by Earl
FIRST THEY thought it was Russia.
In America, that is.
That was on June3, 1954, at 8:05 A.M., when the first of the strange radioactive bombs dropped within the borders of the USA. Just a scattered few that morning, landing haphazardly here and there, mostly in open fields, hitting no important targets.
The enemy didn’t have the range yet.
But by noon, one had dropped in the heart of New Orleans, spreading its deadly rays. It was noticed from the start what peculiar bombs they were—“bombs” only for lack of a more specific name. They were large obloid drums of metal, about 50 feet wide, looking somewhat like eggs flattened at both ends. Egg bombs they were quickly labeled, by the slogan-tracked American mind. Also atomic eggs.
Actually, they were not atomic bombs at all, as quickly became apparent.
They did not explode with a devastating blast, leveling half a city. Oddly, they landed with no more than a meteoric thump and cracked open like eggshells, spraying their lethal contents far and wide. Something like an incendiary bomb.
But with far more death-dealing power, for the contents were “hot,” extremely so. They were a mass of material radioactive to a violent degree.
The material itself was peculiar—a mixed lumpiness of organic as well as metallic matter, which seemed vaguely to resemble broken-down parts of manufactured articles of many kinds. It was as if anything at hand, any old thing, had been turned “hot” and crammed in. It made one think of Civil War cannon primed with nuts and bolts and nails and chains.
In New Orleans, where the first atomic egg bomb hit its target city, many nearby people instantly received fatal burns. Then, as the deadly debris lay scattered up and down the street, the radiations contaminated the air. And the air circulated up one street and down the next, aided by a brisk Gulf breeze.
Radioactive air, poisonous. Lungs taking one breath of it were doomed. And so it went, a wind of death sweeping along, claiming victims for a slow, agonizing, lingering death—slow but nonetheless sure.
“Those Red Fiends!” screeched one woman, already retching blood. “Atom bombs would be more merciful. They’ve discovered a horrible new weapon!”
“Give it back to them!” raged a man, who had stepped directly on a portion of radioactive debris with his foot, and knew he was marked for the grave. “The dirty back-stabbers! Communist madmen! Give it back to them!”
And that’s what Washington was already in the process of doing, within a week, mobilizing swiftly for retaliation to this monstrous sneak attack.
This undeclared atomic war.
In Russia, they thought it was America.
At 4:52 P.M. of that same day of June 3, 1954, the first bomb hit Russia, up near the Finnish border. That was 4:52 New Orleans time. It was 7:47 A.M. Moscow time. An hour later, one egg bomb had landed in the outskirts of Archangel. The Russians too were astonished at these “soft” bombs that were designed not to explode and destroy, but to sneak and destroy.
And it mystified them too that the lethal fillings of the bombs were a species of “junk,” rather than a specific homogeneous fission byproduct. Everything was in them including the kitchen sink. One had ceramic pieces of a sink within.
They were startled, the Russians, for they had expected—in case of war—all of America’s awesome mind-horrifying repertory of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs and whatever else those brilliant mad-dog capitalist pigs had stockpiled.
“Unsocialized Yankee plutocrats!” cursed a stricken Soviet citizen, and she could think of no worse revilements. “They invented something more awful than the hydrogen bomb!”
“Give it back to them!” screamed a dying male Marxist. “They struck without warning! Inhuman! How did they beat us to it? Give it back to them!”
And that’s what the Politburo was hastily scrambling to do in the next week, mobilizing all out to smash back at this inhuman sneak attack from decadent America, which must somehow have gotten wind of their own planned sneak attack of the following year.
No, the atomic war did not start two seconds later, with bombs dropping on Washington and Moscow, respectively. It took a week even to think of starting, in spite of all popular conceptions of instantaneous warfare at the drop of a hat—or hate. A week to begin allocating atom bombs, wheeling out planes, planning the first tactical thrust, and all the other immensely complex details of global war.
A week.
And that was a blessing.
