what amounted to protective custody—imprisonment. That included Manning
himself. I could go because I did not have the secret—I could not even have
acquired it without years of schooling—and what I did not know I could not
tell, even under, well, drugs. We were determined to keep the secret as
long as we could to consolidate the Pax; we did not distrust our English
cousins, but they were Britishers, with a first loyalty to the British
Empire. No need to tempt them.
I was picked because I understood the background if not the science, and
because Manning trusted me. I don’t know why the President trusted me, too,
but then my job was not complicated.
We took off from the new field outside Baltimore on a cold, raw afternoon
which matched my own feelings. I had an all-gone feeling in my stomach, a
runny nose, and, buttoned inside my clothes, papers appointing me a special
agent of the President of the United States. They were odd papers, papers
without precedent; they did not simply give me the usual diplomatic
immunity; they made my person very nearly as sacred as that of the
President himself.
At Nova Scotia we touched ground to refuel the F. B. I. men left us, we
took off again, and the Canadian transfighters took their stations around
us. All the dust we were sending was in my plane; if the President’s
representative were shot down, the dust would go to the bottom with him.
No need to tell of the crossing. I was airsick and miserable, in spite of
the steadiness of the new six-engined jobs. I felt like a hangman on the
way to an execution, and wished to God that I were a boy again, with
nothing more momentous than a debate contest, or a track meet, to worry me.
There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I
could not see it, the cabin being shuttered. Our pilot—captain ignored it
and brought his ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, I suppose,
though I did not know nor care. I would have welcomed a crash. Then the
lights outside went on and I saw that we had come to rest in an underground
hangar.
I stayed in the ship. The commandant came to see me to his quarters as his
guest. I shook my head. “I stay here,” I said. “Orders. You are to treat
this ship as United States soil, you know.”
He seemed miffed, but compromised by having dinner served for both of us in
my ship.
There was a really embarrassing situation the next day. I was commanded to
appear for a royal audience. But I had my instructions and I stuck to them.
I was sitting on that cargo of dust until the President told me what to do
with it. Late in the day I was called on by a member of Parliament—nobody
admitted out loud that it was the Prime Minister—and a Mr. Windsor. The M.
P. did most of the talking and I answered his questions. My other guest
said very little and spoke slowly with some difficulty. But I got a very
favorable impression of him. He seemed to be a man who was carrying a load
beyond human strength and carrying it heroically.
There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little
longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split-second intensity
of imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was
using the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two
face-to-face television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President
spoke German fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to
the warring peoples themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the
continent were able to listen, the police regulations there being what they
were.
The Ambassador for the Reich was given a special demonstration of the
effect of the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western
prairie and allowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of