"You might say that, General."
"Then it is a missile."
"Uh, yes and no."
"Don't 'yes-and-no' me again. Out with it! It is or it isn't. "
"It's not a conventional missile. But it acted like one in flight. In other words, it was ballistic."
"That makes it a missile," General Leiber said decisively.
"No," said the major. "A missile is a fuel-propelled rocket. This is no such thing."
"No? Then how did it get to Washington? By slingshot?"
"That's the part of this I can't answer, General. We haven't a clue there."
The general stubbed his cigar into his mouth. He tilted his service cap off his lined forehead and his hands went on his hips.
"If you know what it is, you oughta be able to tell me what its motive power was."
"That I can tell you," the major said, patting the long drumlike cylinder affectionately. "They usually run on kerosene or coal."
The general blinked. "Say again."
"Kerosene or coal. That's the fuel. But the propulsion system is a by-product."
"What?"
"Steam."
"Steam." The general's cigar dropped to the floor, shedding sparks. "My God. Do you realize how serious this is? Steam. Every ratass little nation in the world possesses steam technology. If this is true, we could be facing a terrible new era of steam missiles."
"That's the bad news, General. Every nation on earth already possesses these devices."
"They do?"
"General, I don't quite know how to tell you this, but the object we dug out of that pit is a locomotive."
The general looked blank. "A what?" he asked quietly.
"A steam locomotive. See this wheeled section? It's part of the propulsion system."
The general looked. Beside the big cylinder was a distorted truck sitting low to the ground. It sat on heavy flanged wheels.
"Locomotive. As in choo-choo? As in the little engine that could? Are we talking about that kind of locomotive?"
"I'm afraid we are, sir."
"That's preposterous," the general sputtered.
"I agree."
"A steam locomotive runs on rails. It doesn't have a propulsion system."
"Not for flight, anyway."
"Steam locomotives don't have guidance systems."
"Exactly. And neither did this one."
"They don't have warheads."
"This one is perfectly harmless. Unless it fell on top of you."
"Then what the hell was it doing falling out of the sky if it was so goddamned harmless?"
"Well, had it landed another hundred yards to the north, it would have demolished the White House."
"That's a hell of a small target to take out for the throw weight involved. Only an imbecile would attempt such a thing. "
"I can't explain it."
"How the hell did it get airborne? You can at least explain that, can't you?"
"I wish I could. I have no idea. The front end is fused from reentery and the rear end, where you'd expect to find a propulsion system, is ... just the rear end of a locomotive."
"There's got to be something more. Something you've overlooked."
"There is one other phenomenon."
"Yes?"
"The individual pieces. As you can see, we've kept them well-separated. Watch what happens when I push them closer."
The general watched as the major walked over to an isolated fragment. With his shoe, he nudged the piece across the floor until it neared the wheeled truck. Suddenly the smaller fragment jumped across the concrete and hit the truck with a bang.
"Magnetic," the major said. "Every bit of it is magnetically charged."
"We knew that at Lafayette park. It was one of the first things we discovered."
"Highly magnetic. Unusually magnetic. It must have taken an incredible application of electricity to magnetize a five-hundred-ton locomotive."
"That's it?"
Major Cheek shrugged. "It's all we have."