Meanwhile, the egg bombs kept dropping from the skies. Presumably they were guided missiles of extreme long range, shot halfway around the world through the stratosphere. And more and more of them were starting to hurt, hitting populous and industrial areas, spreading their silent death.
Some of these later bombs were filled with pieces and shreds of what seemed to be cloth and leather. In fact, it could be guessed by then that no two bombs ever had exactly the same physical contents, which might range from chips of metal to a pile of wood kindling. The one common denominator was that every load of the queer mish-mash was a miniature atomic pile operating at a furious rate of fission. Since by theory all matter known in the universe was potentially radioactive, under the proper manipulation, it didn’t matter what matter was stuffed in the bombs. But no wit dared speak that deadly pun aloud.
It seemed the start of a savage and frightful atom war that might scourge civilization off the face of the Earth, victor along with vanquished. It was all a dread pattern, long expected and long hoped against, that sickened every soul around the planet.
But thoughtful minds were already seeing that it was not quite the expected pattern. That somehow, two and two added up to a mystifying, mocking five. That it was a square peg in a round hole. Or even in a hole that didn’t exist.
“Look,” said Dr. Raymond Schaulk, atomic scientist, at Atomic Plant X in Nevada. He was in charge now of the stockpile of A and H bombs pouring out. “First, our press is screaming at the fiendish ‘new weapon’ the enemy is using. Radio Moscow screams, in the same pitch, at our use of the identical new weapon.”
“It’s a lie of course,” snapped Major General Leonard R. Knox, Jr., who was the military chief sent to expedite the procedures at this atomic arsenal. “Typical Soviet smoke-screen tactics. Accusing us of using the same weapon they are hurling at us, claiming we used it first. Putting the onus on us.”
“But that’s the point,” said Schaulk. “They didn’t say we used it first. They reported the first bomb almost nine hours after ours.”
The general’s eyes widened. “Incredible! How could they make that stupid mistake? They left themselves wide open for the label of aggressor, in the eyes of the whole world!”
“Second,” went on Schaulk, “and even more peculiar: The attack on America ended abruptly, that first day, before the attack on Russia began . . . nine hours later. Then the bombing of Russia ceased completely, before America was the target again, some fifteen hours later. Add nine and fifteen and you get twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four hours? Why, that’s a day.”
“Exactly, General. And that pattern has been followed for a week now. First America attacked—then Russia—always alternately. What’s more, the bombing attacks have only hit the southern states, from New Orleans northeast to Savannah, Georgia. Why the south, instead of the key industrial north? And in Russia, the line of bombs has gone only through the latitude of Archangel—northern Russia—on up northeast again out into the Arctic Circle.”
“Our south and Russia’s north,” mused the general, gnawing it over. “The least important areas—from a war standpoint—of both nations. That is odd.”
“And not only America and the USSR got it,” Schaulk continued pedantically. “But all points between. England reported some. Ships in the Atlantic also observed egg bombs dropping in mid-ocean, harmlessly—I might say, wastefully. After Russia, Australia always gets a few, and many South Pacific islands, before we get bombed again. All as regular as clockwork, each twenty-four hours.”
The general lit a cigarette with a slight tremor to his fingers. “Go on, Schaulk. You’re driving at something. That path of bombs around the world—”
“Yes, a great circle,” nodded Schaulk. “It cuts from America up to Latitude 75 degrees in Russia, always northeast. From there, it covers bleak northern wastes, passing near the North Pole. Twelve hours later, that path has cut past the South Pole and keeps slanting up northeast through Australia, the South Seas and back to America. In short, those egg bombs are creating a routine clockwork swath of destruction across the Lice of Earth, in time with Earth’s rotation.”
“I hate to hear the rest, Schaulk,” said the General, unaware of cigarette ashes dropping in his lap, “but let’s have it, cold turkey.”
“Those bombs aren’t coming from the Soviets. And we never made any. Those bombs are coming down from space.”
