Pushbutton War Read online

had an hour to kill before going on watch, and thiswas as good a place as any to kill it. The lounge was almost empty. Mostof the pilots must have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike'sgame. He leaned over a low table in the center of the room and startedsorting through the stack of magazines.

  "Looking for anything in particular, Harry?"

  He turned to face the speaker. "No, just going through these fugitivesfrom a dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet. Ican't figure out where all the new magazines go. The ones in here alwaysseem to be exactly two months old."

  "Here's this month's _Western Stories_. I just finished it. It had somepretty good stories in it."

  "No, thanks, the wrong side always wins in that one."

  "The wrong ... oh, I forgot. I guess they don't write stories where yourside wins."

  "It's not really a question of 'my side'. My tribe gave up the practiceof tribal life and tribal customs over fifty years ago. I had the sameeducation in a public school as any other American child. I read thesame newspapers and watch the same TV shows as anyone else. My Apacheancestry means as little to me as the nationality of his immigrantancestors means to the average American. I certainly don't considermyself to be part of a nation still at war with the 'palefaces'."

  "Then what's wrong with Western stories where the United States Cavalrywins?"

  "That's a different thing entirely. Some of the earliest memories I haveare of listening to my grandfather tell me about how he and his friendsfought against the horse-soldiers when he was a young man. I imagine heput more romance than historical accuracy into his stories. After all,he was telling an eager kid about the adventures he'd had over fiftyyears before. But at any rate, he definitely fixed my emotions on theside of the Indians and against the United States Cavalry. And the factthat culturally I'm descended from the Cavalry rather than from theApache Indians doesn't change my emotions any."

  "I imagine that would have a strong effect on you. These stories arereally cheering at the death of some of your grandfather's friends."

  "Oh, it's worse than that. In a lot of hack-written stories, the Indiansare just convenient targets for the hero to shoot at while the authorgets on with the story. Those stories are bad enough. But the worst arethe ones where the Indians are depicted as brutal savages with noredeeming virtues. My grandfather had an elaborate code of honor whichgoverned his conduct in battle. It was different from the code of thepeople he fought, but it was at least as rigid, and deviations from itwere punished severely. He'd never read Clausewitz. To him, war wasn'tan 'Instrument of National Policy'. It was a chance for the individualwarrior to demonstrate his skill and bravery. His code put a highpremium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward wascrushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indiantreatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, Iabsorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war,and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by theauthors of the run-of-the-mill Western story or movie."

  "Well, those writers have to eat, too. And maybe they can't hold anhonest job. Besides, you don't still look at war the way yourgrandfather did, do you? Civilization requires plenty of other virtuesbesides courage in combat, and we have plenty of better ways to displaythose virtues. And the real goal of the fighting man is to be aliveafter the war so he can go home to enjoy the things he was fightingfor."

  "No, I hadn't been in Korea long before I lost any notions I might havehad of war as the glorious adventure my grandfather described it to be.It's nothing but a bloody business, and should be resorted to only ifeverything else fails. But I still think the individual fighter could doa lot worse than follow the code that my grandfather believed in."

  "That's so, especially since the coward usually gets shot anyway; if notby the enemy, then by his own side. Hey, it's getting late! I've gotsome things to do before going on watch. Be seeing you."

  "O.K. I'll try to find something else here I haven't read yet."

  * * * * *

  Eight o'clock. Still no sign of the sun. The stars didn't have the skyto themselves, however. Two or three times a minute a meteor would bevisible, most of them appearing to come from a point about halfwaybetween the Pole Star and the eastern horizon. Harry Lightfoot stoppedthe elevator, opened the hatch, and stepped in.

  "She's all yours, Harry. I've already checked out with the tower."

  "O.K. That gyro any worse?"

  "No, it seems to have steadied a bit. Nothing else gone wrong, either."

  "Looks like we're in luck for a change."

  "Let me have the parka and I'll clear out. I'll think of you up herewhile I'm relaxing. Just imagine; a whole twenty-four hours off, and noteven any training scheduled."

  "Someone slipped up, I'll bet. By the way, be sure to look at thefireworks when you go out. They're better now than I've seen them at anytime since they started."

  "The meteor shower, you mean? Thanks. I'll take a look. I'll bet they'rereally cluttering up the radar screens. The Launch Control Officer mustbe going quietly nuts."

  * * * * *

  The Launch Control Officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts understress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required ofprospective Launch Control Officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy.He sat in a dimly-lighted room, facing three oscilloscope screens. Oneach of them a pie-wedge section was illuminated by a white line whichswept back and forth like a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper,however, it put little white blobs on the screen, instead of removingthem. Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo.The center screen was his own radar. The outer two were televised imagesof the radar screens at the stations a hundred miles on either side ofhim, part of a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Greenland. Inthe room, behind him, and facing sets of screens similar to his, sat hisassistants. They located the incoming objects on the screen and setautomatic computers to determining velocity, trajectory, and probableimpact point.

  This information appeared as coded symbols beside the tracks on thecenter screen of the Launch Control Officer, as well as all duplicatescreens. The Launch Control Officer, and he alone, had theresponsibility to determine whether the parameters for a given trackwere compatible with an invading Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, orwhether the track represented something harmless. If he failed to launchan interceptor at a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant thedeath of an American city. However, if he made a habit of launchinginterceptors at false targets, he would soon run out of interceptors.And only under the pressure of actual war would the incredible cost ofshipping in more interceptors during the winter be paid without a secondthought. Normally, no more could be shipped in until spring. That wouldmean a gap in the chain that could not be covered adequately byinterceptors from the adjacent stations.

  His screens were never completely clear. And to complicate things, theQuadrantids, which start every New Year's Day and last four days, weregiving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analyzed, and thepresence of the meteor shower greatly increased the number of tracks hehad to worry about. However, the worst was past. One more day and theywould be over. The clutter on his screens would drop back to normal.

  Even under the best of circumstances, his problem was bad. He was hemmedin on one side by physics, and on the other by arithmetic. The mostprobable direction for an attack was from over the Pole. His radar beambent only slightly to follow the curve of the Earth. At great range, thelower edge of the beam was too far above the Earth's surface to detectanything of military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory, anICBM aimed for North America would not be visible until it reached 83 deg.North Latitude on the other side of the Pole. One of his interceptorstook three hundred eighty-five seconds to match trajectories with such amissile, and the match occurred only two degrees of latitude south ofthe station. The invading missile traveled one degree of latitude info
urteen seconds. Thus he had to launch the interceptor when the missilewas twenty-seven degrees from intercept. This turned out to be 85 deg. NorthLatitude on the other side of the Pole. This left him at most thirtyseconds to decide whether or not to intercept a track crossing thePole. And if several tracks were present, he had to split that timeamong them. If too many tracks appeared, he would have to turn overportions of the sky to his assistants, and let them make the decisionsabout launching. This would happen only if he felt an attack was inprogress, however.

  Low-altitude satellites presented him with a serious problem, sincethere is not a whole lot of