before that.
The President said, “Sit down, deFries. Care to smoke?” Then to Manning.
“You think he can do it?”
“I think he’ll have to. It’s Hobson’s choice.”
“And you are sure of him?”
“He was my campaign manager.”
“I see”
The President said nothing more for a while and God knows I didn’t!—though
I was bursting to know what they were talking about. He commenced again
with, “Colonel Manning, I intend to follow the procedure you have
suggested, with the changes we discussed. But I will be down tomorrow to
see for myself that the dust will do what you say it will. Can you prepare
a demonstration?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Very well, We will use Captain deFries unless I think of a better
procedure.” I thought for a moment that they planned to use me for a guinea
pig! But he turned to me and continued, “Captain, I expect to send you to
England as my representative.”
I gulped. “Yes, Mr. President.” And that is every word I had to say in
calling on the President of the United States.
After that, Manning had to tell me a lot of things he had on his mind. I am
going to try to relate them as carefully as possible, even at the risk of
being dull and obvious and of repeating things that are common knowledge.
We had a weapon that could not be stopped. Any type of K-O dust scattered
over an area rendered that area uninhabitable for a length of time that
depended on the half-life of the radioactivity.
Period. Full stop.
Once an area was dusted there was nothing that could be done about it until
the radioactivity had fallen off to the point where it was no longer
harmful. The dust could not be cleaned out; it was everywhere. There was no
possible way to counteract it—burn it, combine it chemically; the
radioactive isotope was still there, still radio-active, still deadly. Once
used on a stretch of land, for a predetermined length of time that piece of
earth would not tolerate life.
It was extremely simple to use. No complicated bomb sights were needed, no
care need be taken to hit “military objectives.” Take it aloft in any sort
of aircraft, attain a position more or less over the area you wish to
sterilize, and drop the stuff. Those on the ground in the contaminated area
are dead men, dead in an hour, a day, a week, a month, depending on the
degree of the infection—but dead.
Manning told me that he had once seriously considered, in the middle of the
night, recommending that every single person, including himself, who knew
the Karst-Obre technique be put to death, in the interests of all
civilization. But he had realized the next day that it had been sheer funk;
the technique was certain in time to be rediscovered by someone else.
Furthermore, it would not do to wait, to refrain from using the grisly
power, until someone else perfected it and used it. The only possible
chance to keep the world from being turned into one huge morgue was for us
to use the power first and drastically—get the upper hand and keep it.
We were not at war, legally, yet we had been in the war up to our necks
with our weight on the side of democracy since 1940. Manning had proposed
to the President that we turn a supply of the dust over to Great Britain,
under conditions we specified, and enable them thereby to force a peace.
But the terms of the peace would be dictated by the United States—for we
were not turning over the secret.
After that, the Pax Americana.
The United States was having power thrust on it, willy-nilly. We had to
accept it and enforce a world-wide peace, ruthlessly and drastically, or it
would be seized by some other nation. There could not be coequals in the
possession of this weapon. The factor of time predominated.
I was selected to handle the details in England because Manning insisted,
and the President agreed with him, that every person technically acquainted
with the Karst-Obre process should remain on the laboratory reservation in