Schaulk’s monotone voice—he had been a teacher for long years at one time—put no emphasis on the last word. But it had more impact than any atomic bomb, several demonstrations of which General Knox had seen, and felt.
“Proof,” said the general, forcing himself calm. “Any real proof, Schaulk?”
The scientist didn’t change his tone, dry as ever, his shell intact. “For the first time in my life, I wished my calculations to be wrong. But they weren’t. Several radar posts tagged the bombs coming down, at my request. They came down not like rocket-driven missiles but like high-speed meteors. In short, under the force of gravity, like falling stones. From the radar reports, at wide points, I plotted their trajectory back into space. It was a hyperbola, General.”
The General hated the word instantly, even though he wasn’t quite sure of its meaning, and raised his eyebrows.
“Hyperbola,” lectured Schaulk. “A curve that never meets itself, and therefore has no Earthly origin. Any missile from Russia to America or vice versa would be a ballistic parabola, within Earth’s gravitational field. The hyperbola is the proof, General, I’m sorry to say.”
The scientist had to admire the officer. He took it without too much shock, though coming like this, it must have hurt—hurt bad. To know that the enemy was out in space. An enemy that was probably ten times more powerful and scientific and ruthless and alien than the one across the sea.
An inhuman enemy.
Not figuratively. Literally.
The general jumped up, but not because the cigarette was burning his fingers.
“Moscow,” he stammered in a sort of bewildered panic. “We’ve got to contact Moscow . . . tell them the truth . . . stave off our ghastly mutual error . . .
For the first time, Schaulk smiled.
“Come now, general. In spite of what we think of Red Russia politically, they are not mentally backward or blind. Their own scientists, top grade and plenty of them, must be figuring it all out for themselves by now. It’s as plain as a nose on a face. As conspicuous as a sore thumb. They can add two and two and get the same staggering five we did. I wouldn’t worry about that Atom War starting between America and Russia now.”
It didn’t.
The Red Fiends put out feelers by radio to Europe and America. The Capitalistic Pigs quickly took it up. After a somewhat involved, cautious, face-saving interchange of stiff notes, Washington and Moscow absolved each other of all blame for the ruthless sneak attack with the egg bombs.
Russia even apologized in that since they had never perfected such bombs, how could America have stolen the secret from them, as with all other prior Soviet pioneering? It reduced to absurdity thusly, at least on the propaganda level. America in turn paid the high compliment that the USSR was far too smart to err on the timing of early reports, putting America on record as first attacked. Clever Russians just never made such gross blunders. It was the only magnanimous thing to admit.
And so, the first embryo Atomic War died stillborn, and it can be surmised that nobody mourned, really.
“Decadent space swine!” shrilled Pravda in its next issue. “They are the brutal enemy, probably from some capitalistic planet of plutocrats, hiding behind a false democratic front.”
“Back-stabbers of another world!” headlined the outraged American press. “Their methods are all too familiar, and it is feared they are under some police-state regime, perhaps seeking to collectivize the solar system.”
However, despite their difference of opinion as to who or what the mutual enemy was, another series of notes flew between Moscow and Washington—and London, Paris, Bonn, Peking, Tokyo. An emergency general assembly of the UN was quickly called. In a surprisingly accelerated session, with the word veto not even mentioned, an alliance was formed to face the enemy with a common front. An alliance that soon included every nation or state or principality on Earth, unanimously, as they all insisted on the right to join, above and beyond the UN.
“What else?” chuckled one newspaper columnist in the USA, who could see a sardonic humor in it all. “For once we have a united Earth, a one-world, a dream of brotherhood come true, all dedicated to a great and noble cause—to butcher the enemy in space. We had it in us all the time, us humans, to forget our hates and fears, of each other. All it took was somebody else to hate and fear. Simple, isn’t it?”
And so, Earth girded itself in unity for the invasion from space, obviously due.
But just who or what was the enemy? Which planet in hitherto sterile space, according to theory? Whom were we fighting, exactly? Moon men? Bums from Mars? Gooks from Pluto? Bloody blokes from Saturn? Especes de chou de Mercure? Schweinehünde von Ganymede?
