"Why did they do that? Use cobalt, I mean?" Peter asked.

The scientist shrugged his shoulders. "Radiological warfare. I can't tell you any more than that."

"I think I can," said the American. "I attended a commanding officers' course at Yerba Buena, San Francisco, the month before the war. They told us what they thought might happen between Russia and China. Whether they told us what did happen six weeks later-well, your guess is as good as mine."

John Osborne asked quietly, "What did they tell you?"

The captain considered for a minute. Then he said, "It was all tied up with the warm water ports. Russia hasn't got a port that doesn't freeze up in the winter except Odessa, and that's on the Black Sea. To get out of Odessa on to the high seas the traffic has to pass two narrow straits both commanded by NATO in time of war-the Bosporus and Gibraltar. Murmansk and Vladivostok can be kept open by icebreakers in the winter, but they're a mighty long way from any place in Russia that makes things to export." He paused. "This guy from Intelligence said that what Russia really wanted was Shanghai."

The scientist asked, "Is that handy for their Siberian industries?"

The captain nodded. "That's exactly it. During the Second War they moved a great many industries way back along the Trans-Siberian railway east of the Urals, back as far as Lake Baikal. They built new towns and everything. Well, it's a long, long way from those places to a port like Odessa. It's only about half the distance to Shanghai."

He paused. "There was another thing he told us," he said thoughtfully. "China had three times the population of Russia, all desperately overcrowded in their country. Russia, next door to the north of them, had millions and millions of square miles of land she didn't use at all because she didn't have the people to populate it. This guy said that as the Chinese industries increased over the last twenty years, Russia got to be afraid of an attack by China. She'd have been a great deal happier if there had been two hundred million fewer Chinese, and she wanted Shanghai. And that adds up to radiological warfare…"

Peter said, "But using cobalt, she couldn't follow up and take Shanghai."

"That's true. But she could make North China uninhabitable for quite a number of years by spacing the bombs right. If they put them down in the right places the fall-out would cover China to the sea. Any left over would go around the world eastwards across the Pacific; if a little got to the United States I don't suppose the Russians would have wept salt tears. If they planned it right, there would be very little left when it got around the world again to Europe and to western Russia. Certainly she couldn't follow up and take Shanghai for quite a number of years, but she'd get it in the end."

Peter turned to the scientist. "How long would it be before people could work in Shanghai?"

"With cobalt fall-out? I wouldn't even guess. It depends on so many things. You'd have to send in exploratory teams. More than five years, I should think

– that's the half-life. Less than twenty. But you just can't say."

Dwight nodded. "By the time anyone could get there, Chinese or anyone else, they'd find the Russians there already."

John Osborne turned to him. "What did the Chinese think about all this?"

"Oh, they had another angle altogether. They didn't specially want to kill Russians. What they wanted to do was to turn the Russians back into an agricultural people that wouldn't want Shanghai or any other port. The Chinese aimed to blanket the Russian industrial regions with a cobalt fall-out, city by city, put there with their intercontinental rockets. What they wanted was to stop any Russian from using a machine tool for the next ten years or so. They planned a limited fallout of heavy particles, not going very far around the world. They probably didn't plan to hit the city, even-just to burst maybe ten miles west of it, and let the wind do the rest." He paused. "With no Russian industry left, the Chinese could have walked in any time they liked and occupied the safe parts of the country, any that they fancied. Then, as the radiation eased, they'd occupy the towns."

"Find the lathes a bit rusty," Peter said.

"I'd say they might be. But they'd have had an easy war."

John Osborne asked, "Do you think that's what happened?

"I wouldn't know," said the American. "Maybe no one knows. That's just what this officer from the Pentagon told us at the commanding officers' course." He paused. "One thing was in Russia's favour," he said thoughtfully. "China hadn't any friends or allies, except Russia. When Russia went for China, nobody else would make much trouble-start war on another front, or anything like that."

They sat smoking in silence for a few minutes. "You think that's what flared up finally?" Peter said at last. "I mean, after the original attacks the Russians made on Washington and London?"

John Osborne and the captain stared at him. "The Russians never bombed Washington," Dwight said. "They proved that in the end."

He stared back at them. "I mean, the very first attack of all."

