I had tried to phone Wyoh from catapult head tube station; reached somebody at Old Dome temporary hospital and learned that Wyoh had collapsed and been bedded down herself, with enough sleepy-time to keep her out for night. Finn had gone to Churchill with a capsule of his lads, to lead attack on transport there. Stu I hadn’t heard from. Hong Kong and Prof were still cut off. At moment Mike and I seemed to be total government.
And time to start Operation Hard Rock.
But Hard Rock was not just throwing rocks; was also telling Terra what we were going to do and why–and our just cause for doing so. Prof and Stu and Sheenie and Adam had all worked on it, a dummy-up based on an assumed attack. Now attack had come, and propaganda had to be varied to fit. Mike had already rewritten it and put it through print-out so I could study it.
I looked up from a long roll of paper. “Mike, these news stories and our message to F.N. all assume that we have won in Hong Kong. How sure are you?”
“Probability in excess of eighty-two percent.”
“Is that good enough to send these out?”
“Man, the probability that we will win there, if we haven’t already, approaches certainty. That transport can’t move; the others were dry, or nearly. There isn’t that much monatomic hydrogen in HKL; they would have to come here. Which means moving troops overland by rolligon–a rough trip with the Sun up even for Loonies–then defeat us when they get here. They can’t. This assumes that that transport and its troops are no better armed than the others.”
“How about that repair crew to Bee Ell?”
“I say not to wait. Man, I’ve used your voice freely and made all preparations. Horror pictures, Old Dome and elsewhere, especially Churchill Upper, for video. Stories to match. We should channel news Earthside at once, and announce execution of Hard Rock at same time.”
I took a deep breath. “Execute Operation Hard Rock.”
“Want to give the order yourself? Say it aloud and I’ll match it, voice and choice of words.”
“Go ahead, say it your way. Use my voice and my authority as Minister of Defense and acting head of government. Do it, Mike, throw rocks at ’em! Damn it, big rocks! Hit ’em hard!”
“Righto, Man!”
25
“A maximum of instructive shrecklichkeit with minimum loss of life. None, if possible”–was how Prof summed up doctrine for Operation Hard Rock and was way Mike and I carried it out. Idea was to hit earthworms so hard would convince them–while hitting so gently as not to hurt. Sounds impossible, but wait.
Would necessarily be a delay while rocks fell from Luna to Terra; could be as little as around ten hours to as long as we dared to make it. Departure speed from a catapult is highly critical and a variation on order of one percent could double or halve trajectory time, Luna to Terra. This Mike could do with extreme accuracy–was equally at home with a slow ball, many sorts of curves, or burn it right over plate–and I wish he had pitched for Yankees. But no matter how he threw them, final velocity at Terra would be close to Terra’s escape speed, near enough eleven kilometers per second as to make no difference. That terrible speed results from gravity well shaped by Terra’s mass, eighty times that of Luna, and made no real difference whether Mike pushed a missile gently over well curb or flipped it briskly. Was not muscle that counted but great depth of that well.
So Mike could program rock-throwing to suit time needed for propaganda. He and Prof had settled on three days plus not more than one apparent rotation of Terra–24hrs-50min-28.32sec–to allow our first target to reach initial point of program. You see, while Mike was capable of hooking a missile around Terra and hitting a target on its far side, he could be much more accurate if he could see his target, follow it down by radar during last minutes and nudge it a little for pinpoint accuracy.
We needed this extreme accuracy to achieve maximum frightfulness with minimum-to-zero killing. Call our shots, tell them exactly where they would be hit and at what second–and give them three days to get off that spot.