Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

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 “prove” that the

British boasts had been hollow. There is no need to recount

the provisional governments that Germany had in t] following several months; the

only one we are co cerned with is the so-called restored monarchy whh used a cousin

of the old Kaiser as a symbol, the 01 that sued for peace.

Then the trouble started.

When the Prime Minister announced the terms the private agreement he had had

with our Presider he was met with a silence that was broken only I cries of “Shame!

Shame! Resign!” I suppose it was i evitable; the Commons reflected the spirit of a

peop who had been unmercifully punished for four yeai They were in a mood to enforce

a peace that wou have made the Versailles Treaty look like the Bea tudes.

The vote of no confidence left the Prime Minister no choice. Forty-eight

hours later the King made a speech from the throne that violated all constitutional

precedent, for it had not been written by a Prime Minister. In this greatest crisis

in his reign, his voice was clear and unlabored; it sold the idea to England and a

national coalition government was formed.

I don’t know whether we would have dusted Lond to enforce our terms or not; Manning

thinks we would have done so. I suppose it depended on the character of the

President of the United States, and there is is way of knowing about that since we

did not have to do it.

The United States, and in particular the President the United States, was

confronted by two inescapable problems. First, we had to consolidate our

position once, use our temporary advantage of an overwhelmingly powerful weapon to

insure that such a weapon would not be turned on us. Second, some means had to be

worked out to stabilize American foreign policy so that it could handle the

tremendous power we suddenly had thrust upon us.

The second was by far the most difficult and serious. If we were to

establish a reasonably permanent peace-say a century or so-through a monopoly on a

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weapon so powerful that no one dare fight us, it was imperative that the policy

under which we acted be more lasting than passing political administrations. But

more of that later-The first problem had to be attended to at once- time was the

heart of it. The emergency lay in the very simplicity of the weapon. It required

nothing but aircraft to scatter it and the dust itself, which was easily and quickly

made by anyone possessing the secret of the Karst-Obre process and having access to

a small supply of uranium-bearing ore.

But the Karst-Obre process was simple and might be independently developed

at any time. Manning reported to the President that it was Ridpath’s opinion,

concurred in by Manning, that the staff of any modern radiation laboratory should be

able to work out an equivalent technique in six weeks, working from the hint given

by the events in Berlin alone, and should then be able to produce enough dust to

cause major destruction in another six weeks.

Ninety days-ninety days provided they started from scratch and were not

already halfway to their goal. Less than ninety days-perhaps no time at all- By this

time Manning was an unofficial member of the Cabinet; “Secretary of Dust,” the

President called him in one of his rare jovial moods. As for me, well, I attended

Cabinet meetings, too. As the only layman who had seen the whole show from beginning

to end, the President wanted me there.

I am an ordinary sort of man who, by a concatenation of improbabilities,

found himself shoved into the councils of the rulers. But I found that the rulers

were ordinary men, too, and frequently as bewildered as I was.

But Manning was no ordinary man. In him ordinary hard sense had been raised

to the level of genius. Oh, yes, I know that it is popular to blame everything on