have to drag information out of you guys.'
'There's far more bang per megaton for one thing. Also the clusters are more useful against dispersed targets.'
'Like silos?'
'Like silos,' I said.
'How does the computer answer that? Against a ten-missile silo, for instance?'
I said, 'Providing there are no 'climate specials' or 'programming errors' it usually comes out as one hundred per cent destruction.'
Schlegel smiled. It was all Blue Suite needed to defeat Ferdy, given average luck. And Schlegel in Master Control could provide that.
'Dandy,' said Schlegel. I was Schlegel's assistant and it was my job to brief him witfi anything he wanted to know. But I had the feeling he had his thumb in the scale for the admirals in Blue Suite, and that made me feel I was letting Ferdy down.
'I'll give Ferdy the air reconnaissance of the drift-ice and the water temperatures, shall I?'
Schlegel came close. 'A word of advice, Patrick. Your friend is under surveillance.'
'What are you talking about?'
He looked over his shoulder to be sure the door was closed.
'Aren't we all? Why are you telling me?'
'For your own good. I mean… if you are with the guy… well, I mean… don't take him to your favourite whore-house unless you want the address on my desk next morning. Right?'
'I'll try and remember.'
I took the weather reports and the air analysis down, to Ferdy in the basement.
Ferdy switched off the console when I entered. It was dark in Red Ops. Around us the edge-lit transparent sheets showed a changing series of patterns as the coloured lines drew closer. 'What did you find out?' he asked anxiously.
'Nothing much,' I admitted. I told him about Detective-Sergeant Davis, and the girl. He smiled. 'Didn't I tell you: Schlegel has set it all up.'
'Schlegel!'
'He was sent here to set it up. Don't you see?'
I shrugged it off. I went out through the light trap into the corridor. I closed the door noisily. When I got back upstairs in the Main Control Balcony the plotters wen: putting flying boats on a square-search along the coast as far as the Norwegian border. Out of Archangel, more were patrolling the narrowest part of the White Sea. Not that there were any seas. The coastlines on. that map meant nothing in the Arctic, where you could walk across the pack-ice of the world's roof, all the way from Canada to the U.S.S.R., and where the drift-ice comes down nearly to Scotland. There wasn't much moving on that great white nothing, where the blizzards roared, and wind turned a man to ice, scattered the fragments and screamed on hardly noticing. Nothing moved on that — but under it. Under it the war never stopped.
'Phase eight, section one,' whispered the loudspeaker on Schlegel's console. The plotters moved the subs and the icebreakers. The phone from Red Suite flashed.
'Challenge,' said Ferdy. He had obviously expected it to be Schlegel on the phone and he changed his voice when he discovered it was me.
'What can I do for you, Admiral?'
'The ice-limit on these weather reports you brought down. They are for an earlier part of the season.'
'I don't think so, Ferdy.'
'Patrick. I don't want to argue but the drift-ice goes solid all along the estuary and links the islands at this time of year. You've been there, you know what: it's like.'
'They are machine-compiled from earth satellite photos.'
'Patrick, let me see the whole season, and I'll show you you are wrong. They have probably jumbled the cards in the machine.'
I was sure that he was wrong but I didn't argue. 'I'll get them,' I said, and put down the phone. Schlegel was watching me. 'Mr Foxwell challenges the ice-limits,' I said.
'Just keep him off my neck, Patrick. That's the fourth challenge of the game. Blue Suite haven't challenged me once.'
I phoned down to the geography room where they kept the ice maps. They said they would take nearly an hour to get the whole lot together. I phoned the duty processor to tell him he'd be needed. Then I phoned Ferdy and told him the challenge would be allowed.
'Could you come down here again?' Ferdy said.
'I'm up and down like a yo-yo,' I complained.
'It's important, Patrick,' he said.
'Very well.' I went down to the basement again. As I was going into the darkened Ops Room, the young submariner who had elected to be Ferdy's assistant passed me on his way out. I had a feeling that Ferdy had found him an errand to be rid of him. 'War is hell,' the boy said, 'don't let anyone tell you different.'
Ferdy confessed that it wasn't really important even before I was through the door. 'But I really needed a chat. You can't talk with that American boy.'
'Schlegel will go crazy if he finds out we've sent a processor to code those instructions, and used computer lime, just to give you a chance for a chat.'
'I'm allowed a few challenges.'
'The other side have made none so far.'
'Amateurs,' said Ferdy. 'Patrick, I was thinking about what you told me… about the girl.'
'Go on,' I said. But Ferdy didn't go on. He didn't want a conversation so much as an audience. He'd placed his counters across the neck of the White Sea. On Ids small War Table it looked like the Serpentine Lake but it was well over twenty miles of frozen water with ice-breakers keeping two shipping lanes clear all through the winter.
The teleprinter clerk read off the computer material as it came on the print-out. 'Hunter-killer submarines searching square fifteen…'
'What have I got in hunter-feller subs?' Ferdy asked the operator.
'Only the Fleet Alerted ones at Poliarnyi, and the ones at Dikson.'
'Damn,' said Ferdy.
'You must have known, what would happen, Ferdy,' I said. 'You've had your fun but you must haw realized what would happen.'
'There's still time,' said Ferdy.
But there wasn't time. Ferdy should have stuck to the usual procedure of hitting the electronic surveillance submarine first. They were the subs that we used for our listening posts to set up the game in the first place. Ferdy knew better than anyone in Blue Suite what they could do, and why the rest of the U.S. missile fleet depended upon them. There were two of them now, positioning the others for the missile attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and Murmansk, while the subs with the more sophisticated MIRV knocked out the missile silos, to lessen the retaliation upon our Western cities.
'Are you going to play it out for Doomsday?' I said. But if Ferdy intended to go for maximum destruction without caring about winning the war, he didn't intend to confide in me about it
'Bugger off,' said Ferdy. If he could find which of the U.S. subs had the mirvs, he might still pull off a freakish win. For the Polaris subs firing from the seabed up through the ocean or the ice aren't accurate enough for targets smaller than a town. The MIRV was Ferdy's real danger.
'It's all over bar the shouting, Ferdy. You can fiddle around for a week of game-days but you'll need uncanny luck to win.'
'Bugger off, I said,' said Ferdy.
'Keep your hair on,' I told him. 'It's only a game.'
That Schlegel is out to get me,' said Ferdy. He got to Ms feet. His giant frame could only just squeeze between console
'It's only a game, Ferdy,' I said again, Reluctantly he gave a little grin to acknowledge the feeble standing
