Towers smiled. «A good idea, Johnny. You wait there. I'm sure you'll see the light.» He switched off.
«There,» said Johnny. «I hope you're convinced that I'm a half-wit – you slimy mistake!» He picked up the hammer, ready to use the minutes gained.
He stopped almost at once; it dawned on him that wrecking the «brains» was not enough. There were no spare «brains,» but there was a well-stocked electronics shop. Morgan could jury-rig control circuits for bombs. Why, he could himself – not a neat job, but one that would work. Damnation! He would have to wreck the bombs themselves – and in the next ten minutes.
But a bomb was solid chunks of metal, encased in a heavy tamper, all tied in with a big steel gun. It couldn't be done – not in ten minutes. Damn!
Of course, there was one way. He knew the control circuits; he also knew how to beat them. Take this bomb: if he took out the safety bar, unhooked the proximity circuit, shorted the delay circuit, and cut in the arming circuit by hand – then unscrewed that and reached in there, he could, with just a long stiff wire, set the bomb off. Blowing the other bombs and the valley itself to Kingdom come. Also Johnny Dahlquist. That was the rub. All this time he was doing what he had thought out, up to the step of actually setting off the bomb. Ready to go, the bomb seemed to threaten, as if crouching to spring. He stood up, sweating.
He wondered if he had the courage. He did not want to funk – and hoped that he would. He dug into his jacket and took out a picture of Edith and the baby. «Honeychile,» he said, «if I get out of this, I'll never even try to beat a red light.» He kissed the picture and put it back. There was nothing to do but wait.
What was keeping Towers? Johnny wanted to make sure that Towers was in blast range. What a joke on the jerk! Me – sitting here, ready to throw the switch on him. The idea tickled him; it led to a better: why blow himself up – alive?
There was another way to rig it – a «dead man» control. Jigger up some way so that the last step, the one that set off the bomb, would not happen as long as he kept his hand on a switch or a lever or something. Then, if they blew open the door, or shot him, or anything – up goes the balloon!
Better still, if he could hold them off with the threat of it, sooner or later help would come – Johnny was sure that most of the Patrol was not in this stinking conspiracy – and then: Johnny comes marching home! What a reunion! He'd resign and get a teaching job; he'd stood his watch.
All the while, he was working. Electrical? No, too little time. Make it a simple mechanical linkage. He had it doped out but had hardly begun to build it when the loudspeaker called him. «Johnny?»
«That you, Colonel?» His hands kept busy.
«Let me in.»
«Well, now, Colonel, that wasn't in the agreement.» Where in blue blazes was something to use as a long lever?
«I'll come in alone, Johnny, I give you my word. We'll talk face to face.»
His word! «We can talk over the speaker, Colonel.» Hey, that was it – a yardstick, hanging on the tool rack.
«Johnny, I'm warning you. Let me in, or I'll blow the door off.»
A wire – he needed a wire, fairly long and stiff. He tore the antenna from his suit. «You wouldn't do that, Colonel. It would ruin the bombs.»
«Vacuum won't hurt the bombs. Quit stalling.»
«Better check with Major Morgan. Vacuum won't hurt them; explosive decompression would wreck every circuit.» The Colonel was not a bomb specialist; he shut up for several minutes. Johnny went on working.
«Dahlquist,» Towers resumed, «that was a clumsy lie. I checked with Morgan. You have sixty seconds to get into your suit, if you aren't already. I'm going to blast the door.»
«No, you won't,» said Johnny. «Ever hear of a 'dead man' switch?» Now for a counterweight – and a sling.
«Eh? What do you mean?»
«I've rigged number seventeen to set off by hand. But I put in a gimmick. It won't blow while I hang on to a strap I've got in my hand. But if anything happens to me – up she goes! You are about fifty feet from the blast center. Think it over.»
There was a short silence. «I don't believe you.»
«No? Ask Morgan. He'll believe me. He can inspect it, over the TV pick-up.» Johnny lashed the belt of his space suit to the end of the yardstick.
«You said the pick-up was out of order.»
«So I lied. This time I'll prove it. Have Morgan call me.»
Presently Major Morgan's face appeared. «Lieutenant Dahlquist?»
«Hi, Stinky. Wait a sec.» With great care Dahlquist made one last connection while holding down the end of the yardstick. Still careful, he shifted his grip to the belt, sat down on the floor, stretched an arm and switched on the TV pick-up. «Can you see me, Stinky?»
«I can see you,» Morgan answered stiffly. «What is this nonsense?»
«A little surprise I whipped up.» He explained it – what circuits he had cut out, what ones had been shorted, just how the jury-rigged mechanical sequence fitted in.
Morgan nodded. «But you're bluffing, Dahlquist. I feel sure that you haven't disconnected the 'K' circuit. You don't have the guts to blow yourself up.»
Johnny chuckled. «I sure haven't. But that's the beauty of it. It can't go off, so long as I am alive. If your greasy boss, ex-Colonel Towers, blasts the door, then I'm dead and the bomb goes off. It won't matter to me, but it will to him. Better tell him.» He switched oft.
Towers came on over the speaker shortly. «Dahlquist?»
«I hear you.»
«There's no need to throw away your life. Come out and you will be retired on full pay. You can go home to your family. That's a promise.»
Johnny got mad. «You keep my family out of this!»
«Think of them, man.»
«Shut up. Get back to your hole. I feel a need to scratch and this whole shebang might just explode in your lap.»
II
Johnny sat up with a start. He had dozed, his hand hadn't let go the sling, but he had the shakes when he thought about it.
Maybe he should disarm the bomb and depend on their not daring to dig him out? But Towers' neck was already in hock for treason; Towers might risk it. If he did and the bomb were disarmed, Johnny would be dead and Towers would have the bombs. No, he had gone this far; he wouldn't let his baby girl grow up in a dictatorship just to catch some sleep.
He heard the Geiger counter clicking and remembered having used the suppressor circuit. The radioactivity in the room must be increasing, perhaps from scattering the «brain» circuits – the circuits were sure to be infected; they had lived too long too close to plutonium. He dug out his film.
The dark area was spreading toward the red line.
He put it back and said, «Pal, better break this deadlock or you are going to shine like a watch dial.» It was a figure of speech; infected animal tissue does not glow – it simply dies, slowly.
The TV screen lit up; Towers' face appeared. «Dahlquist? I want to talk to you.»
«Go fly a kite.»
«Let's admit you have us inconvenienced.»
«Inconvenienced, hell – I've got you stopped.»
«For the moment. I'm arranging to get more bombs – »
«Liar.»
« – but you are slowing us up. I have a proposition.»
«Not interested.»
«Wait. When this is over I will be chief of the world government. If you cooperate, even now, I will make you my administrative head.»
Johnny told him what to do with it.
Towers said, «Don't be stupid. What do you gain by dying?»
Johnny grunted. «Towers, what a prime stinker you are. You spoke of my family. I'd rather see them dead than living under a two-bit Napoleon like you. Now go away – I've got some thinking to do.»
Towers switched off.
Johnny got out his film again. It seemed no darker but it reminded him forcibly that time was running out. He was hungry and thirsty – and he could not stay awake forever. It took four days to get a ship up from Earth; he could not expect rescue any sooner. And he wouldn't last four days – once the darkening spread past the red line he was a goner.