Atvar read intently for a little while, then stopped and stared at Kirel. “Major release of radioactivity in Deutschland” he said. “This is supposed to please me? It means the Big Uglies there are a short step away from a nuclear bomb.”
“But they do not know how to take that next step,” Kirel replied. “If you please, Exalted Fleetlord, examine the analysis.”
Atvar did as his subordinate asked. As he read, his mouth fell open in a great chortle of glee. “Idiots, fools, maniacs! They achieved a self sustaining pile without proper damping?”
“From the radiation that has been-is being-released, they seem to have done just that,” Kirel answered, also gleefully. “And it’s melted down on them, and contaminated the whole area, and, with any luck at all, killed off a whole great slew of their best scientists.”
“If these are their best-” Atvar’s hiss was full of amazement. “They’ve done almost as much damage to themselves as we did to them when we dropped the nuclear bomb on Berlin.”
“No doubt you are right, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “One of the main characteristics of the Tosevites is their tendency to leap headlong into any new technology which comes within their capabilities. Where we would study consequences first, they simply charge ahead. Because of that, no doubt, they went in the flick of an eye turret from spear-flinging savages to-”
“Industrialized savages,” Atvar put in.
“Exactly so,” Kirel agreed. “This time, though, in leaping they fell and smashed their snouts. Not all ventures into new technology come without risks.”
“Something went right,” Atvar said happily. “Ever since we came to Tosev 3, we’ve been nibbled to pieces here: two killercraft lost in one place, five landcruisers in another, deceitful diplomacy from the Big Uglies, the allies we’ve made among them who betrayed us-”
“That male in Poland who embarrassed us by recanting his friendship is back in our claws,” Kirel said.
“So he is. I’d forgotten that,” Atvar said. “We’ll have to determine the most expedient means of punishing him, too: find some way to remind the Tosevites who have joined us that they would do well to remember who gives them their meat. No hurry there. He is not going anyplace save by our leave.”
“No indeed, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “We also need to consider the effect of stepping up our pressure on Deutschland in light of their failure with the atomic pile. We may find them discouraged and demoralized. Computer models suggest as much, at any rate.”
“Let me see.” Atvar punched up detail maps of the northwestern section of Tosev 3’s main continental mass. He hissed as he checked them. “The guerrillas in Italia give us as much trouble as armies elsewhere… and though the local king and his males loudly swear they are loyal to us, they do cooperate with the rebels. Our drives in eastern France have bogged down again-not surprising, when half the local landcruiser crews cared more about tasting ginger than fighting. We’re still reorganizing there. But from the east-something might be done.”
“I have taken the liberty of analyzing the forces we have available as well as those with which the Deutsche could oppose us,” Kirel said. “I believe we are in a position to make significant gains there, and perhaps, if all goes well, to come close to knocking the Deutsche out of the fight against us.”
“That would be excellent,” Atvar said. “Forcing them into submission would improve our logistics against both Britain and the SSSR-and they are dangerous in their own right. Their missiles, their jet planes, their new landcruisers are all variables I would like to see removed from the equation.”
“They are dangerous in more ways than that, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said quietly. “More even than the emperor-slayers in the SSSR, they have industrialized murder. Eliminating them might also eliminate that idea from the planet.”
Atvar remembered the images and reports from the camp called Treblinka, and from the bigger one, just going into operation when the Race overran it, called Auschwitz. The Race had never invented any places like those. Neither had the Hallessi or the Rabotevs. So many things about Tosev 3 were unique; that was one piece of uniqueness he wished to the tip of his tailstump that the Big Uglies had not come up with.
He said, “When we are through here, the Tosevites will not be able to do that to one another. And we will have no need to do it to them, for they will be our subjects. In obedience to the will of the Emperor, this shall be done.”
Along with Atvar, Kirel cast down his eyes. “So it shall. I hope two things, Exalted Fleetlord: that the other Big Uglies working toward nuclear weapons make the same error as the Deutsche, and that the disaster permanently ended the Deutsch nuclear program. Given their viciousness, I would not want to see them of all Tosevites armed with atomic bombs.”
“Nor I,” Atvar said.
XIV
Heinrich Jager gave his interrogator a dirty look. “I have told you over and over, Major, I don’t know one damned thing about nuclear physics and I wasn’t within a good many kilometers of Haigerloch when whatever happened there happened. How you expect to get any information out of me under those circumstances is a mystery.”
The Gestapo man said, “What happened at Haigerloch is a mystery, Colonel Jager. We are interviewing everyone at all involved with that project in an effort to learn what went wrong. And you will not deny that you were involved.” He pointed to the German Cross in gold that Jager wore.
Jager had donned the garishly ugly medal when he was summoned to Berchtesgaden, to remind people like this needle nosed snoop that the Fuhrer had given it to him with his own hands: anyone who dared think him a traitor had better think again. Now he wished he’d left the miserable thing in its case.
He said, “I could better serve the Reich if I were returned to my combat unit. Professor Heisenberg was of the same opinion, and endorsed my application for transfer from Haigerloch months before this incident.”
“Professor Heisenberg is dead,” the Gestapo man said in a flat voice. Jager winced, nobody had told him that before. Seeing the wince, the man on the safe side of the desk nodded. “You begin to understand the magnitude of the-problem now, perhaps?”
“Perhaps I do,” Jager answered; unless he missed his guess, the interrogator had been on the point of saying something like “disaster,” but choked it back just in time. The fellow had a point. If Heisenberg was dead, the bomb program was a disaster.
“If you do understand, why are you not cooperating with us?” the Gestapo man demanded.
The brief sympathy Jager had felt for him melted away like a panzer battalion under heavy Russian attack in the middle of winter. “Do you speak German?” he demanded. “I don’t know anything. How am I supposed to tell you something I don’t know?”
The secret policeman took that in stride. Jager wondered what sort of interrogations he’d carried out, how many desperate denials, truer and untrue, he’d heard. In a way, innocence might have been worse than guilt. If you were guilty, at least you had something to reveal at last, to make things stop. If you were innocent, they’d just keep coming after you.
Because he was a Wehrmacht colonel with his share and more of tin plate on his chest, Jager didn’t face the full battery of techniques the Gestapo might have lavished on a Soviet officer, say, or a Jew. He had some notion of what those techniques were, and counted himself lucky not to make their intimate acquaintance.
“Very well, Colonel Jager,” the Gestapo major said with a sigh; maybe he regretted not being able to use such forceful persuasion on someone from his own side, or maybe he just didn’t think he was as good an interrogator without it. “You may go, although you are not yet dismissed back to your unit. We may have more questions for you as we make progress on other related investigations.”