The group turned as one man to General Tredway, but he paid no attention. He was pacing back and forth, pulling at his lower lip, frowning in concentration. “General,” said the President. “I… I guess you had the right idea. These things are monsters. Will you handle this next one?”

  General Tredway stopped and said, “Yes, but I had better explain what is now involved. I want every vehicle that can move to converge on the fourth object; the one that is now loose will attempt to protect it. I want every plane and copter that can fly to launch a continuing attack on it. I want every available missile zeroed in and launched at it immediately. I want every fusion and fission bomb we’ve got directed at the fourth object by means of artillery, missiles, and planes; one of them might get through. I want a request made to Canada, Brazil, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy to launch fusion-headed missiles at the site of the fourth object immediately. In this way we might have a chance to stop them. Let us proceed.”

  The President stared at him and said, “Have you gone crazy? I will give no such orders. What you ask for will destroy our middle eastern seaboard.”

  The general nodded. “Yes, everything from Richmond to Pittsburgh to Syracuse, I think, possibly more. Fallout will cover a wider area. There’s no help for it.”

  “You’re insane. I will do no such thing.”

  The Speaker stepped forward and said, “Mr. President, I think you should reconsider this. You saw what that thing could do; think of two of them loose. I am very much afraid the general may be right.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The Vice President stepped to the President’s side and said, “I agree with the President. I never heard of such an absurd suggestion.”

  The moment froze into silence. The general stared at the three men. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he undid his holster flap and pulled out his pistol. He snapped the slide back and fired once at point-blank range, shifted the gun, and fired again. He walked over to the table and carefully placed the gun on it. Then he turned to the Speaker and said, “Mr. President, there is very little time. Will you give the necessary orders?”

  The Irvhank Effect, by Harry Turtledove

  Editor’s Introduction

  I have a doctorate in political science, and I’ve managed several winning (and a few losing) political campaigns. On the evidence I should understand something of American politics.

  Clearly I don’t understand as well as I think I do.

  Take strategic defense, “Space Shield,” for example. As Chairman of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy I helped draw up some of the documents that convinced President Reagan to make his famous speech challenging the scientific community to make the ICBM “impotent and obsolete.” (The phrase, incidentally, was the President’s; it wasn’t in the drafts he was given.)

  The President fully expected overwhelming support for his Space Shield. After all, it ended what Arthur Clarke had called the absurdity of MAD: “two small boys standing in a pool of gasoline while seeing which could collect the most matches.” It also conformed to Clarke’s Law: “If a grey-bearded eminent scientist tells you something is possible, believe him; if he says it is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.” A number of eminent scientists, including not only Edward Teller but many rocket scientists as well as strategic analysts, said that strategic defense certainly was possible; and we knew the Soviets thought it was, because they had been working on one for years.

  So. On March 23, 1983, President invited “those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace.”

  Moreover, the research programs were successful. It doesn’t seem to matter.

  Despite promising developments in Strategic Defense—the 1986 MIRACL experiment at White Sands Proving Grounds where a laser destroyed a Titan booster on the ground; Homing Overlay in which a missile physically intercepted another in outer space—we have seen increasing opposition from Congress, the media, and even within the Pentagon itself. Even the advocates of Nuclear Freeze—which is quite compatible with SDI—have argued for MAD rather than defenses that defend.

  The problem with MAD—Mutual Assured Destruction—is that it’s immoral. Free men standing between their loved homes and the war’s desolation is compatible with all of Western Judaeo-Christian philosophy; with the Thomistic doctrine of Just War. Deliberately setting fire to the enemy’s women and children isn’t.

  Yet if we don’t threaten to burn Russian school girls, we can’t honor our pledges.

  In 1969 Stefan T. Possony and I published The Strategy of Technology, in which we argued for a U.S. strategy of “assured survival” rather than one of assured destruction. At the time we didn’t know how it might be accomplished, and we well understood that until the technical means were developed the U.S. would have to depend on deterrent threats. Our point was that assured survival was a permissible goal, one worth achieving; assured destruction is at best an immoral and disheartening goal for those who have to make it work.

  So. Acting on the advice of senior scientists and advisors, the President asked: “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our soil or that of our allies?”

  The response was nearly instantaneous. Congressional leaders giggled “Star Wars.” The Union of Concerned Scientists published a disdainful report so full of errors they were obvious to high school students. A well-known professor at MIT said that “the issue was too important for physics.” Senator Kennedy dubbed the President “Darth Vader.”

  In “The Irvhank Effect,” Harry Turtledove shows us one reaction to the discovery of a device that can end all possibility of nuclear war. Twenty years ago, I might have questioned his conclusion; now, I’m not so sure…

  The Irvhank Effect

  Harry Turtledove

  The Nevada desert looks like a proving-ground for hell. That is not the reason the government tests its atomic weapons there, but it does give the more thoughtful technicians pause.

  As one of the devices—a much more sanitary and less hair-raising word than “bomb”—was making its long journey underground, an engineer in the blockhouse said to the man at his elbow, “Just once, I wish the goddamn thing wouldn’t go off.”

