over an area rendered that area uninhabitable for a length of time that
depended on the half-life of the radioactivity.
Period. Full stop.
Once an area was dusted there was nothing that could be done about it until
the radioactivity had fallen off to the point where it was no longer
harmful. The dust could not be cleaned out; it was everywhere. There was no
possible way to counteract it?burn it, combine it chemically; the
radioactive isotope was still there, still radio-active, still deadly. Once
used on a stretch of land, for a predetermined length of time that piece of
earth would not tolerate life.
It was extremely simple to use. No complicated bomb sights were needed, no
care need be taken to hit "military objectives." Take it aloft in any sort
of aircraft, attain a position more or less over the area you wish to
sterilize, and drop the stuff. Those on the ground in the contaminated area
are dead men, dead in an hour, a day, a week, a month, depending on the
degree of the infection?but dead.
Manning told me that he had once seriously considered, in the middle of the
night, recommending that every single person, including himself, who knew
the Karst-Obre technique be put to death, in the interests of all
civilization. But he had realized the next day that it had been sheer funk;
the technique was certain in time to be rediscovered by someone else.
Furthermore, it would not do to wait, to refrain from using the grisly
power, until someone else perfected it and used it. The only possible
chance to keep the world from being turned into one huge morgue was for us
to use the power first and drastically?get the upper hand and keep it.
We were not at war, legally, yet we had been in the war up to our necks
with our weight on the side of democracy since 1940. Manning had proposed
to the President that we turn a supply of the dust over to Great Britain,
under conditions we specified, and enable them thereby to force a peace.
But the terms of the peace would be dictated by the United States?for we
were not turning over the secret.
After that, the Pax Americana.
The United States was having power thrust on it, willy-nilly. We had to
accept it and enforce a world-wide peace, ruthlessly and drastically, or it
would be seized by some other nation. There could not be coequals in the
possession of this weapon. The factor of time predominated.
I was selected to handle the details in England because Manning insisted,
and the President agreed with him, that every person technically acquainted
with the Karst-Obre process should remain on the laboratory reservation in
what amounted to protective custody?imprisonment. That included Manning
himself. I could go because I did not have the secret?I could not even have
acquired it without years of schooling?and what I did not know I could not
tell, even under, well, drugs. We were determined to keep the secret as
long as we could to consolidate the Pax; we did not distrust our English
cousins, but they were Britishers, with a first loyalty to the British
Empire. No need to tempt them.
I was picked because I understood the background if not the science, and
because Manning trusted me. I don't know why the President trusted me, too,
but then my job was not complicated.
We took off from the new field outside Baltimore on a cold, raw afternoon
which matched my own feelings. I had an all-gone feeling in my stomach, a
runny nose, and, buttoned inside my clothes, papers appointing me a special
agent of the President of the United States. They were odd papers, papers
without precedent; they did not simply give me the usual diplomatic
immunity; they made my person very nearly as sacred as that of the
President himself.
At Nova Scotia we touched ground to refuel the F. B. I. men left us, we
took off again, and the Canadian transfighters took their stations around
us. All the dust we were sending was in my plane; if the President's
representative were shot down, the dust would go to the bottom with him.
No need to tell of the crossing. I was airsick and miserable, in spite of
the steadiness of the new six-engined jobs. I felt like a hangman on the
way to an execution, and wished to God that I were a boy again, with
nothing more momentous than a debate contest, or a track meet, to worry me.
There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I
could not see it, the cabin being shuttered. Our pilot?captain ignored it
and brought his ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, I suppose,
though I did not know nor care. I would have welcomed a crash. Then the
lights outside went on and I saw that we had come to rest in an underground
hangar.
I stayed in the ship. The commandant came to see me to his quarters as his
guest. I shook my head. "I stay here," I said. "Orders. You are to treat
this ship as United States soil, you know."
He seemed miffed, but compromised by having dinner served for both of us in
my ship.
There was a really embarrassing situation the next day. I was commanded to
appear for a royal audience. But I had my instructions and I stuck to them.
