"Goddammit, man, stop talking in circles. Spit it out."
"It's like this, sir. Once we had the brick ovens-"
"High-Temperature Organic Kiln Constructs. Remember that if we're questioned later. No way will the taxpayers pay three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for ordinary brick ovens."
"Yessir. In any case, we isolated the pieces and restored what we could to their original shapes. A lot of it was slag, of course, from reentry heat, but we estimate only the leading third of the object was incinerated. The back two-thirds was intact right up until impact."
"Go on, man."
"Well," the major said hesitantly, "fortunately, several sections of what I guess you'd call the propulsion system survived. I had the smiths-excuse me, the Metallurgical Consultants-I had them try to weld what they could of it together. The propulsion system told us a lot."
"Look, I don't care about how it got here. I want to know about its offensive system. How many kilotons? What's the yield, man, what's the yield?"
"It doesn't have a yield. Exactly."
"Exactly what does it have?" the general asked, touching the remaining lobster claw with his thumb. It felt cool. He couldn't eat it now.
"Um, as I was saying, General, when we put together the propulsion system, we were able to measure one of the rods. By that time we had a fair idea of what we were dealing with. The gauge turned out to be four feet, eight and a half inches. That's very important. It told us right away the object was American-made. Because the rods in the European versions are usually three feet, six inches."
"It's American-made," General Leiber said angrily. "What kind of traitor would sell out his own government?" Then he wondered if he had sold any nuclear missiles lately. He couldn't remember having sold anything that big. "Give me specifics, will you? I'm writing this down."
Major Cheek vented a hot sigh. "We estimate the object to weigh approximately five hundred tons at ... er ... launch."
"God, I've never heard of a missile with that kind of throw weight. Thank God it didn't detonate."
"Actually, there was no danger of that, General."
"Why not?"
"It couldn't. I mean, it's not possible."
"It wasn't armed?"
"No, sir. I can safely say that it was not armed."
"If it wasn't armed, then what the hell was it supposed to do?"
"As near as I can tell, sir, it was meant to impact with maximum damage."
"Well, of course, you idiot."
"But it's neither explosive, nor nuclear, nor chemical in nature."
"I'm not following you."
"Sir, perhaps you should come down here yourself. I don't think trying to explain this over the phone can really do the situation justice."
"I'll be right over," said General Martin S. Leiber. General Leiber was allowed through the Andrews gates only after he shouted down the guards. They tried to tell him the base had been declared off limits except to cleared personnel.
"I know, you noncommissioned jerk," Leiber shouted, flashing his Pentagon ID. "I'm the man who ordered it." They waved him through.
General Leiber drove to the hangar. He hadn't been there before. It was simple prudence. No way was he going near that thing. It might go off. But the major had assured him the device was no longer a threat. On the other hand, the major was stupid enough to raise his bid and then lay down a royal flush in the face of a superior officer. A man that foolhardy was capable of any imbecility.
As he was let in through a side door, the general thought the major had just better be correct. If anything happened to him, the President would be stuck underground for a long, long time.
Inside the cavernous hangar, light was furnished by banks of fluorescent tubes. It was hot. At one end, the orange glow of the kilns flared angrily. They were surrounded by an assortment of heavy anvils. Tools lay on the concrete floor. But there was no sign of the blacksmiths.
Major Cheek came running up. He was in his shirtsleeves and sweating.
"Where are my blacksmiths?" General Leiber snapped. "I hope they're not goofing off. They cost the government plenty."
"I sent them to a secure area, General. Their job is done and I thought it was better that they not be privy to the evaluation process."
"Harumph. Good thinking. Now, let's have the poop on this thing."
"This way, General."
General Leiber followed as he unknotted his tie. "Blasted hot in here," he muttered.
"It takes a lot of heat to make iron malleable," the major said. "That's why your barbecue grills weren't enough. We needed extremely high temperatures."
"Blacksmiths on TV westerns always used stuff that looked like barbecue grills to me. How was I to know the difference?"
At the far end of the hangar there were no lights. Major Cheek started speaking as he began hitting switches, illuminating one section of the floor at a time.
"In a way, you were right, General," he said. "The bell was a good starting point. But even so, we would have had a hard time working from there. It was really superfluous."
As the general watched, piles of twisted metal came into view. Closest to him were simple jumbles of blackened slag. Beyond them were the unfused pieces. They lay about in neat groups. It reminded General Leiber of photos of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger after the pieces had been recovered and laid out for inspection. There were a lot of pieces. Leiber saw bent metal bars, strange constructs, and in a corner pile, huge round flat things that reminded him of impossibly large gears.
"As I said," the major went on, "when we assembled one of the propulsion units, it dawned on us what this thing was. But even then, I doubt if I would have recognized what we had if my son hadn't been into HO models."
"HO?" asked General Leiber clutching at his cigar for support. "My God, are we talking about hydrogen ordnance?"
"Why, no. I've never heard of hydrogen ordnance."
"Never mind," said Leiber. "I thought you said this thing was safe."
"It is. Now. Please come with me."
General Leiber followed the major through the aisles between the debris. Although many of the pieces had been restored from their impact-mangled states, they were not perfect. Exteriors were blackened and pitted and many of the pieces only approximated the original parts. They had been too badly compressed to be completely reconstructed.
"This is the heart of it," Major Cheek said, gesturing to a huge black cylinder set on a wooden frame. It lay open and half-melted at one end.
The general poked his head in. The open end was easily seven feet in diameter and very black both inside and out. It smelled of scorched metal--like an old cast-iron stove. He ran his fingers along the outer skin, which was still warm from being welded.
"From the pieces, we were able to reconstruct this portion."