  “Don’t we all, Dave, don’t we all,” his companion said. “However, things being as they are–”

  “I know, Felipe,” Dave sighed. The device was in place now, a good many thousand feet below the desert. The countdown proceeded smoothly. No reason why it shouldn’t; after hundreds of tests over four decades, a routine had long since grown up.

  Dave waited for zero. The bomb down there was a peewee, forty kilotons nominal yield, but it could still make the ground rock and roll. Hell, they’d feel it in Vegas, fifty miles southeast down US 95. He was a lot closer than fifty miles, worse luck.

  Zero came and went. The desert remained unshaken; the instruments in front of Dave did not go wild. The voice of the principal investigator boomed over the intercom: “Gentlemen, we appear to have a glitch somewhere. We’re trying to track it down now. Please stay at your stations.”

  “Willpower, that’s what it is,” Dave said, flexing a stringy bicep.

  “Bullshit, that’s what it is,” Felipe snorted, and made as if to hit him with a clipboard. His friend flinched.

  US 95 skirts the edge of Nellis Air Force Range and Nuclear Testing Site. The four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup had left the highway about two thirds of the way from Beatty down to Lathrop Wells. No one paid any particular attention to it; there were always a lot of off-road vehicles chewing up the Amargosa Desert.

  The pickup stopped well outside the edge of the air force range. MP’s did a lot of patrolling on test days. The two men in the truck had a fair amount of electronic junk and a portable generator bolted to the cargo bed. The last thing they wanted was to be taken for a couple of Russian spies.

  Irv Farmer got out on the passenger side. He was in his late twenties, slim (well, skinny, actually), sandy-haired, and too pale to be wearing only a T-shirt and shorts in the fierce desert sun. The thin weave of his cap, which proclaimed his allegiance to the Philadelphia Phillies, did not give his balding scalp nearly enough protection.

  “Christ, I’m gonna look like a lobster tomorrow,” he said. He could not even tell how much he was sweating. The hot, parched air dried the moisture on his skin as fast as it appeared.

  Hank Jeter let out a rich, booming laugh. “What do you know? Finally I’m somewhere where being black does me some good.” Los Angeles Raiders, his cap said. He looked like a defensive lineman; each of his thighs was nearly as big around as Farmer’s waist. In spite of his formidable appearance, he was a talented physicist. So, for that matter, was Irv Farmer.

  Irv persuaded the generator to flatulent life. The two men worked together to hook their gadgetry to it. Anxiously checking one meter after another, Jeter asked, “What time is that sucker supposed to go off, man?”

  “Let me check.” Irv ambled back to the cab of the truck, got out a copy of yesterday afternoon’s Las Vegas Sun. The story he was looking for was on page five. “‘Local residents are advised not to worry if they feel an earthquake tomorrow,’” he read. “‘The NRC is conducting another of a series of low-yield nuclear tests, with detonation scheduled for 10:52 A.M.’”

  Jeter pulled out his pocket watch, glanced at it. “We got set up just in time. Only ten minutes to kill. How about a beer?”

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day.” There was a cooler in the truckbed, too. Farmer pressed an icy can of Coors to his forehead before he opened it. He drank the Colorado Kool-aid down in four long, blissful gulps, but Hank Jeter still finished ahead of him.

  Ten fifty-two passed. So did eleven o’clock, and ten after, quite without an earthquake. The big black man and the little white man solemnly shook hands. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I would say we have something here,” Jeter said.

  “I would say we do.” Farmer reached in and turned off the generator. The ground under his Nikes gave a lurch. He had to grab for the tailgate to keep from falling into a cactus. His eyes glowed. “Yes, I’d say we do.”

  Like a lot of discoveries, this one had been more accident than design. Several things went into it: the fact that, by some accident of engineering, the lab apparatus had a backup and the overhead lighting didn’t; the fact that Hank Jeter’s great-grandfather had worked as a railroad chief porter during the 1920’s; and the fact that Hank was seeing what time it was at the exact moment when a drunk slammed into the power pole out on Rhawn Street.

  The lab was in an interior room, with no windows, and the sudden darkness was Stygian. People swore in disgust. Somebody tripped over a stool, which fell with a crash. “Where’s the flashlight, goddamit?” somebody else said.

  Hank didn’t need it; not, at least, to look at his watch. That watch had been in his family since his great-grandfather’s day. As a matter of fact, it was a conductor’s watch, but great-grandpa had bought it all the same, just as soon as he could afford it. He loved it, and why not? It had been keeping good time for more than sixty years now, a big, old-fashioned stemwinder with a long, thick gold chain, perfect for wearing in a vest pocket. It had a radium dial that glowed in the dark.

  Except it wasn’t glowing now. Hank held it so close to his face that it almost bumped his nose, squinted until his eyes crossed. Nothing.

  Just then, someone found the flashlight. It was pointed straight at Hank’s face when it got turned on. In total blackness, it was like a magnesium flare exploding. Hank yelped and nearly dropped his watch.

  “Everybody out to the parking lot,” the fellow with the light said. He had a loud, officious voice, and herded his colleagues along like sheep.

