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“Yes, sir,” Groves repeated. At the moment, he had one, count it, one atomic bomb ready for use. He would not have any more for several weeks. Bradley was supposed to know as much. In case he didn’t, Groves proceeded to spell it out in large red letters.
Bradley nodded. “I do understand that, General. I just don’t like it. Well, the first one will have to rock them back on their heels enough to buy us time to get the next built, that’s all there is to it.”
A flight of American planes, long hoarded against desperate need, roared by at treetop height. The P-40 Kittyhawks had ferocious shark mouths painted on their radiator cowlings. Wing machine guns blazing, they shot up the Lizards’ front-line positions. One of them took out an enemy helicopter, which crashed in flames.
Briefed against heroics that would get them killed, the pilots quickly turned for the run home. Two exploded in midair in quick succession, the second with a blast louder than the other racket on the battlefield. The rest made it back into American-held territory.
“Nice to see the Lizards on the receiving end for a change instead of dishing it out,” Groves said.
Bradley nodded. “I hope those pilots can get down, get out of their planes, and get under cover before any Lizard rockets follow them home.” He had a reputation for being a soldiers’ general, for thinking of his men first. Groves felt a vague twinge of conscience that he hadn’t done the same.
As if to show how the job should be done, a Lizard fighter dove on the American lines like a swooping eagle. Instead of talons, it used two pods full of rockets to rend its foes. Men-and a few women-with red crosses in white circles on helmets and arm-bands ran forward to take the wounded back to aid stations.
“The Lizards don’t shoot at medics on purpose, do they?” Groves said. “They’re better at playing by the rules than the Japs were.”
“You can’t say things like that any more. Japan is on our side now.” A dry tone and a raised eyebrow warned that Bradley did not intend to be taken altogether seriously.
Another Lizard fighter pounded the American positions, this one close enough to Groves and Bradley that both men dove into a dugout to escape bomb fragments and cannon fire. Groves spat out mud. That wasn’t the taste of war he got in his usual theater of operations. He wasn’t used to looking down at himself and seeing a filthy uniform, either.
Bradley took it all in stride, although he wasn’t used to real live combat himself. As calmly as if he were still standing upright, he said, “We’ll want to site the bomb in an area where the Lizards are concentrating troops and materiel. In fact, we’ll do our best to create such an area. The tricky part will be doing it so the Lizards don’t notice what we’re up to till too late.”
“You tell me where you want it, sir, and I’ll get it there for you,” Groves promised, doing his best to match Bradley’s aplomb. “That’s how I earn my salary, after all.”
“No one has anything but praise for the way you’ve handled your project, General,” Bradley said. “When General Marshall-Secretary Marshall, I should say; his second hat takes precedence-sent me here to conduct the defense of Denver, he spoke very highly of you and of the cooperation I could expect from you. I haven’t been disappointed, either.”
Praise from George Marshall was praise indeed. Groves said, “We can get the bomb up to the front either by truck with reinforced suspension or by horse-drawn wagon, which is slower but might be less conspicuous. If we have to, I suppose we can send it up in pieces and assemble it where we’ll set it off. The beast is five feet wide and more than ten feet long, so it comes in a hell of a big crate.”
“Mm, I’ll have to think about that,” Bradley said. “Right now, I’m inclined to vote against it. If I understand correctly. If we lose any of the important parts, we could have all the rest and the thing still wouldn’t work. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” Groves answered. “If you try to start a jeep without a carburetor, you’d better hope you’re not going farther than someplace you can walk.”
Bradley had dirt all over his face, which made his grin seem brighter and more cheerful than it was. “Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to keep from having to use it-we’ve got a counterattack laid on for the Kiowa area, a little bit south of here, for which I have some hope. The Lizards had trouble on the plains southeast of Denver, and they still haven’t fully reorganized in that sector. We may hurt them.” He shrugged. “Or, on the other hand, we may just force them to concentrate and become more vulnerable to the bomb. We won’t know till we try.”
Groves brushed clinging dirt from his shirtfront and the knees of his trousers. “I’ll cooperate in any way you require, sir.” The words didn’t come easy. He’d grown used to being the biggest military fish in the pond in Denver. But he could no more have defended it from the Lizards than Bradley could have ramrodded the Metallurgical Laboratory project.
Bradley waved for his adjutant, a fresh-faced captain. “George, take General Groves back to the University of Denver. He’ll be awaiting our orders there, and prepared to respond to the situation however it develops.”
“Yes, sir.” George looked alarmingly clean and well pressed, as if mud knew better than to stick to him or his clothes. He saluted, then turned to Groves. “If you’ll come with me, sir-”
He had a jeep waiting. Groves had hoped he would; his office was most of a day’s ride away by horseback, and he was so heavy that neither he nor most horses enjoyed the process of equitation. He glanced skyward several times on the way back, though. The Lizards made a point of shooting at motor vehicles and those who rode in them. He managed to return to the university campus unpunctured, for which he was duly grateful.
That evening, a great rumble of gunfire came from the southeast, with flashes lighting the horizon like distant lightning. Groves went up to the roof of the Science Building for a better view, but still could not see much. He hoped the barrage meant the Army was giving the Lizards hell and not the other way around.
The next morning, an aide woke him before the sun rose. “Sir, General Bradley on the telephone for you.”
Groves yawned, rubbed his eyes, ran his hands through his hair, and scratched at his unruly mustache, which was tickling his nose. By the time he’d picked up the telephone, perhaps forty-five seconds after he’d been awakened, he sounded competent and coherent, even if he didn’t feel that way yet. “Groves here.”
“Good morning, General,” Bradley said through static that came from the telephone rather than from Groves’ fuzzy brain-or so he hoped, anyhow. “You remember that package we were discussing yesterday. It looks like we’re going to need it delivered.”
What felt like a jolt of electrici
ty ran up Groves’ spine. All at once, he wasn’t sleepy any more. “Yes, sir,” he said. “As I told you, we’re ready. Ahh-will you want it all in one piece, or shall I send it by installments?”
“One piece would be sooner, wouldn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer, Bradley went on, “You’d better deliver it that way. We’ll want to open it as soon as we can.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll get right on it,” Groves said, and hung up. He threw off his pajamas and started scrambling into his uniform, begrudging even that little time wasted. When Groves said he’d get right on something, he didn’t mess around. He bulled past his aide without aGood morning and headed for the reprocessing plant, where the latest atomic bomb was stored. Soon enough, part of Colorado would go into the fire.
Liu Han’s heart pounded as she approached the little scaly devils’ pavilion that so marred the beauty of the island in the midst of the lake in the Forbidden City. Turning to Nieh Ho-T’ing, she said, “At last, we have a real victory against the little devils.”
Nieh glanced over to her. “You have a victory, you mean. It matters little in the people’s fight against imperialist aggression, except in the propaganda advantages we can wring from it.”
“Ihave a victory,” Liu Han conceded. She didn’t look back at Nieh. As far as she could see, he put ideology and social struggle even ahead of love, whether between a man and a woman or between a mother and a child. A lot of the members of the central committee felt the same way. Liu Han sometimes wondered if they were really human beings, or perhaps little scaly devils doing their best to impersonate people but not quite grasping what made them work.
Nieh said, “I hope you will not let your personal triumph blind you to the importance of the cause you also serve.” He might have less in the way of feelings than an ordinary person-or might just keep those feelings under tighter rein-but he was far from stupid.
