did it,” he said gruffly. “I apologize for ever thinking—”
The Chamber shuddered, and Hoshawk paled, but Jeffrey held up his hand. He glanced at the chronometer. “That was Marseilles blowing up,” he said.
His feet moved and he was gone. In a moment he was back. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he begged. “I’ve got to see the squad. Just figured out a way to beat the Blues. If you—”
He stopped, frowned.
He had felt it before they did—a distant blast. Then they heard it—a dull explosion through three hundred feet of solid rock above them. The floor shuddered under their feet.
It came again, and again, farther away. A pattern. Then off somewhere else came another string of explosions.
The forty august heads stared at the ceiling. Mouths were open, but the President’s mutant brain in seconds analyzed the possibilities and came up with the answer:
“Atom-bombs!”
“Impossible!” growled Hoshawk. “Forgacs’ Chamber was destroyed.”
The President was already back in the Chamber. He pressed a key.
“Starter,” came the answer. “Forgacs’ Chamber is destroyed. You have won the war.”
Hoshawk was behind him. “But he’s still firing, isn’t he?”
“No.” The President was icily alert. He pointed to the big map. There were no red pinpoints that would indicate rockets or bombs coming from the European continent. “The Chamber is gone. Undeniably gone.”
A new pattern of bomb-bursts came from above. “Chicago must be destroyed by now,” said the President harshly. He pointed to a blacked-out area on the ground-glass screen above. “There are no detector tubes left above us. But look—orange lights. Thousands of them coming from the sea on the Maryland coast. And look there, to the right. One—two—fifteen thousand bombers coming!”
Hoshawk nodded as if he had known it all the time. “Sure. He has men in those planes. Live men who can observe and act independently. He’s throwing hundreds of thousands of planes and submarine tractors and mobile bomb-throwers at us—all operated by men. And Forgacs himself is here, leading them. We’re whipped, Sire! Where is your civilization now?”
Wadsworth was calm. He was taking it like a man, anyway. He threw a lever and poised at the great keyboard, then his mutant fingers began to work in blurred movement.
Hoshawk watched the screen above. The Atlantic filled with long trains of red lights that arose from their American bases and streamed eastward.
Hoshawk blinked. “You’re firing everything. And you’ve locked the controls.”
Wadsworth didn’t look up. “In five minutes,” he said, “there won’t be an ounce of explosive left in any emplacement in America.”
“But that’s—” Hoshawk started to say “foolish,” but he changed it. “That won’t help, Sire. Forgacs’ equipment is all over here, now.”
But Wadsworth leaned back. Their golden explosive screen showed no longer on the Map. Already some of the emplacements had ceased to spew out red lights, and the tail-ends of their trains were disappearing to the east.
Hoshawk shuddered as he saw that now America was completely defenseless.
But Wadsworth spoke into his transmitter. “Radio. Give me special frequency three-hundred-eighty-one thousand, six hundred kilocycles. Clear all airlines.”
“Yes, sire.”
The President pressed the scrambler button and then spoke. The words came out of the amplifier. “Three tons of butter unloaded a fast curve day before tomorrow because the baby was yelling for its morning highball. The soapsuds are thick enough for whipping but who knows where or when.”
The President leaned back and smiled. “That’s an order to all sixteen thousand mutants over the country to be on the alert at their predetermined stations.”
Hoshawk frowned. “But everybody’s been evacuated.”
“Not the mutants. You see General, we ourselves haven’t trusted Forgacs.”
Hoshawk’s grim face lighted up. “Do you mean you have secretly made some fighting equipment?”
Wadsworth shook his head. “No. We could have. There’s a loophole in the Twenty-one Eighteen Agreement. But we have observed the spirit—ah!”
Up on the ground-glass screen, purple lights had been flashing on at intervals over the United States, until now there were nineteen, and
