Warning from the Stars | Page 7

"Colonel Barfield, Intelligence?"
The young colonel tried to sound flippant, unsuccessfully.
"General, acting on the assumption the story is true, it would answer
about two hundred question marks in our files. Maybe more, with
further study."
The C.I.A. man cleared his throat and raised a finger.
"For everybody's information," he said, "a preliminary field check
shows that Dr. Preston's train was stopped for ten minutes by fog last
night. The train's radar installation failed simultaneously. There
wouldn't be anything odd about that except the temperature at the time
was about 65 degrees, and the humidity was only 55 per cent. Consider
that, gentlemen.
"Theoretically, fog can't form under such conditions. Similar local fog
occurred on the occasions when O'Connor and Walters were reported
missing. The Met. people couldn't explain that, either. That's all."
Morganson sat up straight, as though he had suddenly made a decision.
"I don't think there's any value in further discussion at this point. You
will all have transcripts of Dr. Forster's statement within a few minutes.
According to that statement, we are due to lose a number of key men in
the next few hours. I'll have Code One emergency precautions
instituted at all research establishments, and I think the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs should hear from me right away. Colonel Barfield, I'd like

you to ask Colonel Malinowski, the Russian military attaché to see me
here not later than an hour from now. We'll have a full dress conference
here at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning, with written evaluation reports in
detail from all branches. Dr. Forster, consider yourself assigned to
Pentagon duty as of now, and until further notice."
* * * * *
Forster sat, dazed, until he realized that the others had left, and the
general was standing in front of him.
"Go get some rest, Forster," the other man said with surprising
gentleness. "You've had a tough day."
As Forster slept that early summer night, weathermen across the world
were marking their weather maps with thousands of
observations--feathery wind arrows, temperatures, barometric pressures
and relative humidities.
Then, as they drew their isobars, the pattern for the northern
hemisphere emerged. A giant high pressure system with its center in
northern Oklahoma promised warm fair weather across America.
Another, centered east of the Ural Mountains, forecast clear weather for
most of Europe and northern Asia.
A low pressure trough between was dropping light warm rain on the
green fields of England, but from Seattle to Washington, D. C, from
Stettin to Vladivostock the sun was rising or setting in clear skies.
Then about 9 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, a thickening mist descended
over warm and drowsy southwest South Carolina. It was a fog that was
not a fog, observers said afterwards, because there was no damp, no
coldness--just a steady loss of visibility until a man couldn't see his
hand held up in front of his face, even though a bright moon was
shining. Most of the reporting night shift at the Aiken hydrogen bomb
plant never reached the tightly-guarded gates. Those who did were not
allowed in.

At the same hour, across the world at the newly-built underground
heavy water factory of Rossilovskigorsk, west of the southern tip of
Lake Baikal, the late morning sun cast deep shadows into the gaping
holes in the hillside which marked the plant entrances and exits. Deep
below, miles of filtration chambers hissed quietly as they prepared their
deadly concentrate.
Then, without warning, the sun grew watery and paled, and within a
few minutes a haze began to form at ground level. It grew thicker and
thicker; the sun became a dim orange sphere, then was blotted out.
Total darkness enveloped the area.
And at the same hour, the watchers manning the lonely circle of
probing radar domes, facing each other across the frozen wastes of the
Arctic, cursed softly in Russian and English as their scopes sweeping
the upper air first went blank and then dark.
* * * * *
They were shaken men at the meeting in General Morganson's office
the next morning.
"Over 30 key men gone from Aiken," Morganson was saying. "In terms
of goals, it means that our 1960 program now cannot possibly be
fulfilled until 1965. If the situation develops as forecast in Dr. Forster's
statement, our entire nuclear weapons program will grind to a halt
within two weeks. If we drain men from civilian research, it will cause
a total breakdown in the civilian atomic power production program. As
you all know, the nation's entire economic expansion program is based
on the availability of that power. Without it, industry will be forced into
a deep freeze. That in turn means we might as well run up a white flag
on the White House lawn."
He smiled thinly. "I would be