“Report status now,” Reyes called out.
“Object previously reported homing on New York was a decoy. Full salvo of interceptors expended. Missile following has now altered course toward same target. Area Defense Commander reports insufficient reserves to intercept. Revised time to impact, forty-three seconds.”
“Jesus . . . !” Somebody breathed.
“Impact will coincide with arrival time of first expected on targets in southern Europe,” the report continued. “More decoys causing uncertainties in previous predictions.”
“Never mind them now,” Reyes snapped. “Read me that one that’s zeroing on New York.”
“Due on target in twenty-two seconds . . . twenty . . . fifteen . . . CONTACT LOST!”
“What the . . . ? You mean we got it?” Reyes was nonplused.
“Negative, sir. There were no defensive missiles near. It just seems to have . . . vanished.” The voice came again, now sounding utterly at a loss. “Predicted impacts in southern Europe deleted from latest computations. Traces of incoming missiles have been lost . . . Disregard confirmations for Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia . . .” The voice grew totally bewildered. “Disregard confirmations previously given for West Coast . . .”
All over the map the leading lines in red were stopping as soon as they got anywhere near their targets, as if an invisible eraser were working along the coastlines of North America. The same pattern developed along the approaches to Europe, Australia, and Japan. The attacking waves were being wiped out by the score.
“Your defenses aren’t doing that?” Reyes asked, incredulous.
“They’ve fired everything they had left,” Carlohm answered, equally bemused. “I doubt if there’s more than a handful of serviceable missiles left in the whole of the West.”
“They’re being J-bombed!” Foreshaw exclaimed abruptly. “Can’t you see what those guys are doing? They’ve lured the whole damn Commie missile force up into the sky at once; now they’re J-bombing it out of existence.”
“Not their whole missile force,” Carlohm reminded him. “Only their attack force. Don’t forget they still haven’t used their antimissile missiles.”
Soon the whole of the network of red lines had frozen into immobility, marking the limit of penetration that had been reached before the last warhead was vaporized. Not one had made it past the frontier of any territory of a Western Alliance nation. Only the green traces were left in motion now, crawling inexorably onward toward their own destinations. By now the leading ones, fired from patrolling allied and U.S. submarines, were getting close.
Sherman had by this time recovered from his despair and had gotten involved in the proceedings again. “Nothing will threaten our security for a long time to come now.” He turned toward Carlohm. “That attack that’s going on there no longer has any purpose. It must be stopped. Order immediate remote disarming of all warheads.”
Carlohm looked amazed for a second, then started to protest. “But there’s nothing to lose now. There’ll never be another chance like . . .”
“Those weapons were conceived and built only as a deterrent. Now there’s nothing left to deter anybody from using. Do it.”
Carlohm gave the order. From a score of command centers around the world, the transmissions were broadcast to transform the most sophisticated instrument of total destruction that the world had ever seen into just so many free-falling chunks of harmless metal.
The green tentacles continued stretching their way forward to condense into a thorny girdle around the Eastern world. It was the picture of a little while earlier all over again, but in reverse. A speckled haze of red pinpoints began to appear, adorning the enemy coastlines and borders.
“Antimissile interceptors coming up,” Carlohm observed, now just a relaxed and passive spectator, as were the rest of them. “They’ve got no way of knowing that those warheads have been deactivated.”
The display produced by the defensive-missile screen put up by the other side was truly spectacular. The amused observers at Brunnermont lounged back in their seats and pictured the alarm that must have been rife on the other side of the world. The whole of the Eastern bloc was becoming outlined by vivid streaks of blood red as thousands of individual tracks merged together; everything that could move was, it seemed, being fired into the sky.