Outside of the place where Washington had been—far outside—in a big house that had belonged to a famous eighteenth-Century American, some fifty men held a meeting in the lamp-lit drawing room. The men came there by automobile, mostly; but three or four walked, and one arrived as the original householder often had, riding on a horse. Some of the men wore bandages, two were brought on stretchers, and all of them had to go through a considerable process of identification at check points around the estate. Bayoneted rifles and even cannon bristled on every hand.
When they had assembled, when they had waited for an hour beyond the agreed time—and greeted a few additional arrivals with quiet joy—a man who wore the white garments of a doctor, and around whose neck a stethoscope hung, said to a man in slacks and a tweed jacket,
“Mr. President….” The man shook his head. “I haven’t taken the oath yet.”
The doctor shrugged. “Mr. Gates, then. I think you ought to have the meeting soon, if possible. The Secretary of State is slipping fast.”
The man in tweeds, in slacks—“Mr. Gates”—walked to the middle of the handsome drawing room and stood at the head of a carved mahogany table. A young man handed him a gavel and he rapped. Talk stopped. Every person present turned toward Mr. Gates.
“The meeting,” he said, “will come to order.”
Chairs moved. Attendants brought stretchers close.
Harry Jackson Gates was sworn in as President of the United States. It was done quickly, in low tones. The only Justice they could find gravely administered the oath. When it was over, all but the new President sat down. He returned to the head of the long, gleaming table. On it, there was only the gavel and a Bible.
“Our group,” he began, in a somber voice, “constitutes, as you all know, all the high-echelon members of the Government who could be assembled, this frightful Christmas Day.” He looked at a notebook which he took from a jacket pocket. “Three members of the late President’s Cabinet are here.” He named them. “Supreme Court Justice Willard. Seventeen members of the United States Senate. Thirty-eight members of the House of Representatives. In an adjacent room, General Faversham and some other high military officers are waiting and I shall ask them in—with your consent. All in favor?”
There were grave “Ayes.”
“Opposed?”
Silence.
The new President nodded to the guards at a far door and it swung back. The military men carne in quietly, took chairs. The President spoke their names, gave their rank, and continued:
“I shall be brief. As you know, panic reigns from coast to coast. Four great cities were totally obliterated by hydrogen bombs in the afternoon and early evening of the twenty-third.
Washington met the same fate later. Twenty-five cities have been struck by plutonium bombs of exceptionally high power. Some twenty millions of us were killed or injured in the attack. Untold numbers, hundreds of thousands, are dying in the progressively worsening riots. It is the judgment of the military”—he paused, looked at the officers—“that weeks, if not months, will be required to restore order, and an indeterminate interval, many more months, to bring the nation back to a state of production and communication which will support the survivors at a survival level. I am sure you are, in general, familiar with those ghastly facts.”
There were murmurs of assent.
“Three possibilities face the United States of America. The first is—surrender.”
A heart-rending “ No!” was wreathed in low-toned murmurs of rejection.
“The enemy,” the President went on grimly, “has offered terms.”
That, too, stirred the audience.
“We have learned the terms by radio, through neutrals. They are quite simple. We are to surrender all atomic weapons, to dismantle all atomic plants and works, to allow enough of the enemy free access within this nation to ensure that the status is permanent. There will be no occupation, no tribute.”
His eyes went over the room. Some of the haggard faces were stony. But some glowed with hope.
“A great predecessor of mine, in an hour of trial, once called an example of wanton assault ‘a day that will live in infamy.’ No phrase, in any language, can be made to speak the evil now done to this nation. I shall not try to give you any condemnatory words. But, let me point out, the offered terms seem reasonable. It is only a seeming. If we grant those terms, nothing—ever afterward—can prevent the enemy from working upon us whatever his further will may be.
We know his philosophy. We bleed now under his treachery. Disarmed, we shall surely soon be enslaved. But surrender is one possibility.
“Another—is to continue the assault we are making. I assure you, the foe is suffering grievously. But his cities are so few, his dispersion of populace is so great, that our gallant Air Force cannot readily drive his people into the general panic that has uprooted this nation and destroyed its social organization. In time our effort might be equally effective. We must inquire if we have the time. The bombs, the planes, the determined men to fly them, we do have. But let us suppose the effort took thirty days. Meanwhile, other assaults would probably be launched against us. Our citizens would continue to battle one another, freeze, soon die of hunger, go mad.
In the end, there might remain in both nations that utter wreckage of civilization which the few predicted for so long, and the many refused to believe. But that is a second possibility.”
“The third?” a woman’s voice called. “What’s the third?”
For a moment, the new President reverted to his old habit as Speaker of the House. “The lady from Massachusetts asks the third. I’ll explain as best I am able. I am not a scientist. The military will amplify.”
He frowned, cleared his throat. “First, I must state that my late, great predecessor, though he worked hopefully for peace, somewhat feared a situation like this. He feared, as did his Chiefs of Staff, the very danger we have encountered. He, with them, prepared a threat of their own—of our own—a dreadful threat, intended only for use as a menace. You are familiar with the Nautilus ….”
The silence in the old room was absolute.
“…the first of the atomic-powered submarines. As the ‘peace’ negotiations reached a high degree of intensity, it was felt in the—the”—he stumbled—“White House that the enemy was probably sincere. But the possibility remained that such negotiations might be the immediate precursor to the disaster that now is fact. Or to the threat of it. Consequently the Nautilus was drydocked and secretly reconverted. She is still a ship, still a submarine, still atomically driven, but she is also a bomb. She contains, now, the largest hydrogen bomb ever assembled, and around it and in her sides, replacing armor, and in her keel, for ballast, is the element cobalt with other readily radioactivated elements. She stands, this day, in the North Sea, awaiting orders. She could be sent swiftly into the Baltic. She could approach the ways to the enemy, dive to bottom, and explode herself.”
“The crew…?” someone interrupted.
Gates said nothing. His long, thin face turned toward the questioner and his hazel eyes burned into the man. Then, at last, he spoke again.
“This is one of the greater-than-super weapons mentioned at least as far back as the Truman Administration. Its exact effect is not known and cannot be calculated. A few scientists fear its detonation at sea bottom might actually set up the planetary chain reaction. Most say not.
I believe the latter. It would, however, unquestionably devastate the enemy’s nation, obliterate perhaps two-thirds of his people and leave hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of square miles of enemy land radioactive, deadly even to vegetation. It might, according to the uncertain vicissitudes of weather, of high-altitude winds, of the so-called jet of air which waveringly girdles our planet, transport a large amount of this lethal material across the Pacific and conceivably leave here a lesser but real train of death and sickness, sterility, misery and additional fear. That is an indeterminate risk involved in the weapon’s use. It is our third possibility—the only alternative I can offer to a surrender that would surely become unconditional with passing time, or to a continuation of the existing holocaust with present weapons. I shall have a few of the military men and scientists speak to you….”
An hour and a quarter later, it was voted to order the Nautilus to proceed—and to demolish herself, and the foe.