attached to their badges, and every day there are fresh announcements over the loudspeaker: engineers, doctors, nurses, food-supply officers, wastage officers, air-supply men, atomic energy officers, loudspeaker officers, psychologists, quite a number of reserve officers and many others have paired up. X-117’s room-mate, X-137, has married too. That leaves only two bachelors out of the four of us.
The ‘Know Thy Level’ talks finished today. In the summing up of the series great stress was laid on the significance of our position on Level 7, the deepest and safest place of all.
The reason for that privileged position is the function of Level 7. At the centre of everything is PBX Command, which is the offensive branch of our military power. “Attack,” the speaker explained, “is the best form of defence.” That is the reason why Level 7 is so deep in the earth: it can hit the enemy and devastate his country while all the time remaining out of his reach.
What he said made me think afresh about my personal position on Level 7. It really is a pretty significant one.
Of course, everybody down here is necessary. Without their services we push-button officers could not do a thing. And X-117’s illness has proved the importance of people like P, who provide nothing in the material sense but stand by in case anything goes wrong with our minds. Still, the knowledge that Level 7 centres round the push-button function, that it houses the Push-Button X Command, in fact, gives me a feeling of importance.
There must still be the Command itself, naturally, whatever it may be. I have never noticed anybody wearing a badge with ‘C on it, nor have any ‘C marriages been announced. I wonder who and how many the commanders are.
At the end of today’s talk the speaker announced a new series which is to start tomorrow: ‘Know Other Levels’. This may prove more interesting, for the ‘Know Thy Level’ series mostly confirmed and explained things we knew about already from daily experience, while the new talks may introduce us to worlds unknown.
MAY 15
The ‘Know Other Levels’ series has begun with the next level up and will work towards the surface. Today we were told about Level 6.
Level 6 is for Push-Button Y Command. Our PBX buttons are for attack. The PBY buttons control the defensive branch of the country’s military power. Although PBY Command is in a sense less significant than ours— its actions cannot be so decisive—it requires a larger personnel and far more complicated machinery.
The task of PBY Command is to intercept enemy rockets and destroy them before they reach their destinations. And since an attack may come as a surprise, it has to be on the watch all the time. So it collects, classifies and remembers innumerable details of aerial activity. There are huge electronic computers whose task it is to collate two kinds of information: flight schedules, which are sent to Level 6 from aircraft and rocket bases up and down the country; and details of actual flights obtained from radar reports. If all is as it should be, there are no actual flights which cannot be collated with the schedules already received. But if radar reports a flight which has
If and when—and this need take no more than a few minutes—the suspect object is identified as an enemy missile, PBY Command takes its first positive action. One of our opposite numbers pushes the button which commands the area over which the enemy object is flying, and so releases ground-to-air interceptors. (There is no double control or additional supervision up there.) The interceptors, which are fitted with small atomic warheads, are radio-controlled by the tracking computer. The button-pusher only indicates the area of action, he does not aim the interceptors. But he can see whether they are successful, because he has a viewing screen, rather like ours, which shows him what is happening.
I find all this very interesting, because it is so much more complicated than the workings of PBX Command. Our inter-continental rockets are all aimed in advance at their immobile strategic targets. All we have to do is press the buttons which send them on their predetermined way. But PBY Command first has to keep an eye on the countless flights which are going on all over the country, and then, when it has singled out a flight that should
Of course, it is the computers and other machines which do most of the work, but this does not mean that the staff of Level 6 can be as small as ours. There is so much more machinery to be looked after that they need a personnel of 2,000—four times the number on Level 7. And in spite of this, the speaker said today, many of the auxiliary services are worse manned than down here, and the crew do not enjoy quite the same degree of comfort, though their level is intended to be as self-sufficient as ours. The fact that Level 6 is only 3,000 feet underground, too, is because of the physical difficulty of constructing a deeper level big enough to house everything.
I do not know whether it was to make us feel privileged and contented, or what, but the speaker kept saying, both by implication and by direct assertion, that Level 7 was more important than Level 6 as well as more comfortable. We were told—and I see no reason to doubt it—that the country relied far more on PBX Command, its offensive arm, than on the defensive PBY Command. This is because it is very doubtful whether the defence system could work quickly enough to deal with inter-continental missiles approaching us at the speed of thousands of miles an hour. Added to this, we do not know what gadgets the enemy’s missiles may be fitted with—to deflect or destroy any interceptors which manage to come near them. “Our own offensive missiles are equipped with devices against enemy interceptors,” we were told.
The chances that we shall be able to destroy the majority of the attacking missiles outside our territory are very small. But even if we are incredibly lucky, and only ten per cent of the enemy rockets reach out country, we shall still be badly devastated. And even if many rockets out of this ten per cent do not hit their predetermined targets, the radioactive fall-out (for the atomic bombs will explode even if intercepted) may make the country uninhabitable for some time.
For how long? I wondered. The loudspeaker did not say.
MAY 16
The talk about Level 6 and the PBY Command has aroused a lot of interest on our own level.
People’s feelings seem to be ambivalent. On the one hand, we feel superior. Firstly, because we are inferior—deeper in the earth. Secondly, because our country relies mainly on the offensive branch. Thirdly, because we are a smaller group.
On the other hand, though, we have to admit that the operations of Level 6 are more intricate and require greater skill. The PBY officers probably have higher technical qualifications, and in that sense they must be superior. So argues X-107, and he is probably right.
We also feel both a liking and an emnity for Level 6. They are a branch of the military forces, entrusted, like ourselves, with the country’s safety—so we feel friendly towards them. But they are also a
Of course, all these feelings are really just speculations as to possible feelings. Actual feelings are rather difficult to have when one knows so little about their object. For the crew of Level 6 are 1,400 feet above our heads, and there is no communication between us.
Or is there none? It seems to me there must be. If the enemy attacked, it would be PBY Command which would know about it first. They must have some way of telling us.
This is an exciting idea: contact with outside. Or rather, with a more outside inside. But there is no point in guessing about that kind of thing when you have no information to go on. Perhaps today’s talk will say something about it.