I was sitting on that cargo of dust until the President told me what to do
with it. Late in the day I was called on by a member of Parliament?nobody
admitted out loud that it was the Prime Minister?and a Mr. Windsor. The M.
P. did most of the talking and I answered his questions. My other guest
said very little and spoke slowly with some difficulty. But I got a very
favorable impression of him. He seemed to be a man who was carrying a load
beyond human strength and carrying it heroically.
There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little
longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split-second intensity
of imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was
using the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two
face-to-face television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President
spoke German fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to
the warring peoples themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the
continent were able to listen, the police regulations there being what they
were.
The Ambassador for the Reich was given a special demonstration of the
effect of the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western
prairie and allowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of
steers. It should have impressed him and I think that it did?nobody could
ignore a visual demonstration!?but what report he made to his leader we
never knew.
The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing
attacks as heavy as any of the war. I was safe enough but I heard about
them, and I could see the effect on the morale of the officers with whom I
associated. Not that it frightened them?it made them coldly angry. The
raids were not directed primarily at dockyards or factories, but were
ruthless destruction of anything, particularly villages.
"I don't see what you chaps are waiting for,
" a flight commander complained
to me. "What the Jerries need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a
lesson in their own Aryan culture."
I shook my head. "We'll have to do it our own way."
He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and his brother officers felt.
They had a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: "Remember
Coventry!"
Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. was not to bomb during the
period of negotiation, but their bombers were busy nevertheless. The
continent was showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared
by our own propaganda agents. The first of these called on the people of
the Reich to stop a useless war and promised that the terms of peace would
not be vindictive. The second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that
herd of steers. The third was a simple direct warning to get out of cities
and to stay out. As Manning put it, we were calling "Halt!" three times
before firing. I do not think that he or the President expected it to work,
but we were morally obligated to try.
The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds-Yarley
nonintercept type, the sort whereby the receiver must "trigger" the
transmitter in order for transmission to take place at all. It made
assurance of privacy in diplomatic rapid communication for the first time
in history, and was a real help in the crisis. I had brought along my own
technician, one of the F. B. I.'s new corps of specialists, to handle the
scrambler and the trigger.
He called to me one afternoon. "Washington signaling."
I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar
floor, wondering if it were another false alarm.
It was the President. His lips were white. "Carry out your basic
instructions, Mr. deFries."
"Yes, Mr. President!"
The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a
receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were
finished. But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers
from every independent nation and from the several provisional governments
of occupied nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at
the request of Manning.
Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all
the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least,
reaching its destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than
Ridpath calculated would be needed for the mission and my last job was to
see to it that every canister actually went on board a plane of the flight.
The extremely small weight of dust used was emphasized to each of the
military observers.
We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, refueled in
the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled
thirty minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut
the thin air for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and
hiked up to permit the utmost maximum of speed and altitude.
Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act
as a diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the
intention to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few
planes actually engaged in the serious work might well escape attention
entirely, flying so high in the stratosphere.
The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions,
planning to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night
was appreciably clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin is not a
hard city to locate, since it has the largest square-mile area of any
modern city and is located on a broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out
the River Spree as we approached it, and the Havel. The city was blacked
out, but a city makes a different sort of black from open country.
Parachute flares hung over the city in many places, showing that the R. A.
F. had been busy before we got there and the A. A. batteries on the ground
helped to pick out the city.
There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our
altitude as nearly as I could judge.
The pilot reported to the captain, "On line of bearing!"
The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse
pots of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of
black powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter the dust at a time
after release predetermined by the fuse spot setting. The method used was
no more than an ancient expedient. The dust would have been almost as
effective had it simply been dumped out in paper bags, although not as well
distributed.
The Captain hung over the navigator's board, a slight frown on his thin
sallow face. "Ready one!" reported the bomber.
"Release!"
"Ready two!"
The Captain studied his wristwatch. "Release!"
"Ready three!"
"Release!"
When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail
and ran for home.
