“You mean they’re still running there now . . . that thing is still live?”
“Absolutely. There’s no way anyone can shut it down . . . but I’ll come to that in a minute. Let’s begin at the beginning.”
Reyes sat back to listen as Cleary continued. “The first thing that they do is limit the operating range of the J-bomb. The bomb is still functional, but it will only accept target coordinates inside North America and allied Western nations, and up to fifty miles beyond their coastlines and frontiers.” He noted one or two looks of bafflement and explained hurriedly. “This means that, in effect, it can only be used as a purely defensive weapon. Any form of attack from another part of the world—whether by land, sea, or air . . . using conventional weapons or nuclear ones—can be crushed before it gets anywhere near us. But since the range can’t be extended into the homelands of the other side, the weapon has no offensive value whatsoever. We couldn’t attack with it.”
“What about space weapons?” General Carlohm asked.
“The J-bomb will fire inside an umbrella that extends for up to one hundred miles above all friendly territory. So, if the East wants to put itself to all the effort and expense it can build itself up a whole new ORBS system if it wants to . . . but the moment they try to drop anything on us, we can blow it out of the sky. Somehow I don’t think they’ll bother.”
President Sherman raised a hand to hold Cleary at that point.
“There’s something I’m not clear about here,” he said. “You’re talking about our being able to fire the bomb in defense if we need to. Who exactly do you mean by ‘us’? Clifford and Philipsz are the only two who seem to really understand how the system works, and I’ve got a feeling they won’t be sticking around for much longer. Who else do you figure could operate it?”
“They’ve taken care of that,” Cleary replied. “Now that the special programs have been integrated into the system, any experienced BIAC operator can be trained to use them. He only has to input data; he doesn’t have to know how they are structured or interconnected internally.”
“In fact,” Foreshaw supplied, “as I understand it, the two of them are offering to stay on at Brunnermont for a period of eight weeks, solely to train the first team of operators for us. After that, they blow.”
“Where to?” Sherman enquired.
“They haven’t said. Back to get on with whatever they want to do at ISF, I guess.”
To the continuing surprise of most of those present, Sherman merely smiled as if he found the whole thing a huge joke. His evident inclination to treat the affair with something approaching cheerful nonchalance . . . almost amusement . . . had been a source of puzzlement ever since the session began.
“Okay,” Reyes conceded. “It looks as if they’ve got the Brunnermont machine locked into a defense-only kind of role. But our security policy still requires an effective means of attack.” He swept his eyes around the table to invite support. “My suggestion is this: Since Brunnermont is ruled out, we get together another scientific team, probably with the nucleus from ACRE and figure out how to build another one. After all, the design data for Brunnermont itself is all available; it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Cleary pursed his lips and shook his head.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t work, Don. You see, the essential part of any other machine that’s built to work on the same principles would be the artificial black hole that sits inside the J-reactor. The hole constitutes an intense emission source of hi-radiation; it would stand out like a lighthouse in the local regions of space.”
“So?”
“The Brunnermont surveillance mechanism would detect it straight away. The whole system has been programmed to function as a never-sleeping . . . watchdog, if you like . . . in hi-space. It will fire automatically on any phenomenon of that kind that it identifies. In other words, if we build another J-bomb, Brunnermont will blow it sky-high the first instant we switch it on.”