A few feet away from him, seated in the second operator’s position in the Control Room, Clifford was engrossed with updating the fire-control programs via the BIACs. Deep below them in the lower recesses of Brunnermont, the dreadful machine that Aub had grown to hate was primed and ready, generators humming and beam on and up to power, waiting to unleash its holocaust. There were only minutes left to run before the ultimatum expired. For the past forty-eight hours, Aub and Clifford had been taking shifts to maintain a constant readiness against the possibility of a surprise attack during the ultimatum period. But there had been no change in the pattern of activity across the global scene; there had been no acknowledgment of the ultimatum at all. Reports from the fronts were that the fighting was continuing unabated.
Aub attracted Clifford’s attention and indicated his desire for Clifford to keep his eye on things alone for a moment while he took a final breath of air outside the Control Room before the action commenced. Clifford nodded his assent, whereupon Aub removed his BIAC skull-harness, stretched his cramped limbs gratefully, rose from the console, and walked out to the access gallery where he stopped to lean on the balustrade and stare out over the Operational Command Floor.
The scene that confronted him, with its air of calm, well-regulated efficiency and smooth organization, could have been the inside of the control center for a space mission . . . were it not for the preponderance of military uniforms. All the communications posts were manned; the display screens were alive; the duty operators were all at their assigned positions and attending to their well-rehearsed tasks, while groups of senior officers surveyed the proceedings from various parts of the room. To one side President Sherman, Vice President Donald Reyes, and Defense Secretary Foreshaw were standing at the center of a semicircle of aides in front of a permanently open communications console, ready for any last-minute response to the ultimatum. This all reminded Aub grimly of a prison warden in an earlier age standing by for an eleventh-hour reprieve before executing sentence on a condemned criminal. He doubted if there would be any reprieve of the death sentence that had been passed on mankind.
He asked himself again why he had failed to declare his dissociation from the business long before this. Why had he not walked out? Had it been simply because he had continued deep down to believe in the man he had once called a friend until it was too late? Or was it now just a case of animal survival? Was he, like the priests performing their rituals at the sacrificial altars below, just reacting to the subconscious knowledge that only the power of the new god they served could preserve them through the wrath that was ordained to come? But whatever things were written on the pages that Destiny had not yet disclosed, there could be no going back now; to quit at this stage would be merely to guarantee the greater disaster.
He gazed at the clock set high on the far wall of the Command Floor, its window at the extreme right showing the relentless flow of seconds. Uncontrollable fingers of ice caressed his spine, and nausea rose to his throat. Less than three minutes. Time to get tuned back in. He turned and re-entered the Control Room.
Clifford was looking toward the door as he came in, as if waiting for Aub to enter. Aub sat down dully and began positioning the BIAC harness.
“Aub.” Clifford’s voice was barely more than a murmur, yet it carried a strange note of urgency. Aub looked up. Clifford was leaning toward him, at the same time holding his arm outstretched to keep a key on his panel depressed, thus temporarily cutting off audio and visual contact between the Control Room and the Command Floor below.
“Aub, it’s not the way you think,” Clifford said, whispering hurriedly. “There isn’t time to explain now. But it was important that your reactions and Sarah’s be absolutely genuine all the way through. Everybody has been under observation here, all the time. I couldn’t risk anyone not acting out his part faithfully.” Aub started to shake his head in bewilderment, but just then Clifford glanced at the clock and hushed him with a gesture of his hand.