"What should I have done, sir?"
"I don't know what you should have done, but if I were you, I would have lost this photo. The other two are fine. You can't tell what the hell the hostile is. But this one distinctly shows a locomotive."
"You wanted the hostile identified, sir."
"I wanted a reasonable explanation. Something I could kick upstairs with confidence. How am I going to explain this?"
"Recon photos don't lie, sir."
Just then, someone came up to the general. "The White House on the hot line, sir."
The general looked at the clerk like a drunk seeing an old enemy coming out of a bad bottle.
"I'll deal with you later," CINCNORAD said, accepting the red receiver and thinking wistfully that if the damn hostile had only been a nuke, he wouldn't now be in this ridiculous position.
The object did not impact on Washington, D.C.
It came down in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia. It impacted on a golf course, which was itself not unusual. It would have been more unusual had it struck in the Bethesda area and not hit a golf course. Most of official Washington played golf in Bethesda.
The object totally obliterated a sandtrap at the eleventh hole and pulverized several nearby trees. Scorched grass continued to smoke even after an Air Force team led by Major Cheek reached the scene less than an hour later.
After surveying the site and ascertaining no presence of radiation or other lethal agents, Major Cheek called the White House, where a nervous switchboard operator put him through to General Martin S. Leiber.
Before taking the call, General Leiber looked over his shoulder. The President was busy at another phone, trying to learn if Washington had sustained any significant damage. General Leiber turned his attention back to his call. "Give it to me straight."
"It looks like another one, General."
"Can you tell for sure?" General Leiber demanded. He shifted in his seat. He kept the paper-bag-wrapped steam-engine model between his thick thighs, holding it with one hand like a little boy who has to pee but is afraid to ask the teacher if he can be excused.
"I can't, but all the signs are the same. What do we do?"
"Haul it off. Make sure. I want a report as soon as possible. You still have the Metallurgical Consultants on hand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Use 'em. I gotta go."
Sweating, the general put in another call. He was going crazy. He needed answers. Real answers. Serious, scientific answers. Anything. As soon as the President had a handle on the situation upstairs, he was going to remember the package. And General Leiber would have to have a lot more than a plastic steam engine when the President asked.
A man finally picked up the line. "Hello?"
"Bob, this is Marty."
"Marty! Hello. Uh, there's no problem with that last batch of stuff, is there?"
"No, the carbon-carbon was fine. Listen, you're with NASA. You know a lot of scientific space crap.
"I stay informed."
"I got a hypothetical for you."
"Shoot."
"Suppose-just suppose -I wanted to launch something across the Atlantic. Something big."
"How big?"
"Oh, four, five hundred tons."
"That's a lot of throw weight."
"That's what I've been saying."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing. This is strictly theoretical. I want to launch this thing, but I can't have any on-board propulsion. What would do it?"
"Hmmm. Nothing we have at the moment."
"Speculate. There's gotta be some blue-sky launch system that could move that kind of tonnage."
"Well, in another decade or so, we could be launching satellites without rockets. That's the talk."
"Using what?"
"Well, they're just in the theoretical stage. There's a lot of talk that the latest superconductor breakthroughs might be the key. They've got them working on a small scale. They're basically peashooters using magnetic propulsion."
"Magnetic!" the general said excitedly, scribbling on a pad.
"Right. Imagine a rifle that fires a bullet without using gunpowder."
"Yeah!" the general said, writing that down too.
"Those we have. Now imagine one a thousand times bigger. "
"I can see it clear as day," the general said loudly. "That's the next generation of satellite launcher."
"This thing you're talking about. Could it launch a warhead?"
"No problem. You wouldn't need boosters or fuel or anything of that sort. Just load it and press the button."
"How about a locomotive?"
"Come again, General?"
"Could it launch a steam engine? I'm being theoretical here. "
"Into orbit?"
"Maybe. Not necessarily," General Leiber said guardedly. "If someone could build a prototype launcher large enough, sure. But it would have to be nearly a quarter of a mile long."
"Yeah?" the general said, writing the figure down. "How come?"
"To build up the power to throw it. The device I'm talking about would be electromagnetic."
"Electromagnetic!" the general said enthusiastically, writing the word down. After a pause he added the prefix "hyper."
"Hyperelectromagnetic," he said under his breath.
"What's that, General?"
"Nothing," said the general, his pencil poised to write the NASA man's next words after "hyperelectromagnetic." This was great. He didn't need to show the model after all.
"Now, what do they call one of these babies?"
"A rail gun."
The general's pencil lead snapped at the tail of the letter R.
"A what?" he croaked.
"A rail gun."
"You said 'rail'?"
"Yeah, rail. Why? You sound funny."
General Leiber turned to see what the President was doing. The President was coming toward him. He wore a strange expression on his face. It was half-scowl, half-confusion.
"Quick," he whispered. "Give me all the scientific theory you can as fast as you can."
General Leiber scribbled furiously. "I gotta go now, Bob," he said hastily, and hung up. He put on his best smile and turned to face the President. He shifted on his seat and managed to slip the locomotive under him. Another part snapped under his shifting weight and he winced as something-it felt like the cowcatcher-dug into his scrotum.
"You have something for me, Mr. President?"
"NORAD just transmitted these satellite photos." Hesitantly General Leiber accepted the photographs from his Commander in Chief. He looked at the blurred black smear floating above the blue of the Atlantic on the first photo.
"NORAD believes that's your KKV," the President said.
"Mean-looking brute, isn't it?" the general said, flipping to the second photo. It too showed an indistinct blot. The general began to let out his pent breath-then he saw the third photo. He started coughing.
"Have you an explanation for this, General?" the President asked bitingly.
The general got control over his cough.
"Oh!" he said suddenly, jumping to his feet. "I nearly forgot. I was going to show you the KKV model." He presented the President of the United States with the paper-bag-wrapped package.
The President took the package. He tore away the paper with careful fingers. The paper fell to the floor and the President held in both hands a model of a steam locomotive with the cowcatcher askew.
"This is a locomotive," the President said quietly. "Actually, that's the civilian term for it, sir. We in the military prefer to call it a KKV, because, sir, as you can see, sir, while it appears to be a steam locomotive and may well have been built for that purpose, these photographs show conclusively that some dastardly outlaw nation has perverted the designer's original intent. It's a Kinetic Kill Vehicle now. Sir."
"I have one question for you, General."
"Sir?"
"How?"
"As a matter of fact, sir, I have just completed my task analysis of the problem. Obviously the Soviets have beaten us in the rail-gun race."