The Big Eye (5 page)

 

 

David adjusted his tie. "Hear anything new on the saber-rattling up at
the observatory, Joe?" He spoke casually, almost too casually.

 

 

Morgan shook his head. "Same old stuff. The fuse is lying right out
there in the open, inviting somebody to light it. Francis had the radio
on, and to hear the commentators tell about it, this little two-bit
planet is scheduled to blow up any minute now." He grinned a little
sickly. "It's funny."

 

 

"What's funny?"

 

 

"I don't know. Up here, on this nice, remote, clinically clean mountain,
it's hard to get excited about this cold war. But I was down in San Dipgo
last night -- and it's different. The place is like a morgue, most of the
lights are out. And that suits me fine!"

 

 

David stared at him, and Morgan grinned. "Professionally, I mean. Or, to
repeat the old saying, it's an ill wind that blows no good. And I'll show
you why." He reached into a box he had brought from the observatory and
took out a number of photographic plates. "Here. Take a look at these,
Dave. Developed 'em a couple of days ago."

 

 

David picked up a plate, looked at it. It didn't look like much, a few
faint smudges of silver granules on a film of gelatin. "You haven't got
it labeled, Joe. What is it?"

 

 

"Messier 31. One of our more skittish island universes, way about beyond
the suburbs of our own star system. You see how clear it is?"

 

 

David nodded, and Morgan picked up another plate, gave it to him.
"Here's the same thing, taken months ago, before the lights went out
in Dago."

 

 

This spectrograph plate was fogged. "Mostly the scattered blue light of
mercury," explained Morgan. "From the advertising signs in San Diego.
It's been ruining our plates. Remember the last mess with the 100-inch
eye at Mount Wilson? Los Angeles was growing too fast for the observatory
there. The lights began to creep way out in the suburbs, making a nebula
of their own and cluttering up the sky. That white, acrid haze they called
smog climbed right over Mount Wilson, dimming the sky nebulae." David
returned the plate to Morgan, and he restored it to the box. "And now
we've got the same thing, Dave. San Diego's grown almost as big as Los
Angeles in the last ten years, and conditions have been getting worse
every day because of those damned lights."

 

 

"I know," said David. "I went down into Dago with the Old Man when he
delivered a speech before the San Diego-California Club, complaining
about the new neon and electric signs they were putting up. Asked them
for an ordinance to stop it."

 

 

"And what did they say?"

 

 

"Oh, they were very polite about it. But they said the Old Man was asking
too much, he was trying to stop progress."

 

 

"And what did the Old Man say?" asked Morgan.

 

 

David grinned. "You should have been there, Joe. It was wonderful. The Old
Man really laid into 'em. Told them that if they were more interested in
advertising sausages and soap and the latest movie epic than in finding
out the secrets of the universe, then they could have it. If that was
progress, he told them, he was going back to his mountain, where the
air was clean, and never step off it again. Then he walked out."

 

 

"Well," said Morgan thoughtfully, "the Old Man got his wish about the
lights. They've gone out here, and everywhere else, and God knows if
anyone'll ever get a chance to turn 'em on again. And if that's progress,"
he added a little bitterly, "we'd better start retreating backward,
damned quick!"

 

 

The phone rang, and David answered. It was Francis, the steward, calling
from the observatory.

 

 

"Dr. Dawson wants you in his office right away. Dr. Hughes."

 

 

David frowned. It was only eleven-thirty in the morning, an unusual hour
to get a call from the Old Man.

 

 

"What's up, Francis?"

 

 

"I don't know, sir." The steward sounded excited. "General Hawthorne is
due here at any moment. He's flown in from the East, and it's some kind
of extraordinary conference. I've never seen Dr. Dawson so agitated."

 

 

"And you're sure he wants me there?"

 

 

"Yes, Dr. Hughes. At once!"

 

 

Francis hung up, and David, puzzled, told his roommate briefly what
had happened.

