"Do you mind--"
"Of course not."
Now the journalist and the colonel shakily fumbled with cigarettes and
the wavering flame of a match.
Chris had turned. He was looking expectantly toward the narrow door
that led to the radar room and from it, presently, Sopho came. "Thought
I'd run a counter through the tunnel," he began. "Check things." He saw
Chris. "Hello! Didn't realize I hadn't met the ship's full complement."
The colonel and the reporter watched.
"My name is Chris, doctor."
"Can't place you. The Chicago Group, perhaps. I didn't meet them all."
"No."
"Army, then? White House? OSS? I'm a physicist. Sopho's the name."
"This man," said Learned, in a hoarse, uneven voice his ears had never
heard before, "comes from--another place." He told the physicist.
Dr. Sopho's right thumb and forefinger touched his small beard. Across
the back of his hand--tanned to leather by his long residence in the
desert--skin pimpled and the reddish hairs rose. The tiny phenomenon
passed--passed like the eddy of air that dimples still water and
disappears. His great head with the thin nose and the straight,
exaggerate brow bent forward attentively. He was searching the stranger
for obvious signs of madness. It became apparent that he found none.
"Incredible," he murmured.
"You do not believe me?"
The scientist shook his head. "My dear fellow--I do not even believe
_in_ you. So--naturally--" He turned with abruptness to the colonel.
"How did he get aboard? His papers?" He now saw the colonel's frantic,
imploring eyes. "Great God, man--you don't accept--?"
"It's the truth," Colonel Calm responded.
Sopho looked quickly at Learned--who glanced away.
The scientist seemed, for the first time, alarmed. Not alarmed at the
statement made by the man but at its effect upon two persons whom he
had considered impervious to wild suggestion. Obviously, it was up
to him to break the lunatic's spell. Some fabulous stowaway--and the
journalist and the soldier--drawn overfine by the magnitude of this
mission--had become prey to imagination.
One humors the mad--at any rate, to begin with. "I see," said Sopho.
He now faced the stranger--who stood in their midst. "Tell me. Just why
did you decide to accompany this particular raid?"
Chris, still smiling, repeated his words about his promise--and after
that, the promise.
"End of the world, eh?" Sopho chuckled. "You sure?"
"Your world--perhaps."
"You want us to give it up? The mission?" Sopho pointed at the bomb
bay. "That?"
Chris looked steadily at him. "If I remember rightly, doctor, you began
the preparation of--that--" he, also, pointed--"not to use against men,
but to have on hand if your other enemy employed such instruments. He
did not. He lies defeated."
Sopho nodded. "Right. Now we are using it to shorten the war. Save
lives."
"_Save_ lives?"
"By shortening the war, man! Simple arithmetic--!"
"What about--the next war? And the next? The wars beyond that?"
"This weapon should--and in my opinion will--put an end to war."
Slowly, Chris shook his head. "Strange reasoning. A _weapon_ will put
an end to war."
"An absolute weapon, man! The world will never again risk going to war.
Never again dare take the risk!"
"It will fear too much, you think?"
"Precisely."
"But isn't it fear, doctor, that has always caused men to wage war?
Fear in this form today--tomorrow in that form--?"
"Can you think of a better means of ending wars--foolish wastes!--than
an absolute weapon? We have changed the whole picture of war!"
"But not changed men!"
There ensued a moment without talk.
Chris presently said, "This weapon. Where it falls, the genes
of men will be broken. Perhaps their children--perhaps their
grandchildren--will carry the heritage. Headless bodies. Eyeless
faces. There--teeth everywhere. And yonder--no voice. Generation after
generation, for a thousand years--this great invention will go on
waging your present war, doctor, against the unborn."