Kepinsky shook his head. “It is a long slow process; I know this. They are very skillful men. Very privately I tell you that in some respects they are ahead of us.”
“It is best that you not say that publicly.”
“I have no such intention,” Kepinsky agreed. “I tell you because you are entitled to know everything.”
The security man was properly flattered. “I shall say nothing. You have been down again?”
“Yes,” Kepinsky lied. The guards could disprove him, but he knew they would not be questioned.
“You are a brave man,” the security chief said, and drove away. Like many others he placed a higher value on the lives of his own people than he did on those who had been subjugated.
After the chief was once more out of sight, Kepinsky, for lack of anything better to do, looked up into the sky. Overhead the massive bulk of the heavy lift crane obscured many of the stars. In the east, across the waters of the bay, the first very faint hints of lightening were beginning to show. It was probably the false dawn, he thought, but when the real one came he would receive credit for having been continuously on the job throughout the night. He was not a warlike man; he had chosen to become a scientist and had expected to work only in his own homeland. Now he was standing on a shipyard pier many thousands of miles from the home that he loved and from his small family that had seen him off with tear-streaked faces. He thought about them and wondered if they would enjoy life in this new land.
He was colder now and he wanted very much to go to bed. He crossed the pier to the north side and seeking the even darker shadow of one of the crane’s legs he urinated into the water. He felt much better after he had finished; he had not been aware of the pressure that had been building inside his bladder; it was like that sometimes when his mind was fully occupied elsewhere. He looked toward the east once more and saw that the sky was perceptibly lighter — it was later in the decaying night than he had thought. He looked again at the submarine, then at the radiation level indicator. For the first time the reading had changed; it was encouragingly lower. The Americans, he had to admit, were good. They had worked the whole nuclear thing out in the first place; Russia had gotten it through Fuchs, MacLean, the Rosenbergs, and the others who had fed them the secrets and saved them years of laborious research. After that France had come into the picture, England, and the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese had botched it; there were strong rumors of nuclear disasters at their testing grounds. How the Americans had ever been conquered was something that he did not understand. The word “subversion” was often used, but that sort of thing was out of his ken. He had at first hoped that he might see America one day as a visiting scientist, but that was not the way it had worked out.
He was cold and it was sure to be much warmer inside the submarine. And the decontamination suits were warm too. Plus which it was undoubtedly his duty to take one more look; the meter indicated that things were coming under control and he could confirm it when he was asked. He went to the brow and called to a man who was on the deck.
Morrison, when he appeared, did his best to dissuade him, but Kepinsky knew what would be expected of him; despite the consideration he was being shown he felt he had to insist. Once more a man was called on deck to give him his suit and once more he went through all of the motions of being properly encased in the radiation protection.
He went down the hatch feeling a little better; the chill was already disappearing from his body and he was in an environment that appealed to him even though the circumstances were far from agreeable. Obviously the Americans were doing well; when he saw the results himself he wondered if it would be within his dignity as a member of the occupying forces to commend them on their work. Someday all men would have to get along together, and that would be accomplished only through millions of relatively small personal contacts. He would see.
He went to the power compartment with no suspicions whatever. He began to look about him and then he realized something; the reactor pile was working — it had to be. That meant only one thing, and in a startling, upheaving moment of revelation he saw the whole truth. He stood stock-still and used his brain; then he turned and raised both of his enclosed arms in front of him, placing his palms together in an unmistakable gesture. He walked quickly out of the compartment and went forward. He made no attempt to go up the hatch when he passed the ladder, but he held his arms up in a gesture of surrender.
When he had gone as far as he was able he pulled off his headpiece and faced the several men who had followed him. The man immediately behind him took off his own headgear and revealed a strange face, hard-set and determined. “You are escaping,” Kepinsky said.
‘Yes, we are.” It was the exec, although Kepinsky did not know that.
“Please, who is in charge?”
“I will do.”
Kepinsky gathered all of the courage he could muster. “Please take me. If stay, I am shoot.” He stopped. He wanted greatly to put his case more eloquently, but his knowledge of English was largely only a reading skill for technical material.
The executive officer hesitated for a bare moment. In that interval Kepinsky remembered a phrase he had read. “Political asylum,” he said.
Another man pushed by and came forward. Kepinsky reacted when he saw him, for despite his smaller stature he realized who he was.
“He knows, captain,” the exec explained. “He’s asking for political asylum — he wants to come with us.”
“Political asylum?”
“Yes, sir. We had every intention of taking action, but he raised his arms…”
“I understand.”
“I help,” Kepinsky pleaded. “Will work.”
Morrison ventured to speak. “He’s been decent enough, sir, just doing his job.”
The captain wasted no more time. “Asylum granted. The first misstep of any kind — dispose of him.”
Kepinsky’s face burst out in sweat. Morrison pushed him by the arm into a tiny cabin and quickly posted a guard; there wasn’t time for anything else.
The captain had already left to return to the con. He glanced at his watch, then dismissed the matter of the unwanted guest from his mind — Morrison was highly responsible and would take care of it.
The quartermaster spoke. “Eleven minutes.”
The captain heard but did not answer; his mind was totally on his ship and the job immediately ahead. The long night was all but past and the near impossible had been accomplished; the screw had been cleared, the pile had been lit, and power was ready. All of this had been done directly under the eyes of the enemy by a group of icy-nerved, exceptionally resourceful men. Navy men. Then in a moment of strict fairness he conceded that the Air Force was good when it had anything to fly, the Army too, and of course the Marine Corps. That mental obligation discharged, he turned back completely to the mission at hand. “Final check,” he ordered.
The departments reported quickly; the crew was in command of the ship even though she was still tied to the dock and under the barrel of a rapid-fire field gun that could pierce her hull with a single round. The responses were all affirmative; the Magsaysay was ready. The captain looked once more at his watch, then folded his arms and stood still in the middle of the con. All he could do now was wait.
Colonel Gregor Rostovitch had had a very large evening and night. He had not had a woman for some time and the need for one had been growing on him. He had had no time for any niceties or any desire to be subtle; he had given orders that he was to be provided with a qualified female, and he had expected results. Then he had returned in savage mood to his self-assigned task of ferreting out the American underground organization. It was not going well. The usual devices were not bringing in the leads; no convenient informers had appeared since the incident in the Midwest, and that had concerned only an impotent group of college students. The colonel wanted and demanded more action; he maneuvered an increasingly large number of agents into every critical area that he could pinpoint and read their reports with total attention, but the solid results were not there. Whoever his opponent was, whoever was playing the game from the other side of the board, was no amateur and the fact that no evidence of activity had appeared above the surface meant nothing. Something had to be going on; the colonel knew that, and he was determined to find out what it was. When he did he would smash it: smash it so hard that no one else would dare to challenge the new authority that had been clamped onto the United States of America.