As he shined the torch at the larger chamber beyond, a grin flickered on his rips. The impassive gray faceting reflected the beam back in a myriad of dull gleams. “Here’s thanks for you,” he murmured.
Twenty minutes. He could be down the tunnel and two miles away. He pulled a knife from his trouser pocket and sliced away the crotch strap on the jacket, then shrugged it off and flung it aside. He slid along the horizontal tunnel, ignoring the heat of the friction on his elbows and butt, and stopped long enough to take a deep breath and prepare to shinny down the chimney. Instinctively wary of heading into even the most familiar darkness, he played his torch beam down.
Three yards below, the beam met a dead end.
Rogers stared at the blockage in disbelief.
It might have been there through all eternity, a flat plug as dark and featureless as the walls of the chimney itself.
“Holy Christ,” he said.
Eighteen minutes.
He was out of the horizontal tunnel and beside the bomb before he could even think. With amazing dexterity, he had the cover plate open and his finger on the cutoff switch. And then he froze, his face wet with sweat, salty drops stinging his eyes.
No way out. Even if he stopped the timer on the monkey, he could not think of any way he could escape. A dozen unlikely possibilities lined themselves up in panicky parade. Perhaps another opening had been made elsewhere. Perhaps the bogey was coming alive, finally, even preparing to lift off.
Perhaps a bargain was being struck.
Deactivate the bomb, and we’ll let you go.
He backed away from the cylinder, his torch swinging back and forth on the floor nearby. Why did it close up? Has it been active all along, watching us, guessing everything we’d do?
He propped himself against the curve of the antechamber near the horizontal tunnel. Sixteen minutes.
In five or six minutes, it probably wouldn’t matter whether he got out or not. He wouldn’t be far enough away from the bogey to survive the hail of shrapnel. He could not conceive of any vessel, even the size of a small mountain, withstanding an internal blast of three kilotons.
Rogers shook his head slowly, trying to concentrate, keep his mind from wandering. He could turn off the weapon and see if the way was opened again. Tit for tat. Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Sorry, it was all a big misunderstanding.
Kneeling beside the monkey, he again reached out for the switch.
You know, this is the first time we’ve actually gotten a reaction.
He thought that over, biting his lower lip, fingers tensing and relaxing over the switch.
“Maybe you feel threatened,” he said aloud. “Maybe for the first time we’re getting through to you.”
Somehow, that wasn’t convincing.
He could not bring himself to flip the switch. He would not be able to reset the timer if he shut the weapon off; the lieutenant had not shown him how to do that.
Fourteen minutes.
The first blow for our side. I’m in charge.
He sat down beside the monkey, reaching out to bring up the radiation jacket and drape it over his knees. Quandary.
The silence within the chamber was absolute.
“If you’re listening, damn you, then talk to me,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.” He chuckled and that sound scared him worst of all, for it told him how close he really was to flipping the switch. He might see his wife and kid again if he flipped the switch; they might not have to receive and read the letter he had posted on his bulletin board. He could see Clare’s face, mourning, and his chest hurt.
William’s face, sweet five-year-old deviltry pure.
What would he think of himself if he deactivated?
His career might as well be over. He would have fallen back in the face of enemy action and jeopardized their entire defense effort. Others had risked their careers, perhaps even their lives. Rogers did not, right now, want to contemplate how many people up the line had helped to procure this weapon, and how they felt at this moment: possible traitors, lawbreakers, risk-takers. Acting in defiance of the President. Mutineers, rebels,
“God damn, you know us so well,” he said to the darkness. “You’ve twisted us every which way, so casual, and now you think you’ve got us again.” No reply.
The silence of deep space. Eternities.
Twelve minutes.
How many times would his hand reach out, the body pleading, and how many times would something undefined pull it back?
“I won’t touch it. Come on out and deactivate it yourself. Maybe I won’t put up a fight. Maybe we have something in common now!”
He was hyperventilating. Clasping his hands before his mouth, he tried to rebreathe each gulp of air and slow his frantic lungs. Did judgment of one’s courage, valor, require the appearance of nobility, or was an act alone sufficient? If by the end of the — he checked — eleven minutes, he was on the floor, a screaming, weeping madman capable only of keeping his finger away from the switch, would he still get to the Army Valhalla and toss off a few with all the dead heroes? Or would he be turned away, sent to the showers? Wash off that stink of fear, soldier.
He didn’t want Valhalla. He wanted Clare and William. He wanted to say good-bye in more words than he had put in the letter. In person.
“Please God, let me be calm,” he said hoarsely. He flattened his cupped hands into a gesture of prayer, pinching the tip of his nose between his index fingers, closing his eyes. It might have been easier if he had brought a pistol along. “Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ.”
Don’t let me fuck this one up. Dear God keep my hand from that switch. Hit them back hit them back in the face. God I know you don’t take sides but I’m a soldier God and this is what I have to do. Take care of them please Lord of all of us and help us save our home our world. Let this mean something please God.
Nine minutes. He crawled down the horizontal tunnel again and saw the plug was still in place. To make sure it was solid, and not just an illusion, he jumped the three yards and landed his feet squarely on the flat grayness, flexing his knees to break the shock, slamming his elbows and lower arms against the chimney wall. Solid. He stomped on it several times. Nothing. Grimacing from his bruised heels, he braced himself and climbed out of the well, returning to the antechamber.
He refused to allow himself to get closer than six feet from the monkey.
Another way out.
Not likely.
Tit for tat.
“What are you doing, learning more about us, setting up another experiment? Will I or won’t I?” He stood on the edge of the antechamber, waving his torch beam across the semiglossy cathedral facets. “I can’t make sense out of any of this. Why did you come here? Why can’t you just go away, leave me with my wife and family?”
That was enough talking, and a fine sentiment to end all the words he had ever spoken. No more words, he vowed. He broke the vow immediately. Breaking small vows helped him keep to the big one.
“So why don’t we talk? I’m not going to push that switch. I won’t be around to tell anybody. Talk to me, show me what you’re all about.”
Five minutes.
“I hear you might have gone clear across this galaxy, gone from star to star. You’re part of a planet-eating machine. That’s what the newspapers are saying. Lots of people speculating. Aren’t you curious what we’d think, what I’d think if I knew the truth? So talk to me.” Give me something to hang on to. Some reason. “I’m not touching that switch! That bomb is going to go off.”
What if it didn’t?
What if he had to spend the next few weeks in here, dying of thirst, all for nothing, because the aliens had found some way to deactivate the weapon? What if they kept him there to starve just as punishment for trying?