  Sirens were baying outside, what with the police, paramedics, fire engine, and electrician all descending on the drunk and the pole he’d knocked over. It was also, as Hank discovered when he got into the light, a quarter past four. Plainly, not much more was going to get done today.

  The section chief saw that too. He sent a couple of people back into the lab to turn off as much equipment as they safely could, and let everyone else go home early.

  There was a scattering of muffled cheers, and some not so muffled. Hank turned to Irv Farmer and said, “How about a drink?”

  “Motion seconded and passed by acclamation. Where to?”

  Hank looked at him in honest surprise. “The Lair; where else?”

  The bar was a couple of miles from the lab. The power was on there, but it was almost as dark inside as it had been when the lights went out at work. Jeter ordered bourbon. Farmer got a bottle of Anchor Porter. He had acquired a taste for the stuff in his undergrad days at Berkeley; the Lair was one of the few bars on the East Coast that stocked it. Thick and dark, dark brown, it was the pumpernickel of beers. He sipped at it; it was too strong-tasting to pour down.

  “Another day shot to hell,” Hank said, lifting his glass.

  “You know it.” Irv licked creamy foam off his upper lip. “The surge when the auxiliary generator kicked in cost me half my data, I’ll bet.”

  Jeter put his head in his huge hands. “Oh, God, I forgot all about that. Me too.”

  One drink became several. After a while, Irv said, “What time has it gotten to be?”

  “Why are you asking me? You’ve got a watch on your wrist,” Jeter retorted in mock anger. “Just because I’m black, you make me do all the work.”

  “Oh, bull. If I didn’t ask you to haul out that brass turnip of yours, you’d sulk for a week.”

  “A likely story.” Chuckling, Hank looked at his great-grandfather’s watch. “It’s twenty to seven.” He frowned. “That’s funny.”

  “No it isn’t. I just remembered I’m supposed to be in Southbridge at seven, and I’m never gonna make it.”

  “No. Look at the dial.”

  “I’ve seen it a million times, thanks.”

  “It’s glowing,” Jeter said.

  “Well, I should hope so. It’s a wonder you don’t futz up half the experiments in the lab with the radioactivity in that damn thing.”

  “You have no respect for an heirloom, my man. The point is, though, when the electricity went out this afternoon, I was looking right at it and there was nothing to see, just black.”

  “Probably you were looking at the back side and didn’t realize it in the dark,” Irv suggested.

  “Hey, no, man, I’m serious,” Jeter said. “I had it out before the power blew. I can’t remember the last time I looked at it in the dark; I just figured the radium paint had worn out or something. Now I don’t know what to think.”

  Irv Farmer stared owlishly at his friend. He had drunk just enough to take him seriously; a little more and he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, a little less and he would have rationalized everything away. Instead, he said, “All right, I give up. What happened?”

  Hank shrugged. “Just one of those things, I guess.” Being almost twice Farmer’s size, he hadn’t been hit as hard by his shots of Hiram Walker’s. As long as everything seemed back to normal, he was happy enough—relieved might be a better word.

  Irv finished his porter. “Let’s go back and see if we can duplicate it,” he said suddenly.

  It was Jeter’s turn to gape. “Probably nothing there to duplicate.”

  “Then what have we lost? A little time.”

  “What about Southbridge?”

  “Oh, the hell with Southbridge. She’s starting to think she owns me. Come on; are you game?”

  “That’s what they asked the hunter in the old joke, and when he said yes they shot him. But I’ll come along; I’ve got nothin’ else shakin’ tonight.”

  As they drove up, they saw the lights were back on. “Can’t keep you fellers away from it, can they?” cackled the security guard. The old codger didn’t bother looking at their security badges; he’d been seeing them come and go for years.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Hank said when they got to the laboratory. “How can we tell what was on and what was off when the power pole got hit?”

  Alcoholic confidence still buoyed Irv Farmer. He went from bench to bench and desk to desk, checking diaries. Once he picked a lock with a paper clip, something he never would—or could—have done cold sober. He made a second circuit round the lab, turning on instruments and setting them to the same configuration they had had during the afternoon.

  At last he turned to Jeter. “All right, where were you?”

  “Right about here,” Hank said, taking his spot. “Look, man, let’s just pack it in, shall we? This is all more hassle than it’s worth.”

  Irv wasn’t listening to him. “Get out your watch,” he said, and turned off the lights. Hank didn’t say anything, so after a minute or so Farmer called, “Well, what do you see?”

  “Come look for yourself.”

  Irv did, moving carefully in the dark. Hank held the watch out to him. The hands and the small painted spots that marked the hours were dark. “Well, I will be damned,” Irv said. His friend was whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

  “Where are you going?” Hank asked.

  “To turn the lights back on. I’ve got an idea.” Farmer rummaged around until he found a Geiger counter. He held the Geiger tube up to the watch. The lazy clicking of background radiation, present everywhere, did not change. Irv and Hank looked at each other.

  Irv started turning off pieces of lab equipment. The Geiger counter immediately began to chatter.

  “Do you know what we’ve got here if we can find out what makes this tick?” Farmer said softly, oblivious to any thought of wordplay. “We’ve got a Nobel prize right in our laps, that’s what.”