Halupalai felt, rather than heard, Tyler’s grunt. The navigator started to go down, but Halupalai went first, one of his legs plunging into the open well to the basement. He teetered briefly, give one last painful wrench at the handgun, and lost his balance, careening backward into the steel seat braces. He heard the gun clanging faintly as it skittered across the metal floor. For a moment his head spun goofily and he couldn’t move, his leg tangled in the ladder, his back aching where the two sharp-edged braces—the ejection tracks—stabbed into his shoulder blades.
Groggily, he saw Moreau, wheeling out of her seat and Tyler on his hands and knees between them, groping for the weapon. Halupalai let out a wild, animal yell and flung himself at Tyler, catching him by the collar. He pulled with such desperate strength that the young navigator flipped backward in a half-somersault, his legs flailing upward, his head crashing down over the edge of the open well. Halupalai heard the crack, even over the engine noise. It was not the noise of the Buff’s aging back as it roared over the ridge. It was a crack he had heard only in his youthful imagination—the quick, clean spinal snap of a haole caught in a wave he had not been meant to ride.
Moreau stood at the front of the plane, staring vacantly at the scene. The music clawed through her helmet, scratchily huzzing in and out as the beam faded and reemerged. Helter-skelter… huzz… birds flew off to the fallout shelter… huzz got up to dance… huzz… never gotthe chance… She pounded at the helmet with two clenched fists. Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Slowly she bent over into the darkness behind the pilot, retrieved the .45, removed the clip, and dropped both on her seat. Kazakhs looked at her desolately. Generation lost in space… “Four little robots,” Moreau said emptily. No time to start again… Moreau reached to pull the radio plug. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Squire sat on a candlestick… Then there was only the roar of the engines, and she started down the narrow walkway.
It was clear at a glance that Tyler was dead. His head wobbled loosely but peacefully in the open well, only the vibration of the aircraft stirring him now. She examined him most briefly, then looked up at Halupalai. The big Hawaiian stood with his back pressed awkwardly against the far wall of the defensive station, his arms spread slightly. Moreau reached out to comfort him, but Halupalai pushed back more tightly, as if he wanted to withdraw beyond the barrier. Moreau smiled wanly at him—poor, lost, gentle friend—and knelt beside the well hatch. She carefully took Tyler’s lolling head in her hands, edged it over to a resting place on the deck, and started down the ladder.
She first saw O’Toole stretched tranquilly in the alcove, his body faintly luminous in the red light. Then she turned toward Radnor and her knees buckled. She grabbed Tyler’s seat to support herself, then sagged into it. She laid a hand on Radnor’s sandy hair, tenderly stroked it, and gently moved him upright, briefly catching and then forever avoiding his faint smile.
Moreau shrieked. “No-o-o-o-o-o-o!” In the aircraft no one heard her. She plugged in the radio cord. In the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed… “No-o-o-o-o-o-o!” Not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken… She pulled herself erect and switched the radio to all channels, so she could speak through the dirge.
“Three little robots,” she said dully.
“Moreau?” The alarmed voice of Kazakhs cut through the hollow rhythms.
The three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died… Moreau lifted a leaden arm to disconnect the radio. They were singing bye-bye. Miss American pie… And the sounds were gone again, the endless drone back, and Moreau stared into Tyler’s screen, its whirling arm seeing no high terrain, no pulsing clouds, no incognitos. Moreau placed her head in her hands, and she cried.
“So what do you folks do, Alice, when one of your crews goes gutless?”
Alice floundered. He looked up from the black phone, his eyes pleading with Sam. Sam shrugged.
“Sir, there’s no precedent—”
“Hell with precedent! No precedent for nothin’ tonight!”
“Normally, sir, we’d send up interceptors,” Alice said weakly, “and try to bring them down.”
“Shoot ’em down?”
“If necessary. We’d try to force them to land first.”
“Land.” The scom cut across the distance. “Then you’d shoot ’em. What’s the difference? Deserters are deserters. Shoot ’em down.”
“Good God, Condor—”
“And stop callin’ me Condor, dammit. This is your President speakin’, not some damned dyin’ bird.”
Alice felt the blood rise in his face. “Sir, ears are opening. They can mouse us. We can mouse them. We’re getting the first bits of messages moving inside Russia.”
There was a pause. “You don’t think you should’ve told your… me… about that, Alice?”
“Sir, we can’t make sense out of it yet. It’s snatches. Bits and pieces. All we can determine is they’re rattled. Just as we are.”
“You think we’re rattled?”
Alice sighed. “Yes, sir.” The general felt someone hovering at his elbow. He impatiently brushed the figure back.
“I’m gonna tell you somethin’, Alice. Straight out. Thing that’s rattlin’ me most is my own damned military geniuses.”
Alice took a deep breath. “In this one, sir, there are no military geniuses.” The figure tugged persistently at his sleeve. He turned angrily and saw his communications officer waving papers at him. “Excuse me a moment, sir,” Alice said, cupping the phone. He could hear protests squawking out of the receiver. “For Christ’s sake, lieutenant, I’m talking to your Commander-in-Chief,” he snapped at the young woman.
“He needs to know this, sir,” she replied, unyielding. “The Bisons have turned. Shortly after Polar Bear One turned, the Soviet squadron approaching them also turned.”
Alice looked at her in disbelief. “You positive?”
“Positive?” The woman shrugged. “Tonight?” She shrugged again. “I’m as sure as I am about Polar Bear One. Same data. Same source.”
Alice scanned the readouts hurriedly. “And the rest of them?” he asked.
“Proceeding, sir. As before.”
Alice stared into the black phone, from which he could hear a persistent babble tugging at him. To the general it seemed an eternity before he spoke into the phone again.
Beneath the Maryland farmlands, the dismayed radio operator ran his fingers through his still-damp hair, massaging the roots thoughtfully. He could hear the hum of the giant turbines, one floor below, methodically cleansing their air. It wasn’t that dirty out there, he thought. Yet. He glanced at the bank of telegraph machines to his left, leafing through the last printouts. Routine stuff until almost an hour after his midnight shift had begun. A string of the usual fifteen-minute communications checks in Greenwich mean time: “NORAD COMM CHECK 0500 CHEYENNE…. NORAD COMM CHECK 0515 CHEYENNE.” The last had come at 0545, followed by a gushing volume of increasing status alerts, urgent alarms, and finally the list of impact areas. Then the machine stopped at 0630 and the paper roll was blank. He glanced at a clock marked Zulu—1204. Four minutes past seven. The sun would be coming up soon. He turned to the tall balding man watching him.