Meanwhile, the egg bombs kept dropping in increasing numbers. It began to build up into the proportions of a barrage, a deluge. Or it came more and more to seem like a frightful meteor shower, plunging down in an endless horde.
As Earth turned, under the bombsights of the faraway enemy, it was lashed by the circle of death.
Planes and anti-aircraft shot down what they could, but then it was seen what a devilish weapon this was. If they had been mere exploding bombs, the gunfire would simply detonate them safely, high in the air. But these bombs, even when struck by high-caliber shells, simply accomplished their original purpose, bursting open and spraying down their lethal loads of smoldering atomic matter. And nothing could stop or gather that up, in mid air. Nothing could hold back the rain of slow-fissioning scraps of all variety that came down like a cloudburst from Hell’s junkyard.
In fact, the public began to complain that shooting them was worse, since the spray then spread over a wider area. There were more and more black areas on the map now, ringing Earth, which were marked with that grim finality: EVACUATED, CONTAMINATED.
Was that the space enemy’s strategy? To continue this infernal bombardment for days—weeks—months? Perhaps years. For the enemy must know that Earth had no space ships with which to go on the offensive. The enemy could leisurely and comfortably continue to bomb the helpless target planet as long as they wished. Maybe they hoped, in ten or twenty years, to wipe out mankind, or at least his civilization. Then how simple to wait a suitable number of years or decades till the radioactive poisons finally dissipated, and then come and take over antiseptic Earth, against no slightest opposition.
And bones, human as well as animal, make good fertilizer.
It was all quite obviously an ingenious, horrible, long-range plan for winning Earth without any blood spilled—from the enemy’s veins . . . if, indeed, those veins carried blood.
And Earth, without any space ships, could only sit and take it.
“Ghastly,” said General Knox to Dr. Schaulk. The latter was now in charge of getting all the useless, unneeded atom bombs and their brethren back into the stockpile, with the general expediting this reversal, suppressed fury in his eye.
“How can we fight that strategy?” the general appealed. “Earth is a sitting duck. We’ve got enough A-bombs to blast that other world flat—if only we could get there. That’s what’s driving me mad, insane.”
A faint ray of hope flav
ored his next words.
“Of course, UE started Project Space. All United Earth is pooling its money and brains to achieve space travel. Just like the Manhattan Project came up with the original atom bomb. But—”
He ground his teeth before he went on.
“But even the most optimistic experts estimate five years before we launch workable manned spaceships. Five years of egg bombs raining down, day and night. Thousands dying by the hour. Cities and industrial areas steadily going black on the map, as the enemy shifts his sights all over. That black spreading cancerously over the face of the Earth. The wheels of civilization slowing down, inexorably. A race against methodical, merciless attrition by the enemy. Time! We won’t have time enough! Schaulk, I’m telling you. Not enough time!”
Schaulk had the slightest tinge of amusement in his dusty voice. “You sound as if you’re appealing to me, general. To perhaps invent some kind of machine to slow down time, or stretch it out. Sorry. I wish I could be a story-book scientist hero and save the world. But I’m just a real scientist, as helpless as you.”
The general had his control back then, looking as dapper as ever.
“Sorry, Schaulk, if I sounded childish about it for a moment. Somehow, we humans—I like that expression, we humans—always expect a champion to show up in the nick of time. The Prince on the White Charger. The hero who will save the world, like in the story-books. Hangover from childhood, I suppose. But I’m a big boy now. I can face the truth. I know that nobody can save Earth. We all know it, we humans, every last one of us. We humans . . . we come to that . . . too late. Dammit all anyhow . . . too late.”
“You think the human race is finally united—in soul—by this threat from the stars?”
“I do believe it,” said the general, in a kind of humbleness. “I think it’s worked a miracle. It has in me. This uniform I wear . . . it looks so tawdry now . . . so pointless. If this same revolution in spirit is going on around the world . . . but too late, dammit!”
