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Authors: Leonard Wibberley

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“Nothing could survive,” Senator Griffin said, more to himself than to the others.

Dr. Kokintz looked sadly at the President. “It has been most interesting work,” he said, “though there have been times when I felt the same compassion for you that Mephistopheles had for Faust. When one is engaged alone, as I have been, in a project of this nature, the very mental isolation from one’s fellows; the impossibility of imparting one vestige of knowledge to them; the increasing and inevitable sense of a godlike power over the mass of humanity, threatens to change the character one builds from childhood.” He smiled a little wryly.

“I felt at times,” he continued, “that you and all mankind had sold your souls to me for the secret represented by that,” and he pointed to the cylinder of quadium. “Even now I am not convinced that all our souls are not forfeit, or at least in jeopardy, as a result of this work. That is what I mean when I talk of Mephistopheles and Faust.

“But, Mr. President, I do not want to be Mephistopheles any more. I want to be a human being again. And as a human being, I want to ask you: do not make this bomb. Do not let it be us, we, the Americans, to whom the Old World has looked for so long, who kill off one quarter or one third of the people on this earth and leave the rest and their children for generations after, to face a fate which we ourselves cannot foretell with any certainty.”

It was not the President who replied, but the Secretary of Defence. He spoke in a clipped, metallic voice, quite different from his normal, hesitant tone.

“It is not our choice,” he said. “The time is running short. Two to five years you estimate. Perhaps less than that. We have got nowhere with attempts at control, even of the atom bomb. Whoever has the quadium bomb first, has the best chance of survival. This bomb promises world mastery, though of a monstrous kind. The others want mastery, and they prefer a monstrous sort. It is either we who are the masters, or they, and the world, I believe, would prefer it to be us.

“It is not a role we choose, but one which is forced upon us. And every hour counts. They would never agree not to use such a weapon.”

“There is no other way? No hope of agreement? No compromise?” Kokintz asked.

“None,” said the secretary.

The President picked up the cylinder of quadium and gave it to the scientist, who put it reluctantly in his tobacco pouch.

“Dr. Kokintz,” the President said, “I understand that though you have lived the greater part of your life in America, you were not born in the United States. Do you mind my asking what was your native land?”

“You have probably never heard of it,” Kokintz replied, a little surprised. “Indeed, I can scarcely remember it myself. It is a place in the northern foothills of the Alps. A little independent duchy called Grand Fenwick.”

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

The newspapers of May 6 that year blazoned the story that sometime in the near future, on a day and at an hour which was to be kept secret even from the President, a full-scale air raid alarm would be enforced for the whole east coast of the United States. This was not to be a mere howling of sirens clearing traffic and people off the streets for ten minutes, and then an all clear with no one particularly disturbed and half the population unaware that anything untoward had taken place.

 

In view of the development of weapons against which no complete defence has yet been devised (the official announcement from the Department of Defence read) it is necessary to bring home to each and every member of the public the need for attending to his individual preservation.

The duration of the alert will be for twenty-four hours or even longer. During that time no one is to leave whatever place he or she may be in, other than to go to an air-raid shelter. Those in their homes, far from any official shelter, must stay there. Air-raid wardens, with the support of the military establishment, have instructions to see that nobody leaves his or her residence, even to search for children who may be out playing or at school, once the alarm has been sounded. It will not be permitted to leave homes or office buildings to obtain food. Restaurants, groceries, and dairies, in common with other businesses, will be closed down. Extra food should be laid in in advance.

Children in school or out playing will be taken to shelters and cared for by the Civil Defence Organization, as will adults in the open at the time of the alert.

Do not use the telephone. Jamming of lines in case of a real attack might well cause the loss of hundreds of lives through essential calls not being able to get through.

Do not turn on water faucets. A heavy demand on mains during actual attack could result in firemen being unable to deal with serious fires. Gas must be turned off. Electric current may remain connected so that the public can listen to developments on the radio.

