Chapter 6

19--?

“Theodore K. Kinnison!” a crisp, clear voice snapped from the speaker of an apparently cold, ordinary-enough-looking radio-television set.

A burly young man caught his breath sharply as he leaped to the instrument and pressed an inconspicuous button.

“Theodore K. Kinnison acknowledging!” The plate remained dark, but he knew that he was being scanned.

“Operation Bullfinch!” the speaker blatted.

Kinnison gulped. “Operation Bullfinch--Off!” he managed to say.

“Off!”

He pushed the button again and turned to face the tall, trim honey-blonde who stood tensely poised in the archway. Her eyes were wide and protesting; both hands clutched at her throat.

“Uh-huh, sweets, they’re coming--over the Pole,” he gritted. “Two hours, more or less.”

“Oh, Ted!” She threw herself into his arms. They kissed, then broke away.

The man picked up two large suitcases, already packed--everything else, including food and water, had been in the car for weeks--and made strides. The girl rushed after him, not bothering even to close the door of the apartment, scooping up en passant a leggy boy of four and a chubby, curly-haired girl of two or thereabouts. They ran across the lawn toward a big, low-slung sedan.

“Sure you got your caffeine tablets?” he demanded as they ran.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ll need ‘em. Drive like the devil--stay ahead! You can--this heap has got the legs of a centipede and you’ve got plenty of gas and oil. Eleven hundred miles from anywhere and a population of one-tenth per square mile--you’ll be safe there if anybody is.”

“It isn’t us I’m worried about--it’s you!” she panted. “Technos’ wives get a few minutes’ notice ahead of the H-blast--I’ll be ahead of the rush and I’ll stay ahead. It’s you, Ted--you!”

“Don’t worry, keed. That popcycle of mine has got legs, too, and there won’t be so much traffic, the way I’m going.”

“Oh, blast! I didn’t mean that, and you know it!”

They were at the car. While he jammed the two bags into an exactly-fitting space, she tossed the children into the front seat, slid lithely under the wheel, and started the engine.

“I know you didn’t, sweetheart. I’ll be back.” He kissed her and the little girl, the while shaking hands with his son. “Kidlets, you and mother are going out to visit Grand-dad Kinnison, like we told you all about. Lots of fun. I’ll be along later. Now, Lady Lead-Foot, scram--and shovel on the coal!”

The heavy vehicle backed and swung; gravel flew as the accelerator-pedal hit the floor.

Kinnison galloped across the alley and opened the door of a small garage, revealing a long, squat motorcycle. Two deft passes of his hands and two of his three spotlights were no longer white--one flashed a brilliant purple, the other a searing blue. He dropped a perforated metal box into a hanger and flipped a switch--a peculiarly-toned siren began its ululating shriek. He took the alley turn at an angle of forty-five degrees; burned the pavement toward Diversey.

The light was red. No matter--everybody had stopped--that siren could be heard for miles. He barreled into the intersection; his step-plate ground the concrete as he made a screaming left turn.

A siren--creeping up from behind. City tone. Two red spots--city cop--so soon--good! He cut his gun a trifle, the other bike came alongside.

“Is this IT?” the uniformed rider yelled, over the coughing thunder of the competing exhausts.

“Yes!” Kinnison yelled back. “Clear Diversey to the Outer Drive, and the Drive south to Gary and north to Waukegan. Snap it up!”

The white-and-black motorcycle slowed; shot over toward the curb. The officer reached for his microphone.

Kinnison sped on. At Cicero Avenue, although he had a green light, traffic was so heavy that he had to slow down; at Pulaski two policemen waved him through a red. Beyond Sacramento nothing moved on wheels.

Seventy ... seventy five ... he took the bridge at eighty, both wheels in air for forty feet. Eighty five ... ninety ... that was about all he could do and keep the heap on so rough a road. Also, he did not have Diversey all to himself any more; blue-and-purple-flashing bikes were coming in from every side-street. He slowed to a conservative fifty and went into close formation with the other riders.

The H-blast--the city-wide warning for the planned and supposedly orderly evacuation of all Chicago--sounded, but Kinnison did not hear it.

Across the Park, edging over to the left so that the boys going south would have room to make the turn--even such riders as those need some room to make a turn at fifty miles per hour!

Under the viaduct--biting brakes and squealing tires at that sharp, narrow, right-angle left turn--north on the wide, smooth Drive!

That highway was made for speed. So were those machines. Each rider, as he got into the flat, lay down along his tank, tucked his chin behind the cross-bar, and twisted both throttles out against their stops. They were in a hurry. They had a long way to go; and if they did not get there in time to stop those trans-polar atomic missiles, all hell would be out for noon.

Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers stationed permanently at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait--wait in instant readiness--until she was actually attacked. Because every good Techno in America had his assigned place in some American Defense Plan; of which Operation Bullfinch was only one. Because, without the presence of those Technos at their every-day jobs, all ordinary technological work in America would perforce have stopped.

A branch road curved away to the right. Scarcely slowing down, Kinnison bulleted into the turn and through an open, heavily-guarded gate. Here his mount and his lights were passwords enough: the real test would come later. He approached a towering structure of alloy--jammed on his brakes--stopped beside a soldier who, as soon as Kinnison jumped off, mounted the motorcycle and drove it away.

Kinnison dashed up to an apparently blank wall, turned his back upon four commissioned officers holding cocked forty-fives at the ready, and fitted his right eye into a cup. Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered; any imposter would have died instantly, without arrest or question. For every man who belonged aboard that rocket had been checked and tested--how he had been checked and tested!--since one spy, in any one of those Technos’ chairs, could wreak damage untellable.

The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large, but crowded, Operations Room.

“Hi, Teddy!” a yell arose.

“Hi, Walt! Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!” and so on. These men were friends of old.

“Where are they?” he demanded. “Is our stuff getting away? Lemme take a peek at the Ball!”

“I’ll say it is! O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!”

He squeezed in. It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and centered approximately by the North Pole. A multitude of red dots moved slowly--a hundred miles upon that map was a small distance--northward over Canada; a closer-packed, less numerous group of yellowish-greens, already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south.

As had been expected, the Americans had more missiles than did the enemy. The other belief, that America had more adequate defenses and better-trained, more highly skilled defenders, would soon be put to test.

A string of blue lights blazed across the continent, from Nome through Skagway and Wallaston and Churchill and Kaniapiskau to Belle Isle; America’s First Line of Defense. Regulars all. Ambers almost blanketed those blues; their combat rockets were already grabbing altitude. The Second Line, from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver across to Halifax, also showed solid green, with some flashes of amber. Part Regulars; part National Guard.

Chicago was in the Third Line, all National Guard, extending from San Francisco to New York. Green--alert and operating. So were the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth. Operation Bullfinch was clicking; on schedule to the second.

A bell clanged; the men sprang to their stations and strapped down. Every chair was occupied. Combat Rocket Number One Oh Six Eight Five, full-powered by the disintegrating nuclei of unstable isotopes, took off with a whooshing roar which even her thick walls could not mute.

The Technos, crushed down into their form-fitting cushions by three G’s of acceleration, clenched their teeth and took it.

Higher! Faster! The rocket shivered and trembled as it hit the wall at the velocity of sound, but it did not pause.

Higher! Faster! Higher! Fifty miles high. One hundred ... five hundred ... a thousand ... fifteen hundred ... two thousand! Half a radius--the designated altitude at which the Chicago Contingent would go into action.

Acceleration was cut to zero. The Technos, breathing deeply in relief, donned peculiarly-goggled helmets and set up their panels.

Kinnison stared into his plate with everything he could put into his optic nerve. This was not like the Ball, in which the lights were electronically placed, automatically controlled, clear, sharp, and steady. This was radar. A radar considerably different from that of 1948, of course, and greatly improved, but still pitifully inadequate in dealing with objects separated by hundreds of miles and traveling at velocities of thousands of miles per hour!

Nor was this like the practice cruises, in which the targets had been harmless barrels or equally harmless dirigible rockets. This was the real thing; the targets today would be lethal objects indeed. Practice gunnery, with only a place in the Proficiency List at stake, had been exciting enough: this was too exciting--much too exciting--for the keenness of brain and the quickness and steadiness of eye and of hand so soon to be required.

A target? Or was it? Yes--three or four of them!

“Target One--Zone Ten,” a quiet voice spoke into Kinnison’s ear and one of the white specks upon his plate turned yellowish green. The same words, the same lights, were heard and seen by the eleven other Technos of Sector A, of which Kinnison, by virtue of standing at the top of his Combat Rocket’s Proficiency List, was Sector Chief. He knew that the voice was that of Sector A’s Fire Control Officer, whose duty it was to determine, from courses, velocities, and all other data to be had from ground and lofty observers, the order in which his Sector’s targets should be eliminated. And Sector A, an imaginary but sharply-defined cone, was in normal maneuvering the hottest part of the sky. Fire Control’s “Zone Ten” had informed him that the object was at extreme range and hence there would be plenty of time. Nevertheless:

“Lawrence--two! Doyle--one! Drummond--stand by with three!” he snapped, at the first word.

In the instant of hearing his name each Techno stabbed down a series of studs and there flowed into his ears a rapid stream of figures--the up-to-the-second data from every point of observation as to every element of motion of his target. He punched the figures into his calculator, which would correct automatically for the motion of his own vessel--glanced once at the printed solution of the problem--tramped down upon a pedal once, twice, or three times, depending upon the number of projectiles he had been directed to handle.