not going.” I guess I must have looked stubborn, for he added, “You’re not to go
because there is work to do here. Wait a minute.” He went to his safe, twiddled the
dials, opened it and removed a sealed envelope which he threw on the desk between
us. “Here are your orders. Get busy.”
He went out as I was opening them. I read them through and got busy. There was
little enough time.
The new President received Manning standing and in the company of several of
his bodyguards and intimates. Manning recognized the senator who had led the
movement to use the Patrol to recover expropriated holdings in South America and
Rhodesia, as well as the chairman of the committee on aviation with whom he had had
several unsatisfactory conferences in an attempt to work out a modus operandi
for.reinstituting commercial airlines.
“You’re prompt, I see,” said the President. “Good.” Manning bowed.
“We might as well come straight to the point,” the Chief Executive went on.
“There are going to be some changes of policy in the administration. I want your
resignation.”
“I am sorry to have to refuse, sir.”
“We’ll see about that. In the meantime, Colonel Manning, you are relieved
from duty.”
“Mr. Commissioner Manning, if you please.”
The new President shrugged. “One or the other, as you please. You are
relieved, either way.”
“I am sorry to disagree again. My appointment is for life.”
“That’s enough,” was the answer. “This is the United States of America.
There can be no higher authority. You are under arrest.”
I can visualize Manning staring steadily at him for a long moment, then
answering slowly, “You a physically able to arrest me, I will concede, but I a vise
you to wait a few minutes.” He stepped to the wi dow. “Look up into the sky.”
Six bombers of the Peace Commission patrolh over the Capitol. “None of those pilots
Page 61
is Americ~ born,” Manning added slowly. “If you confine ni none of us here in this
room will live out the day.’ There were incidents thereafter, such as the unfc
tunate affair at Fort Benning three days later, and t] outbreak in the wing of the
Patrol based in Lisbon au its resultant wholesale dismissals, but for practic
purposes, that was all there was to the coup d’etat. Manning was the undisputed
military dictator the world.
Whether or not any man as universally hated Manning can perfect the Patrol
he envisioned, make self-perpetuating and trustworthy, I don’t kno’ and-because of
that week of waiting in a buried En lish hangar-I won’t be here to find out. Manninl
heart disease makes the outcome even more uncc tam-he may last another twenty years;
he may ke over dead tomorrow-and there is no one to take F place. I’ve set this down
partly to occupy the she time I have left and partly to show there is anoth side to
any story, even world dominion.
Not that I would like the outcome, either way. there is anything to this
survival-after-death busine5 I am going to look up the man who invented the bc and
arrow and take him apart with my bare hanc For myself, I can’t be happy in a world
where any ma or group of men, has the power of death over you ai me, our neighbors,
every human, every animal, eve living thing. I don’t like anyone to have that kind
power.
And neither does Manning.
FOREWORD
After World War II I resumed writing with two objectives: first, to explain
the meaning of atomic weapons through popular articles; second, to break out from
the limitations and low rates of pulp science-fiction magazines into anything and
everything: slicks, books, motion pictures, general fiction, specialized fiction not
intended for SF magazines, and nonfiction.
My second objective I achieved in every respect, but in my first and much
more important objective I fell flat on my face.
Unless you were already adult in August 1945 it is almost impossible for me
to convey emotionally to you how people felt about the A-bomb, how many different
ways they felt about it, how nearly totally ignorant 99.9% of our citizens were on