Picnic On Nearside

"No, no. Oh, I'll help you. I'm sure I can make a contact. I used to do that before I got into this game. What I meant was, are you going to bet I can't find some? We could bet... say, a di

She thought she had only two alternatives: walk away from him, or kill him. But she found a third.

"You're a betting man. I guess I can see why. But that's what I wanted to ask you. How can you stay so calm? Why doesn't this get to you like it does to me and my people? You can't tell me it's simply that you're used to it."

He thought about it. "And why not? You can get used to anything, you know. Now what about that bet?"

"If you don't stop talking about that," she said, quietly, "I'm going to break your arm."

"All right." He said nothing further, and she asked no further questions.

The fireball grew in milliseconds into an inferno that could scarcely be described in terms comprehensible to humans. Everything in a half-kilometer radius simply vanished into super-heated gases and plasma: buttresses, plate-glass windows, floors and ceilings, pipes, wires, tanks, machines, gewgaws and trinkets by the million, books, tapes, apartments, furniture, household pets, men, women, and children. They were the lucky ones. The force of the expanding blast compressed two hundred levels below it like a giant sitting on a Dagwood sandwich, making holes through plate steel turned to putty by the heat as easily as a punch press through tinfoil. Upwards, the surface bulged into the soundless Lunar night and split to reveal a white hell beneath. Chunks flew away, chunks as large as city sectors, before the center collapsed back on itself to leave a crater whose walls were a maze of compartments and ant-tu

What was left was five million burnt, blasted corpses, and ten million injured so hideously that they would die in hours or days. But Bach had been miraculously thrown clear by some freak of the explosion. She hurtled through the void with fifteen million ghosts following her, and each carried a birthday cake. They were singing. She joined in.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday..."

"Chief Bach."

"Huh?" She felt a cold chill pass over her body. For a moment she could only stare down into the face of Roger Birkson.

"You all right now?" he asked. He looked concerned.

"I'm... what happened?"

He patted her on both arms, then shook her heartily.

"Nothing. You drifted off for a moment." He narrowed his eyes. "I think you were daydreaming. I want to be diplomatic about this... ah, what I mean... I've seen it happen before. I think you were trying to get away from us."

She rubbed her hands over her face.

"I think I was. But I sure went in the wrong direction. I'm all right now." She could remember it now, and knew she had not passed out or become totally detached from what was going on. She had watched it all. Her memories of the explosion, so raw and real a moment before, were already the stuff of nightmares.

Too bad she hadn't come awake into a better world. It was so damn unfair. That was the reward at the end of a nightmare, wasn't it? You woke up to find everything was all right.

Instead, here was a long line of uniformed officers, bearing birthday cakes to a fifty kiloton atomic bomb.

Birkson had ordered the lights turned off in the Leystrasse. When his order had not been carried out, he broke out the lights with his putter. Soon, he had some of the officers helping him.

Now the beautiful Leystrasse, the pride of New Dresden, was a flickering tu

"I am a bomb! I am a bomb!" he yelled. He had never had so much fun.

Bach and Birkson retreated from the scene into the darkened recess of the Bagatelle Flower Shoppe. There, a stereo viewing tank had been set up.

The X-ray picture had been taken with a moving plate technique that allowed a computer to generate a three dimensional model. They leaned over the tank now and studied it. They had been joined by Sergeant McCoy, Bach's resident bomb expert, and another man from the Lunar Radiation Laboratory.

"This is Hans," said Birkson, moving a red dot in the tank by means of a dial on the side. It flicked over and around a vague gray shape that trailed dozens of wires. Bach wondered again at the pressures that would allow a man to like having his body stripped from him. There was nothing in that lead flask but the core of the man, the brain and central nervous system.

"Here's the body of the bomb. The two sub-critical masses. The H.E. charge, the timer, the arming barrier, which is now withdrawn. It's an old design, ladies and gentlemen. Old, but reliable. As basic as the bow and arrow. It's very much like the first one dropped on the Nippon Empire at Hiroshima."

"You're sure it'll go off, then?" Bach put in.

"Sure as taxes. Hell, a kid could build one of these in the bathroom, given only the uranium and some shielding equipment. Now let me see." He pored over the phantom in the tank, tracing out wiring paths with the experts. They debated possibilities, lines of attack, drawbacks. At last they seemed to reach a consensus.

"As I see it, we have only one option," Birkson said. "We have to go for his volitional control over the bomb. I'm pretty sure we've isolated the main cable that goes from him to the detonator. Knock that out, and he can't do a thing. We can pry that tin can open by conventional means and disarm that way. McCoy?"

"I agree," said McCoy. "We'd have a full hour, and I'm sure we can get in there with no trouble. When they cyborged this one, they put all their cards on the human operator. They didn't bother with entry blocks, since Hans could presumably blow it up before we could get close enough to do anything. With his control out, we only have to open it up with a torch and drop the damper into place.

The LRL man nodded his agreement. "Though I'm not quite as convinced as Mr. Birkson that he's got the right cable in mind for what he wants to do. If we had more time..."

"We've wasted enough time already," Bach said, decisively. She had swung rapidly from near terror of Roger Birkson to total trust. It was her only defense. She knew she could do nothing at all about the bomb, and had to trust someone.

"Then we go for it. Is your crew in place? Do they know what to do? And above all, are they good? Really good? There won't be a second chance."

"Yes, yes, and yes," Bach said. "They'll do it. We know how to cut rock on Luna."