No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about
it. But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did
not feel much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his
courage and undergone a serious operation; it's over now, he is still numb
from shock but his mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home.
The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my
ship at once and gave me an escort for the off shore war zone. It was an
expensive way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended
some millions of lives in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a
money expense? He gave the necessary orders absentmindedly.
I took a double dose of Nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some
news while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had.
The government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly
after the raid, sneering at the much vaunted "secret weapon" of the British
and stating that a major air attack had been made on Berlin and several
other cities, but that the raiders had been driven off with only minor
damage. The current Lord Haw-Haw started one of his sarcastic speeches but
was unable to continue it. The announcer said that he had been seized with
a heart attack, and substituted some recordings of patriotic music. The
station cut off in the middle of the "Horst Wesser' song. After that there
was silence.
I managed to promote an Army car and a driver at the Baltimore field which
made short work of the Annapolis speedway. We almost overran the turn to
the laboratory.
Manning was in his office. He looked up as I came in said, "Hello, John,"
in a dispirited voice, and dropped his eyes again to the blotter pad. He
went back to drawing doodles.
I looked him over and realized for the first time that the chief was an old
man. His face was gray and flabby, deep furrows framed his mouth in
a
triangle. His clothes did not fit.
I went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it so hard,
chief. It's not your fault. We gave them all the warning in the world."
He looked up again. "Estelle Karst suicided this morning."
Anybody could have anticipated it, but nobody did. And somehow I felt
harder hit by her death than by the death of all those strangers in Berlin.
"How did she do it?" I asked.
"Dust. She went into the canning room, and took off her armor.
I could picture her?head held high, eyes snapping, and that set look on her
mouth which she got when people did something she disapproved of. One
little old woman whose lifetime work had been turned against her.
"I wish," Manning added slowly, "that I could explain to her why we had to
do it."
We buried her in a lead-lined coffin, then Manning and I went on to
Washington.
While we were there, we saw the motion pictures that had been made of the
death of Berlin. You have not seen them; they never were made public, but
they were of great use in convincing the other nations of the world that
peace was a good idea. I saw them when Congress did, being allowed in
because I was Manning's assistant.
They had been made by a pair of R. A. F. pilots, who had dodged the
Luftwaffle to get them. The first shots showed some of the main streets the
morning after the raid. There was not much to see that would show up in
tele-photo shots, just busy and crowded streets, but if you looked closely
you could see that there had been an excessive number of automobile
accidents.
The second day showed the attempt to evacuate. The inner squares of the
city were practically deserted save for bodies and wrecked cars, but the
streets leading out of town were boiling with people, mostly on foot, for
the trams where out of service. The pitiful creatures were fleeing, not
knowing that death was already lodged inside them. The plane swooped down
at one point and the cinematographer had his telephoto lens pointed
directly into the face of a young woman for several seconds. She stared
back at it with a look too woebegone to forget, then stumbled and fell.
She may have been trampled. I hope so. One of those six horses had looked
like that when the stuff was beginning to hit his vitals.
The last sequence showed Berlin and the roads around it a week after the
raid. The city was dead; there was not a man, a woman, a child?nor cats,
nor dogs, not even a pigeon. Bodies were all around, but they were safe
from rats. There were no rats.
The roads around Berlin were quiet now. Scattered carelessly on shoulders
and in ditches, and to a lesser extent on the pavement itself, like coal
shaken off a train, were the quiet heaps that had been the citizens of the
capital of the Reich. There is no use in talking about it.
But, so far as I am concerned, I left what soul I had in that projection
room and I have not had one since.
The two pilots who made the pictures eventually died?systemic, cumulative
infection, dust in the air over Berlin. With precautions it need not have
happened, but the English did not believe, as yet, that our extreme
precautions were necessary.
The Reich took about a week to fold up. It might have taken longer if the
new Fuehrer had not gone to Berlin the day after the raid to 'approve" that
the British boasts had been hollow. There is no need to recount the
provisional governments that Germany had in the following several months;
the only one we are concerned with is the so called restored monarchy which