present arms.
Striding toward the aircraft from the edge of the landing field, with several junior officers and a number of civilian official-looking men in tow, was Col. Wolfgang Mann.
Colonel Mann, supreme military commander of the armed forces of New Germany, saluted. “Herr General!”
John Rourke, uncomfortable with the rank imposed upon him by the president of Mid-Wake, didn’t know what to do for a moment. To salute in return, he thought, would be silly. He wore no uniform and considered his rank an honorary tide more than anything else. Colonel Mann held the salute. John Rourke at last nodded, saying, “Thank you, Colonel,” and Mann lowered the salute.
A litde girl with long blond ringlets and a very serious expression in her pretty blue eyes was shoved forward out of the crowd of dignitaries. She was so tiny that John Rourke
hadn’t even noticed her until that instant. She wore a frilly white dress, like something for a formal birthday party. And, in her hands she held flowers. She presented them to him, more or less forcing them toward his hands as he crouched down to her. “And thank you, too,” John Rourke smiled… .
An attractive young female officer, an aide to Colonel Mann, announced that the J7-V carrying Sarah, Natalia, Annie, Maria Leuden, and Bjorn Rolvaag had just landed safely. Then the aide retired from the room and Dieter Bern, his fragile-looking frame bent over the table at the center of which were placed the Soviet energy weapons— the one obtained by Jason Darkwood from Mid-Wake, the second secured by Rourke, Paul, and Michael —said, “What a frightening object. Is it not, mein hernn?”
Paul said, “But how much more frightening in the hands of the enemy alone.”
John Rourke looked at his friend, nodding in agreement. “Sir, do your scientists think that the weapon can be duplicated in time to be of some use?”
Dieter Bern’s eyebrows shrugged as he looked up.
The room was a formal meeting hall left over from the days of Nazi rule here, overlarge for their purposes, elaborate in the extreme. Black marble quarried in the mountains, Rourke had been told once, comprised the floor and the ceiling, gray marble with yellow gold molding adorning the walls, an immense crystal chandelier suspended on chains from the ceiling direcdy over the, by comparison, simple dark-stained wooden table around which they were clustered.
Dieter Bern, his voice reedy-sounding from age, at last answered verbally. “Much to my personal regret, but out of necessity, our scientists labor long into each night in the design of weapons. As you no doubt are aware or at least suspect, Herr Doctor, we have even developed thermonuclear warheads and are near completion in the development of long-range delivery systems. At the present, our weapons are crude by comparison to those that your generation used five centuries ago to nearly eradicate all life on earth. But, if the Soviets launch against us, we will at least be able to respond.”
” ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ is the term, sir” John Rourke responded. “Many persons at that time saw considerable meaning in the English acronym the first letters of those three words form.”
“Mad” Wolfgang Mann said solemnly.
Rourke nodded, staring at the energy weapons. “If this device can be perfected in time for use by your troops and the forces of Mid-Wake, these energy weapons may give us the tactical and strategic advantage necessary to prevent that first launch. As we all know, as doubdess your scientists know, even the most modest nuclear exchange could so violently upset our currendy quite fragile atmospheric envelope that all life on the surface would perish once again, and the planet would never heal itself. Would life beneath the surface forever be life at all?”
Dieter Bern splayed his long, age-gnarled fingers along the table. “Already, my friend, some of our scientists are laying the foundation necessary to support research into
Striding toward the aircraft from the edge of the landing field, with several junior officers and a number of civilian official-looking men in tow, was Col. Wolfgang Mann.
Colonel Mann, supreme military commander of the armed forces of New Germany, saluted. “Herr General!”
John Rourke, uncomfortable with the rank imposed upon him by the president of Mid-Wake, didn’t know what to do for a moment. To salute in return, he thought, would be silly. He wore no uniform and considered his rank an honorary tide more than anything else. Colonel Mann held the salute. John Rourke at last nodded, saying, “Thank you, Colonel,” and Mann lowered the salute.
A litde girl with long blond ringlets and a very serious expression in her pretty blue eyes was shoved forward out of the crowd of dignitaries. She was so tiny that John Rourke
hadn’t even noticed her until that instant. She wore a frilly white dress, like something for a formal birthday party. And, in her hands she held flowers. She presented them to him, more or less forcing them toward his hands as he crouched down to her. “And thank you, too,” John Rourke smiled… .
An attractive young female officer, an aide to Colonel Mann, announced that the J7-V carrying Sarah, Natalia, Annie, Maria Leuden, and Bjorn Rolvaag had just landed safely. Then the aide retired from the room and Dieter Bern, his fragile-looking frame bent over the table at the center of which were placed the Soviet energy weapons— the one obtained by Jason Darkwood from Mid-Wake, the second secured by Rourke, Paul, and Michael —said, “What a frightening object. Is it not, mein hernn?”
Paul said, “But how much more frightening in the hands of the enemy alone.”
John Rourke looked at his friend, nodding in agreement. “Sir, do your scientists think that the weapon can be duplicated in time to be of some use?”
Dieter Bern’s eyebrows shrugged as he looked up.
The room was a formal meeting hall left over from the days of Nazi rule here, overlarge for their purposes, elaborate in the extreme. Black marble quarried in the mountains, Rourke had been told once, comprised the floor and the ceiling, gray marble with yellow gold molding adorning the walls, an immense crystal chandelier suspended on chains from the ceiling direcdy over the, by comparison, simple dark-stained wooden table around which they were clustered.
Dieter Bern, his voice reedy-sounding from age, at last answered verbally. “Much to my personal regret, but out of necessity, our scientists labor long into each night in the design of weapons. As you no doubt are aware or at least suspect, Herr Doctor, we have even developed thermonuclear warheads and are near completion in the development of long-range delivery systems. At the present, our weapons are crude by comparison to those that your generation used five centuries ago to nearly eradicate all life on earth. But, if the Soviets launch against us, we will at least be able to respond.”
” ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ is the term, sir” John Rourke responded. “Many persons at that time saw considerable meaning in the English acronym the first letters of those three words form.”
“Mad” Wolfgang Mann said solemnly.
Rourke nodded, staring at the energy weapons. “If this device can be perfected in time for use by your troops and the forces of Mid-Wake, these energy weapons may give us the tactical and strategic advantage necessary to prevent that first launch. As we all know, as doubdess your scientists know, even the most modest nuclear exchange could so violently upset our currendy quite fragile atmospheric envelope that all life on the surface would perish once again, and the planet would never heal itself. Would life beneath the surface forever be life at all?”
Dieter Bern splayed his long, age-gnarled fingers along the table. “Already, my friend, some of our scientists are laying the foundation necessary to support research into
Similar Books
