Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler Read Free Book Online Page A

toward Knapp and Raskob with an animal-like speed. He spoke to them quickly. Raskob's voice was raised in protest. At once General Bogan moved toward him.
    "Now look here, God damn it, General, if we are going to go to war our lives are as involved as yours and I want to know all about it," Raskob said.
    "Who said anything about going to war?" General Bogan asked. Suddenly his voice had a whiplike quality. "Colonel Cascio ordered you out of this room and that was my order he was carrying out."
    "One minute to Fail-Safe."
    Raskob had spread his feet. He had a pyramidal, fundamental, ferocious look about him. General Bogan realized instantly that here was a man used to fighting.
    "Don't try that crap on me, General," Raskob said. "As I read the situation right now we are one minute from going to war and either I am going to get the hell out of here and back to my family in New York or I am going to stay right here and see what happens. The one thing I am not going to do is let you put me off in a toilet or one of these little cells of yours. Not without a fight. I mean that, General."
    "One-half minute to Fail-Safe," the voice said. "Count down will now be by seconds. Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three. . ."
    General Bogan looked at Raskob and knew that he could not get the man out of the room without a fight. There were other things to do. He turned away and spoke to Colonel Cascio.
    "It might not be a commercial plane on a crash angle," he said. "It might be an enemy mocked-up rocket plane which faked a flame-out on all four jet
    engines and then when it got below 500 feet it would be below the effective range of our radar and come in low."
    A look of pain went across Colonel Cascio's face.
    "You are right, General," Colonel Cascio said. "It is a possibility."
    General Bogan realized suddenly that the look of pain was on Cascio's face because he had ignored a point of logic and not because of the situation.
    "Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. . ."
    The teletype on the 41 3-L desk started to datter. The officer in charge of the desk leaned back, away from the tape, so that the other two men could have a dear view of it. The tape came Out at the normal speed but to General Bogan it seemed to emerge with deliberate slowness.
    "UFO has conformation of Boeing 707 but 'grass' obscures total impression," the tape said. "Operators state that despite interference UFO had normal 707 conformation."
    "Eight, seven, six, five. . ."
    On the Big Board the six bomber groups were at the very edge of converging with the green crosses which marked their Fail-Safe points. Each of them was exactly the same distance from its green cross. But the distance was tiny. The blip of the UFO was now invisible although occasionally it glowed and then disappeared. In countless war games General Bogan had seen fighters and even heavy bombers come in so low and fast, jinking, weaving, taking advantage of every• copse of trees and every low hill, and managing to evade the mechanical eye of the radar for hundreds of -miles.
    By a deliberate act of will, as deliberately as uncurling a fist into a hand, General Bogan made himself relax. Even so he felt a single drop of sweat, acid from
    r
    tension, roll slowly down his spine. It did not feel like sweat. It felt like a tiny solid hot piece of shot.
    He had gotten to the Fail-Safe point before but General Bogan had never had a UFO which acted in such a strange way. As he looked at the board three things happened. The mechanical voice said, "All groups at Fail-Safe point." And the six bomber blips simultaneously and beautifully merged with their green crosses.
    The teletype on the 41 3-L desk began to clatter again. General Bogan's head turned about. As it did he saw the faces of Knapp and Raskob. Raskob's jaw was set. His eyes were unafraid. His shrewd, intelligent face understood perfectly what was happening. Knapp seemed mesmerized by the machinery. General Bogan had the impression that he did not realize what