“Those are Canadian fighters. They are probably subsonic planes so they will dose the unidentified object in a half hour or so.”
“Colonel Cascio, what information do we have on the UFO?”
Colonel Cascio walked over to the machine and tore off a piece of tape. He handed it to General Bogan. It read, “UFO at Angels 30, speed 525, heading 196.”
“That means that it’s at 30,000 feet going 525 miles an hour on a compass heading of 196,” General Bogan said.
“Just suppose, General, that the planes get there right on schedule, what are they likely to find?” Raskob asked.
“Usually it is a commercial airliner that has neglected to file a flight plan or has been blown off course by high winds,” General Bogan said. “But keep in mind, sir, that there is a big blank space over the Atlantic where neither the radar sets from Europe nor America have the range to pick up planes. This wasn’t much of a problem with slow-flying planes at low altitudes, but with jets going at high speeds and altitude they can drift a couple of hundred miles while they are ‘in the gap.’ Occasionally the radar itself makes a mistake and gets a blip off the moon or a swarm of geese or gets a false echo from a satellite. But the radar mistakes have pretty well been eliminated since 1960.”
“Suppose it just looks like a commercial airliner but has actually been loaded up with thermonuclear bombs and is trying to sneak through, masquerading as a commercial plane?” Raskob asked.
“It’s possible, but not likely,” General Bogan shrugged. “The fighter pilots would raise the plane on radio and ask where it had started from and what its destination was and this would then be checked out with Federal Aviation Agency operators to make sure it was a legitimate flight. Also the fighter pilots, if they are the least suspicious, get dose enough to the plane to give it a good inspection. If there were seams and hinges that indicated a bomb bay on what looked like a DC-8 that would change the situation. Plenty.”
“What would you do in that case?” Knapp asked. “I mean that even after the fighters see the plane they still have some suspicions?”
“Probably not a great deal,” General Bogan said. “The fighter pilots would order the plane to land or to turn around and if it ignored orders then we would have a tough decision. We would probably go to Condition Yellow and would start to launch more fighters and also bring up some of the bombers to a higher degree of readiness. But just a single unidentified plane by itself, still over a thousand miles from any Canadian or American city, doesn’t constitute a very great danger. Any conceivable enemy would be launching a number of planes at us. What we would do is make sure that the single plane did not have a runaway pilot who wanted to commit hara-kiri on New York or Montreal.”
“General, can you add the SAC bombers that are flying toward their Fail-Safe point to the board?” Raskob asked.
“Yes, sir,” General Bogan said. He nodded at Colonel Cascio. Colonel Cascio started to move some levers. “What you will see is a fuller projection of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s something like looking down at the earth from directly above the North Pole and at an altitude of about one hundred miles.”
Again there was a slow dissolve on the Big Board. When it had firmed up, the longitude lines came together at a neat point in the center of the board. The unidentified flying object and the six fighters were now tiny and because the scale was much greater they were closing at what seemed a much slower pace. Six large green blips, fragmented into small dots of luminosity, swam into clear visibility. Even to the unaccustomed eyes of Raskob and Knapp it was dear that these blips were moving at a much higher speed than either the fighters or the unidentified flying object. Each of the green fragmented blips was moving toward a green cross which in each case was well outside the Soviet boundaries, but which formed a rough circle around her borders.
“As you can see, the bombers are moving much faster than either the fighters or the UFO,” Colonel Cascio said. “Those are Vindicator Bombers and they fly at over 1500 miles an hour. You also notice that some of them, such as the group based on Okinawa, can get to their Fail-Safe point very quickly so they jink around a good deal. The idea is to have all of the planes arrive at the Fail-Safe point at the same moment. The one which has the farthest distance to travel is Group Six, which is the one over the Bering Strait. As you can see, it is moving fast and straight toward the green cross over St. Matthew Island, which is just about at longitude 80 degrees. That is its Fail-Safe point.”
“Seven minutes to Fail-Safe,” a loud dear voice suddenly said in words that could be heard throughout the whole War Room. It was a tape-recorded voice that was geared to one of the calculating machines.
“That is a recorded voice and it goes on automatically at seven minutes and starts a countdown,” General Bogan said. “It is very unlikely that the planes will actually get to the Fail-Safe point. That happens very rarely. Usually the UFO or the radar disturbance is identified well before the bombers get to the Fail-Safe point. When that happens we simply raise the Vindicators on a predetermined radio frequency and order them back to their bases, or to a refueling point. I would say that in only one in twenty Conditions Blue do the planes reach the Fail-Safe point.”
“But assume that they reach the Fail-Safe point and the unidentified object is still unidentified, then what?” Raskob asked.
“Just one helluva lot,” Knapp said unexpectedly.
All three of the men looked at him.
“Mr. Knapp’s firm manufactures some of the equipment that goes into operation at that point,” General Bogan explained. “The first thing that happens is that automatically we go to Condition Yellow. Even if the situation has not changed materially, the passage of time constitutes a danger. Secondly, a number of supporting light jet bombers equipped with defensive gear and groups of fighter planes would start to fly toward the Fail-Safe point in support of the entire operation.”
“Six minutes to Fail-Safe,” the mechanical voice said.
One of the doors in the side of the War Room opened and four officers walked in and sat down at various desk-consoles.
“Actually you are seeing a pretty unusual Condition Blue,” General Bogan said. “Usually we have the situation analyzed and solved well before this. Just as a precaution, once we get to six minutes to Fail-Safe we start to man the various machines in the War Room.”
Both General Bogan and Colonel Cascio were looking steadily at the UFO. The two blips seemed almost to have merged. For a few seconds the larger fragmented blip of the fighter plane obscured the blip of the UFO. General Bogan nodded his head at Colonel Cascio. Colonel Cascio walked to a machine and pulled off a piece of tape. He handed it to General Bogan.
At this moment the UFO disappeared from the screen.
“The unidentified object is now over the Nenieux Islands off Baffin Bay,” General Bogan read. “The UFO is losing altitude rapidly. Our fighters overflew and are now making a visual search. No visual contact as yet. The radar signal is erratic.”
“Five minutes to Fail-Safe,” the mechanical voice said. “From now until Fail-Safe, time will be given in half minutes.”
“General, what the hell happened to that thing?” Raskob asked. “It’s gone.”
“Colonel Cascio, let’s go to Condition Yellow,” General Bogan said briskly.
Raskob and Knapp both swung about and stared at General Bogan. He did not take his eyes from the Big Board.
“There is nothing to worry about, gentlemen, this is fairly orthodox,” General Bogan said. “The UFO is not acting in the characteristic way and I have the option to go to Condition Yellow. I have taken that option, because the UFO has dropped from 30,000 feet and disappeared in the grass. ‘Grass’ is the fuzz at the bottom of a radarscope which is caused by interference from hills, some inherent defect in the tubes, and other things we don’t quite understand. But once the plane is ‘in the grass’ it is lost to radar. It may be a plane with mechanical trouble about to crash, but it is conceivable that it is an enemy plane taking evasive action.”
General Bogan turned and looked at the two visitors. Both of them had a look which he had come to recognize. It was a look compounded of excitement, horror, and malice. It was not a pleasant look to see, but General Bogan had learned long ago that even for experienced airmen there was a morbid fascination with plane crashes.
“Four and one-half minutes to Fail-Safe,” the voice said.