Cars and buses on the streets at the time of the alert are to be abandoned, and the passengers are to go immediately to the nearest air-raid shelter. Subway trains are to take their passengers to the nearest station and disembark them there. The passengers will remain in the station where emergency feeding arrangements have already been established for them.

Ships in east coast harbours, capable of doing so, will proceed immediately to sea. Personnel aboard other ships will evacuate their vessels and go to air-raid shelters.

During the attack, key groups of defence workers, wearing special coverings designed to give them protection from lethal radiation, will undertake special missions. They will visit a number of key buildings in the course of these duties. They are on no account to be impeded or interfered with in any way.

 

Then followed a long list of things which people might do to provide for the alert, and at the end the admonition: “This is an exercise in preparing for the preservation of yourself, your community, and your nation. It is essential that you do your part.”

The warning of the coming alert was broadcast, courtesy of numerous automobile dealers, soap, soup, canned meat, furniture, and other manufacturers, every fifteen minutes twenty-four hours a day for a week. The same warning was given, at the same intervals and courtesy of much the same sponsors, over television. The Broadway regulars chuckled over the quip of a night club comedian that, “This disaster comes to you courtesy of the Cosmopolitan Life Insurance Company.” As the days passed, and the warnings continued through every medium of communication--the Press, the radio, television, the cinema, from the pulpit, and in a host of pronouncements from everyone with the slightest claim to public attention, a mild hysteria began to develop and manifest itself in a series of curious reactions.

A rumour, traced to a Brooklyn storekeeper, that salami was the only food acknowledged to be proof against atomic contamination produced such a demand for the sausage that within twenty-four hours there was not a pound of salami to be had in the whole of New York City. A case was reported from the Bronx of a man who had sold his house for two hundred pounds of salami. A food-store proprietor on Staten Island told police that a widow with eight children had offered him her baby for only five pounds of the meat. Eventually, the
New York Times
was compelled to interview half a dozen well-known physicists and obtain from each of them a statement that salami had no special virtues as a food in case of atomic attack. The reporter who obtained the interviews was recommended for a Pulitzer prize.

Hardly had the salami furore died down than another, concerning alcohol, arose. Someone recalled that the United States Navy, in an experiment carried out on mice, had made the fascinating discovery that mice, fed enough alcohol to make them paralytic drunk, and then subjected to gamma rays in lethal concentrations, had come through the experience without as much as a hangover. The navy had arrived at two cautious conclusions as a result of the experiment. The first, that mice could hold, by comparison, twice as much alcohol as man without becoming intoxicated. The second, that a high percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream of mammals seemed to provide an uncertain but definite degree of immunity from the radiation released by atomic or other nuclear explosions.

The run on bars and liquor stores, when the story gained circulation, exceeded even that which took place following the repeal of prohibition. A form of drunkenness christened “blitz plotz” by a copy-reader on the
New York Daily News
became acceptable in even the most rigid social circles. Millions took to carrying hip flasks as they had during prohibition. Elderly ladies and high-school students held it prudent to carry a snort of rye, bourbon, Scotch, gin, or vodka in their handbags, and “Have a life-saver on me” became a familiar and kindly greeting in business circles.

The
Herald Tribune,
jealous of the salami service of the
Times,
undertook to expose the “blitz plotz” fallacy, but ran into unexpected and humiliating difficulties. In the first instance the public, once convinced that it was a patriotic and personally wise precaution to keep a pleasant buzz on all day and night, was loath to be persuaded otherwise. They liked the idea, and circulation of the
Tribune
commenced to fall off from the opening of the anti-blitz plotz campaign. Then the attempt to obtain forthright statements from scientists to the effect that alcohol provided no protection at all from atomic radiation was only partially successful. The scientists themselves were convinced that it was not so. The evidence of the mice was irrefutable, so far as mice were concerned, they pointed out. While this did not necessarily apply to man, the possibility that it did could not be ruled out. A close parallel between mice and men had been demonstrated in a number of other conditions. Not a scientist could be found who would go on record with a flat statement that intoxication provided no immunity for gamma radiation.

