On the Big Board the six Vindicator blips were drawing close to the Fail-Safe crosses. It was an elegant maneuver, possessing all of the grace of ballet dancers positioning themselves on a stage. Each group was precisely the same distance from its Fail-Safe point and each was now moving at maximum speed.
“Four minutes to Fail-Safe.”
One of the desk-consoles started to chatter. A major tore off the tape and handed it to General Bogan. He did not even have to think about the words.
“Go to Condition Green,” General Bogan barked. “And project the light bombers, the Skyscraper support, and the jet tankers on the Big Board.”
“What the hell—” Raskob started to say, but stopped in mid-sentence as General Bogan raised his hand.
The light over the Big Board went green. There was a sharp, piercing klaxon sound that cut through the room. Doors began to open and in thirty seconds every desk-console in the room was manned.
“Three and a half minutes to Fail-Safe,” the voice went on relentlessly.
Strange shapes were blossoming all over the Big Board. Behind each of the Vindicator groups appeared a large single blip. These were air-borne tankers. Two fragmented blips appeared on the port and starboard quarter of the Vindicators and began to angle toward them. These were the support fighters which are always activated in a Fail-Safe maneuver but which had not been projected on the Big Board until that moment.
Colonel Cascio quickly explained the situation to the two visitors, but without taking his eye from the board.
“Three minutes to Fail-Safe.”
“Can you tell us why you went to Condition Green?” Knapp asked, in a whisper.
“No, sir, I cannot tell you, for the reason which I gave earlier,” General Bogan said without looking at them. His voice was flat and imperative. “Colonel Cascio, will you come with me to the 413-L desk?”
He looked at Raskob and Knapp as he turned, felt an impulse to explain, and then felt a sudden pressure of anxiety.
When they reached the desk General Bogan handed the slip of paper to Colonel Cascio. It said, “Extended DEW Line Station No. 4.6 on UFO. Some atmospheric interference, but UFO is not air-breathing vehicle.”
“Two and a half minutes to Fail-Safe,” the mechanical voice said. Now the voice was not as loud, for the dozens of machines in the room gave off a low collective hum which toned down its harsh clarity.
“Not an air-breather?” Colonel Cascio asked. There was awe in his voice. Colonel Cascio turned to the officer at the desk and said, “Try to get DEW Line No. 4.6 and see if they have any dope on the conformation of the UFO.”
The officer repeated the order but even as he spoke his fingers were adjusting dials and levers. A line of three green lights went on.
“Two minutes to Fail-Safe.”
“If it is riot an air-breather,” General Bogan said slowly, “it might be a commercial plane which has lost power on all four engines. It would not give off enough air turbulence for even the DEW system’s new turbulence detectors to be able to pick up.”
“One and a half minutes to Fail-Safe.”
“If it is a commercial plane that has lost power, we’ll know the answer right away,” Colonel Cascio said. “A pilot can stretch a flight with dead engines only just so far and then he’ll have to crash. If the blip disappears we can assume that it is a commercial plane that crashed with all engines dead.”
General Bogan stared at Colonel Cascio for a moment. “Not necessarily,” he said evenly. “Get those two visitors out of here.”
Colonel Cascio moved toward Knapp and Raskob with an animal-like speed. He spoke to them quickly. Raskob’s voice was raised in protest. At once General Bogan moved toward him.
“Now look here, God damn it, General, if we are going to go to war our lives are as involved as yours and I want to know all about it,” Raskob said.
“Who said anything about going to war?” General Bogan asked. Suddenly his voice had a whiplike quality. “Colonel Cascio ordered you out of this room and that was my order he was carrying out.”
“One minute to Fail-Safe.”
Raskob had spread his feet. He had a pyramidal, fundamental, ferocious look about him. General Bogan realized instantly that here was a man used to fighting.
“Don’t try that crap on me, General,” Raskob said. “As I read the situation right now we are one minute from going to war and either I am going to get the hell out of here and back to my family in New York or I am going to stay right here and see what happens. The one thing I am not going to do is let you put me off in a toilet or one of these little cells of yours. Not without a fight. I mean that, General.”
“One-half minute to Fail-Safe,” the voice said. “Count down will now be by seconds. Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three…”
General Bogan looked at Raskob and knew that he could not get the man out of the room without a fight. There were other things to do. He turned away and spoke to Colonel Cascio.
“It might not be a commercial plane on a crash angle,” he said. “It might be an enemy mocked-up rocket plane which faked a flame-out on all four jet engines and then when it got below 500 feet it would be below the effective range of our radar and come in low.”
A look of pain went across Colonel Cascio’s face.
“You are right, General,” Colonel Cascio said. “It is a possibility.”
General Bogan realized suddenly that the look of pain was on Cascio’s face because he had ignored a point of logic and not because of the situation.
“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”
The teletype on the 41 3-L desk started to datter. The officer in charge of the desk leaned back, away from the tape, so that the other two men could have a dear view of it. The tape came Out at the normal speed but to General Bogan it seemed to emerge with deliberate slowness.
“UFO has conformation of Boeing 707 but ‘grass’ obscures total impression,” the tape said. “Operators state that despite interference UFO had normal 707 conformation.”
“Eight, seven, six, five…”
On the Big Board the six bomber groups were at the very edge of converging with the green crosses which marked their Fail-Safe points. Each of them was exactly the same distance from its green cross. But the distance was tiny. The blip of the UFO was now invisible although occasionally it glowed and then disappeared. In countless war games General Bogan had seen fighters and even heavy bombers come in so low and fast, jinking, weaving, taking advantage of every copse of trees and every low hill, and managing to evade the mechanical eye of the radar for hundreds of miles.
By a deliberate act of will, as deliberately as uncurling a fist into a hand, General Bogan made himself relax. Even so he felt a single drop of sweat, acid from tension, roll slowly down his spine. It did not feel like sweat. It felt like a tiny solid hot piece of shot.
He had gotten to the Fail-Safe point before but General Bogan had never had a UFO which acted in such a strange way. As he looked at the board three things happened. The mechanical voice said, “All groups at Fail-Safe point.” And the six bomber blips simultaneously and beautifully merged with their green crosses.
The teletype on the 41 3-L desk began to clatter again. General Bogan’s head turned about. As it did he saw the faces of Knapp and Raskob. Raskob’s jaw was set. His eyes were unafraid. His shrewd, intelligent face understood perfectly what was happening. Knapp seemed mesmerized by the machinery. General Bogan had the impression that he did not realize what was happening. The words came, again at an excruciatingly slow pace, out of the 413-L machine. They said, “UFO is now at 1,050 feet and is dearly air-breathing vehicle. Best estimate is that it is BOAC, Commercial Boeing 707, which has regained power on two of its jets.”
“It’s all right, Colonel Cascio,” General Bogan said. “It didn’t make much sense anyway, because if they did come they surely would come with more than a single plane. Let the Vindicators orbit at their FaBSafe point, however, until we get a positive confirmation from the Canadian fighters.”
Colonel Cascio stood up and, although his face was smiling, his pink tongue licked at the corner of his mouth.
“General, they’ll orbit whatever we do,” he said, “it’s SOP. But I’m still not sure about that UFO. Couldn’t the Russians anticipate exactly the way we would interpret it and just add a couple of jet pods to the mocked-up plane