"That's right. The very first attack. They were Russian long-range bombers, II 626's, but they were Egyptian manned. They flew from Cairo."

"Are you sure that's true?"

"It's true enough. They got the one that landed at Puerto Rico on the way home. They only found out it was Egyptian after we'd bombed Leningrad and Odessa and the nuclear establishments at Kharkov, Kuibyshev, and Molotov. Things must have happened kind of quick that day."

"Do you mean to say, we bombed Russia by mistake?" It was so horrible a thought as to be incredible.

John Osborne said, "That's true, Peter. It's never been admitted publicly, but it's quite true. The first one was the bomb on Naples. That was the Albanians, of course. Then there was the bomb on Tel Aviv. Nobody knows who dropped that one, not that I've heard, anyway. Then the British and Americans intervened and made that demonstration flight over Cairo. Next day the Egyptians sent out all the serviceable bombers that they'd got, six to Washington and seven to London. One got through to Washington, and two to London. After that there weren't many American or British statesmen left alive."

Dwight nodded. "The bombers were Russian, and I've heard it said that they had Russian markings. It's quite possible."

"Good God!" said the Australian. "So we bombed Russia?"

"That's what happened," said the captain heavily.

John Osborne said, "It's understandable. London and Washington were out-right out. Decisions had to be made by the military commanders at dispersal in the field, and they had to be made quick before another lot of bombs arrived. Things were very strained with Russia, after the Albanian bomb, and these aircraft were identified as Russian." He paused. "Somebody had to make a decision, of course, and make it in a matter of minutes. Up at Canberra they think now that he made it wrong."

"But if it was a mistake, why didn't they get together and stop it? Why did they go on?"

The captain said, "It's mighty difficult to stop a war when all the statesmen have been killed."

The scientist said, "The trouble is, the damn things got too cheap. The original uranium bomb only cost about fifty thousand quid towards the end. Every little pipsqueak country like Albania could have a stockpile of them, and every little country that had that, thought it could defeat the major countries in a surprise attack, That was the real trouble."

"Another was the aeroplanes," the captain said. "The Russians had been giving the Egyptians aeroplanes for years. So had Britain for that matter, and to Israel, and to Jordan. The big mistake was ever to have given them a long-range aeroplane."

Peter said quietly, "Well, after that the war was on between Russia and the Western powers. When did China come in?"

The captain said, "I don't think anybody knows exactly. But I'd say that probably China came in right there with her rockets and her radiological warfare against Russia, taking advantage of the opportunity. Probably they didn't know how ready Russia was with radiological warfare against China." He paused. "But that's all surmise," he said. "Most of the communications went out pretty soon, and what were left didn't have much time to talk to us down here, or to South Africa. All we know is that the command came down to quite junior officers, in most countries."

John Osborne smiled wryly. "Major Chan Sze Lin."

Peter asked, "Who was Chan Sze Lin, anyway?"

The scientist said, "I don't think anybody really knows, except that he was an officer in the Chinese Air Force, and towards the end he seems to have been in command. The Prime Minister was in touch with him, trying to intervene to stop it all. He seems to have had a lot of rockets in various parts of China, and a lot of bombs to drop. His opposite number in Russia may have been someone equally insignificant. But I don't think the Prime Minister ever succeeded in making contact with the Russians. I never heard a name, anyway."

There was a pause. "It must have been a difficult situation," Dwight said at last. "I mean, what could the guy do? He had a war on his hands and plenty of weapons left to fight it with. I'd say it was the same in all the countries, after the statesmen got killed. It makes a war very difficult to stop."

"It certainly made this one. It just didn't stop, till all the bombs were gone and all the aircraft were unservicable. And by that time, of course, they'd gone too far."

"Christ," said the American softly, "I don't know what I'd have done in their shoes. I'm glad I wasn't."

The scientist said, "I should think you'd have tried to negotiate."

"With an enemy knocking hell out of the United States and killing all our people? When I still had weapons in my hands? Just stop fighting and give in? I'd like to think that I was so high-minded but- well, I don't know." He raised his head. "I was never trained for diplomacy," he said. "If that situation had devolved on me, I wouldn't have known how to handle it."