Expanded Universe

Washington rang up again about an hour later. It was the Secretary of War. This time Ma

I did not mean that you would avoid responsibility. intended to be helpful... . Fine! Thank you, Mr. Secretary."

The White House rang up later in the day and set time.

We drove down to the District the next day through a nasty cold rain that threatened to turn to sleet. TF usual congestion in Washington was made worse b the weather; it very nearly caused us to be late in arriving. I could hear Ma

The thirty minutes went by.

The President's reception secretary went in, and came out very promptly indeed. He stepped on out into the outer reception room and I heard something that began with, "I'm sorry, Senator, but - " He came back in, made a penciled notation, and passed it out to an usher.

Two more hours went by.

Ma

I fell over my feet getting up.

Ma

I had never seen him before, though, of course, I knew something of his record the two years he had been in the Senate and while he was Mayor before that.

The President said, "Sit down, DeFries. Care to smoke?" Then to Ma

"I think he'll have to. It's Hobson's choice."

"And you are sure of him?"

"He was my campaign manager."

"I see."

The President said nothing more for a while and God knows I didn't! - though I was bursting to know what they were talking about. He commenced again with,

"Colonel Ma

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Very well, we will use Captain DeFries unless think of a better procedure." I thought for a moment that they pla

I gulped. "Yes, Mr. President." And that is ever word I had to say in calling on the President of the United States.

After that, Ma

We had a weapon that could not be stopped. An type of K - O dust scattered over an area rendered the area uninhabitable for a length of time that depends 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 ha fallen off to the point where it was no longer harmful The dust could not be cleaned out; it was every when. There was no possible way to counteract its burn or combine it chemically; the radioactive isotope was still there, still radioactive, still deadly. Once used o 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 complicate bomb - lights were needed, no care need be taken to h "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.

Ma

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. Ma

After that, the Pax Americana.

The United States was having power thrust on it, willy - nilly. We had to accept it and enforce a worldwide 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 Ma

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 a long as we could to consolidate the Pax; we did not distrust our English cousins, but they were Britisher 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 Ma

We took off from the new field outside Baltimore o a cold, raw afternoon which matched my own feeling I had an all - gone feeling in my stomach, a ru

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. If the President 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 - engine 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 trace meet, to worry me.

There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I could not see it, the cabin shuttered. Our pilot - captain ignored it and brought his ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, 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.