 

 

Morgan was impressed. "Sounds like big stuff, Dave. Hawthorne's head of
military intelligence and the key figure in this whole cold war setup
right now. If he says the Russians are about to let us have it, then
we'll try to beat them to the punch. One word from him, one opinion,
and the dynamite goes off, all hell breaks loose. And he wouldn't be
traveling to Palomar, right in the middle of this witch's brew, just to
pass the time of day."

 

 

David agreed soberly. "But this is high-echelon stuff. Why does the Old
Man want me there?"

 

 

Morgan shrugged. "You're his first assistant -- number one boy. And the
Old Man must have his reasons. All I'm sure of is that this meeting
isn't going to be a love feast. You know how the Old Man feels about
Hawthorne and the rest of the brass. And that goes, vice versa."

 

 

A half-hour later David was closeted with the general and Dr. Dawson in
the Old Man's study.

 

 

The general was a big, hulking man with the face and look of a bulldog.
His ice-blue eyes were set deep in his square face, and they snapped
whenever he spoke. He had made his reputation as a young colonel in G-2
during the last World War, the one they called World War H, back in the
forties. In 1955, under the growing tension of the cold war, Congress
had broken up the Civilian Commission for the Control of Atomic Energy,
originally headed by David Lilienthal, and turned it over to the military.

 

 

It was then that Matt Hawthorne had been given four stars, and with it
control not only of the whole atomic program, but of every scientist
connected with it. In the next five years, because of the obvious
integration of this function with the intelligence branch of the military,
he had been authorized to mobilize and use, at his own discretion,
the scientific brains of the United States in every field of endeavor.

 

 

David sat there, fascinated, and watched the two men, General Hawthorne
and Dr. Dawson. The Old Man was sitting back in his chair behind the
desk, watching the general clamp a cigar in his teeth as he paced up
and down the room. Dr. Dawson looked small and almost frail behind the
big desk, a man of sixty-five with a finely chiseled face cast almost
in an ascetic mold and topped by a shock of tousled white hair. Now,
in the light of the hooded lamp on the desk, David saw how gaunt the
Old Man's face had become, how deep the shadows under his eyes, and how
sharply etched the lines around his mouth. He's tired, thought David;
he's got the look of a man almost unbearably weary, a man stretched
taut and close to the breaking point. Only his eyes seemed to be very
much alive against the pallor of his face. They were unnaturally bright,
almost feverish and crackling in their intensity, and as they followed
the general they were wary and hostile.

 

 

They're a couple of heavyweights, thought David, champions in their line,
the best in the business. And they had already squared off; the very air
in that quiet room was electric with their hostility. They had clashed
brusquely, from the moment the general strode into Dr. Dawson's study,
over the question of David's presence there.

 

 

"I told you over the phone that this was to be a private meeting over
an extremely confidential matter," the general had snapped, glancing at
David. "I don't think we want any third party present."

 

 

"Dr. Hughes is my assistant," Dr. Dawson said quietly. "He is here at
my request, he knows the details of my work for the military, and he has
my entire confidence. I think you can count on his discretion, General."

 

 

The general started to say something in protest. Then, with an impatient
wave of the hand, he forfeited the point. It was plain that he had some
larger matter of argument on his mind.

 

 

"Dr. Dawson," he began, "we have just established a new defense
headquarters at an underground location not far from New York City.
At eleven o'clock tomorrow morning there will be an extraordinary meeting
of the General Staff and a select group of scientists. This meeting will
be of the highest importance, and I want you to be there."

 

 

The Old Man stiffened. "May I ask what this meeting will be about.
General?"

 

 

The general stopped his pacing. He flicked the ashes from his cigar,
very deliberately, into an ash tray. Then he turned to the Old Man and
looked him squarely in the eyes.

 

 

"We shall make a rather important decision," he said. "By noon we
shall decide whether we will strike at the Soviet Union immediately,
with every weapon in our arsenal -- or wait for a few more days."