In desperation, the editor of the
Tribune
himself called on Dr. Kokintz in the special laboratory established for him on the second floor of the administration building of Columbia University, and asked him bluntly, “Dr. Kokintz, would you yourself recommend being drunk during an attack by nuclear weapons?”

Kokintz peered at him through his thick glasses and said, “What else? What else?”

“But,” persisted the editor, “are chances of survival greater for the individual if he is intoxicated?”

“With the weapons we have at the present time,” Kokintz replied gravely, “neither sobriety nor intoxication will make any difference. There are no chances of survival.”

After thinking this statement over, the editor decided to wind up the campaign with a series of statements from the clergy and prominent social workers.

That evening, he dropped in at the St. Regis and had one of their giant martinis in the King Cole Bar. It was, he reflected as he drank it, a completely subconscious reaction--the same kind of unreasoned and primitive urge that drives men to duck their heads when a building falls on them. He decided he would have another while he thought about the matter.

 

Gradually, but definitely, what had been intended as warning of a mere practice alert, though on an unprecedented scale, evolved, as a result of the mass publicity, the insistent and inescapable repetitions, the emphasis on the omnipotence of the weapon which had inspired the exercise, into a warning of an actual alert in the public mind. The attempts to put down the salami rumour and the alcohol rumour were taken as positive proof that the real thing was to be expected. The belief grew that the United States Government had received secret information that a genuine attack with atomic weapons or even worse was to be launched on the east coast. And then, from a mild hysteria, a form of panic developed.

It started with a demand by parents that schools be closed lest, when the alarm was sounded, mothers and fathers be separated from their children. The school authorities, not wishing to be responsible for the care of hosts of children during an alarm of uncertain duration, readily acquiesced in this demand.

Then city workers began to avoid travelling by subway or by bus, lest they be caught in these conveyances during the alarm. Three days after the warning of the practice alert was issued, subways were carrying less than half their usual quota of commuters. Buses reported their traffic had fallen off sixty per cent. Later, though not much later, wives demanded that their husbands stay at home, and as the conviction grew that a real attack was impending, there was a rush at railway and airline terminals to get out of New York. Businesses closed down, streets and playgrounds were left deserted, and the panic was on.

The full power of all the communication media was again called upon, this time to get over the message that no actual attack was expected. The exercise was to be merely one of preparedness. The international situation was healthy-healthier than it had been at any time since the close of the war. Diplomats attested to this and were supported by generals and admirals. One general, who but ten days previously had advocated an immediate attack upon those nations, which, he said, were intent upon bleeding the United States to death, announced that there was no reason at all why the two sides could not sort out their difference peaceably.

“We are,” he said, “on the very verge of peace--a peace which, if cool judgments are allowed to prevail, must last through our lifetimes and those of our children.”

All this, however--the unwavering insistence that this was to be but a practice in preparedness, the unqualified statements of diplomats, generals, and admirals that no war was in sight, even a Press conference in which the President assured the nation that there was no danger of attack by any foreign nation or combination of foreign nations--all this had little effect. One question remained unanswered in the public mind: Why have such a large-scale practice if there is no possibility of war breaking out immediately?

Then the one thing happened which, even if the attempt to allay the panic had made any headway, would have cancelled all the progress achieved.

Senator Griffin, seriously disturbed by a thousand letters a day from people all over the country, demanding to know whether the United States had any adequate weapons with which to defend itself, decided to announce that the quadium bomb had been perfected. He did so only after consulting with the President, the Secretary of Defence, and other members of the cabinet. He urged on them that the only way to allay the panic was to assure the public that the United States was in possession of a weapon of such tremendous destructive capacity that no other nation would dare to attack it.

BOOK: The Mouse That Roared
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