 

 

The room was quiet. David sat there, stunned, watching the Old Man
sitting immobile behind his desk, the general staring at him. Suddenly
David heard the grandfather clock in the corner of the study. It seemed
to grow louder as he listened. Now it was abnormally loud; it seemed
to tick faster and faster, with an accelerated metronomic beat. David
resisted a crazy impulse to rise, to smash the glass face of the clock,
to rip the hands off, to stop that loud and obscene beat, the thing it
was saying, war or peace, war or peace, war or peace.

 

 

War or peace. They or we. Strike or wait. War or peace.

 

 

The Old Man stirred. Finally he spoke, quietly, almost inaudibly.

 

 

"General Hawthorne, why are we forcing this decision? Our policy
is, and has been, not to strike in an undeclared war without moral
justification. The President himself, the State Department, has promised
the people that -- "

 

 

"Bunk!" The general swung around the desk, leaned down, stared
belligerently at the Old Man. "Moral justification! Ethics! Do you
think the Soviets care a damn about nonsense like that?" He stopped,
and then said slowly and deliberately, "Besides, we have plenty of
moral justification -- self-defense. What would you say if I told you
the Russians have already attacked us?"

 

 

The general paused dramatically. But if he expected a reaction from the
Old Man, he was disappointed. As for David, he had half risen from his
chair, fascinated with horror, watching General Hawthorne.

 

 

"I have heard no evidence of any attack," the Old Man said.

 

 

"No," snapped the general. "No, you wouldn't. Not up here on this
mountaintop, maybe. But down in the cities, my dear Doctor, down where
people live, it's different. They're going crazy with rumors, and some
of these rumors are true. We're holding them together by discipline,
in some areas by martial law, and faced by the threat of a national
panic if the people really find out the truth."

 

 

"What truth, General?"

 

 

"I'll give it to you straight, Dr. Dawson. The fact is that the Soviets
have a secret weapon, some kind of new super weapon. We don't know what
it is, we have no countermeasures against it, all we know is that they're
throwing it against us in controlled doses and have been doing so for
the past month. They're using it as a technique of cold war, trying to
smash our morale, to demoralize us and break us down, so that we'll
listen to a deal -- their deal!" The general spat out the word. "But
they may be in for a little surprise. After we finish this East Coast
meeting tomorrow, the whole thing may boomerang back into their damned
Red faces. We've learned a few tricks of our own!"

 

 

He's good, thought David, watching the general. He's hard, and he's
ruthless, and he doesn't scare easily, and he knows his way around. The
Soviet propaganda had built up the Red soldier to scarehead proportions,
a man of physical might with a fanatic contempt of death. But watching
General Hawthorne, under the circumstances, was strangely comforting. If
there had to be a final holocaust, thought David, it was the Hawthornes
who would save the country, or die trying, and the United States was
lucky to have them.

 

 

Dr. Dawson stuck to his point. "How do you know there is a new Soviet
weapon. General?" he said, almost dryly, as though he were posing a
question to some student in a lecture class. "What facts do you have,
what evidence?"

 

 

The general started to pace the floor again. "Dr. Dawson, in the past
month we have undergone a series of phenomena -- unexplained phenomena,
without any scientific rhyme or reason -- freak disasters. The earthquakes
in various sections of the United States where no tremors have ever
been experienced before. The tidal wave that rose out of the sea without
warning, swamping Havana.

 

 

"These erratic changes in the internal pressures of the earth's surface
suggested something possibly astronomical, or cosmic, in nature. We know
that the top men in the Soviet, scientists like Kavenoff and Malvik, have
been working on this type of grand-scale weapon for some time. They've
drawn on the best brains of their satellites, in addition -- Ferenz of
Hungary, Dubois of France, Migliore of Italy, Peterson of Sweden, and
Dietz of Germany." General Hawthorne paused, looked steadily at the
Old Man, and then said with gentle irony: "And as you know, Doctor,
we have been conducting the same line of cosmic research ourselves,
with your own enthusiastic participation."