The sky was dark, the snow deep, and the wind bitterly cold as the little file of men on snowshoes awkwardly made their way forward. Each clutched with thick mittens the rope that kept him from losing the others when the whirling snow was all there was to see. The leader, at the head of the file, glanced frequently back over his shoulder at the studious-looking man who came next in line, and who looked often at a small gray box he carried in his left hand. This box was attached by a smooth, thick, black cord to a pack on his back, from which projected a shiny antenna. He now called out sharply and, at the head of the file, the leader reached inside his thick fur coat, took out a whistle, and blew a long shrill blast.
The file came to a halt. The men began to help each other unload their packs. The leader, after an intent glance all around, conferred with the man next in line, who gave a final look at the little gray box, and helplessly spread his hands. As the wind died down, both men glanced uneasily around, as if they might be overheard, and lowered their voices.
"I may be a scientist, Comrade," said the studious-looking man, "but still I can't be sure. The astronomers are the ones who predict the timing, and they leave themselves a good margin for error."
"I don't want to get too close too soon," said the leader. "Are we at least sure that's the spot, up ahead?"
"What is 'sure'? We carry out the calculations as best we know how, analyze the data, rely on the surviving geodetic satellites to help us fix position accurately, and try to correct any erroneous assumptions that creep into our calculations. Nevertheless, we calculate according to assumptions that may or may not prove valid in any given case. I think that's the spot. There is no way I can know."
"The last one of these little expeditions," said the leader shortly, "didn't come back. That was how it was discovered that their predicted intensity was wrong."
"Well, I am responsible for the present intensity prediction, and I am here to take the consequences."
The leader blinked, then grinned, and clapped the scientist on the shoulder. "It will give me great pleasure to see you go, too, if your damned calculations are wrong. But at least you are here to listen to my complaints. Would that these higher-ups of ours were a little less remote."
"It is best not to speak of such things."
"And I hope the Americans, at least, got well paid back for this."
"Shh. It wasn't as you think. In any case, they did. But we cannot talk of such matters."
"Who is to hear, in this place?" Nevertheless, the leader glanced around uneasily. After a silence, he said, "Can't you give me some idea when it will start?"
"In all probability, it will start, that is all I can say. We are given a time-band that is supposed to represent an extreme limit of possibility. But . . . Look! The snow!"
Ahead of them, the snowfield grew brighter, reflecting a new glow of the clouds overhead. The leader put his whistle to his lips, and blew a succession of short blasts.
Before them, the reflected glow strengthened. The snow shone with a white light. The glow became a glare. Then the snow ahead was one dazzling blaze of blinding light.
At that moment, the leader, turning to check that his men had their instruments in use, chanced to see the expression on the face of the scientist.
Afterward, what the leader remembered most clearly was that expression. He had seen it somewhere before, knew it from the past, and it connected with strong emotions somewhere beneath the surface of his memories. But at first he could not recall where or when he had seen it.
It was only later, back in the barracks, that he remembered. Lying awake in the darkness, in the early morning chill, he could see again his brother's face, long ago, back in the time after the famine and the migration, when a wandering drifter had broken into his parents' cabin while his father was away in the woods. He had smilingly insulted his mother, and with easy slaps knocked the two small children out of his way. He had helped himself comfortably from the table, cuffed their mother when she tried to gather the crying children to her, and then, grinning, had suddenly caught her by the arm.
At that moment, the door with the freshly broken latch had come open behind the intruder. Gun in hand, their father stepped in.
It had been then, and in the moments following, that he had seen the grim exultant expression on his brother's face, and hadn't thought of it since, until, with that merciless blaze pounding down from the sky, he had seen the same expression again, on the face of the scientist.
"Why?" he asked himself, lying in the darkness. What was there about that terrible light and heat and glare that was like the father returning home as the family was in desperate need?
Lying motionless in the dark, he recalled the bits of information that were all he had managed to wring from the scientist:
The Americans had been paid back; but don't talk of it; and it wasn't as you think.
Frowning, he lay in the darkness thinking it over, and for the first time he wondered, what had it been like on the other side of all that had happened? He lay for a time recalling the contradictory accounts of the Americans that were all that he had heard. It was little enough to go on, and, always, it was wisest to say nothing, best to ask no questions, most prudent to offer no comment, as the scientist had warned him.
Thinking of it, he again fell asleep, and his mother was there, comforting him, and his father's deep voice was in the background, reassuring and steady, and everything was all right, and he was sound asleep, no longer thinking about the Americans, and the war, and what had happened back there in the confusion of the past.
Thousands of miles away, Calder still lay, the service rifle beneath his hands, turned toward the entrance from the tunnel that led to the old abandoned mine shaft. From the place where he lay, the location of the massive steel door that closed the mineshaft end of the tunnel was easy to see. The odds on anyone coming in through that door were almost nil, but the general had insisted that one place where the Reds excelled was in the gathering of intelligence, and he would take no chance on the assumption that they didn't know what was concealed here.
Calder's assignment had been to guard this entrance, and he lay now in almost the same position he had chosen when that sudden premonition of trouble had struck him, just after he had come down and relieved Minetti, who had complained that this was a damned hard floor, either to stand on, sit on, or lie on, and they should have made it out of wood instead of this damned concrete. Concrete was bad for the arches, gave people rheumatism, and aggravated other unmentionable complaints that Minetti described in full and enthusiastic detail, and then, grinning, he had said, "Enjoy yourself, kid," and started back down the corridor. And nothing had seemed to change here, nothing had seemed to change at all, deep inside the mountain, until the grating noise had sounded at the massive steel door, and the vibration had traveled up the corridor, and the bright steady light had come in through the ring of new holes in the door, and then at last the big section had been tilted out, and now the men came in through the opening, neither in Russian uniforms nor in the American uniforms worn by Calder and Minetti. These men, in their strange gray uniforms, advanced warily up the corridor, led by a tall man with a full white beard, who, frowning, knelt beside Calder as the brilliant white lanterns shone down, felt carefully at Calder's wrist and throat, looked up wonderingly, slowly straightened, and turned to the man with him.
"This is the uniform of the Old O'Cracys themselves. But this body shows no wounds. And it is not decomposed. Yet the air here is breathable. This air should support life, including the life of the organisms of decay. Look up the corridor—there lies another soldier of the O'Cracys. What killed these two men? And why is there no decomposition?"
A look of intense speculation crossed his face. "Could the Old Soviets have attacked this place to kill the defenders without destroying what they defended?"
He turned to an officer whose branch of service was indicated by a small silver disc at the lapel of his uniform jacket.
"Send to Arakal over the flasher our time of entry through that door, and two sentences: 'O'Cracy installation. Seems intact.' Sign it 'Colputt'. Use the code book, and query every half-half until we have confirmation."
He glanced intently up the corridor, took the pad held out to him, and initialed the message.
The communications officer went quickly back down the corridor toward the mine shaft that led up to the outside.
Colputt led the way past the two bodies into the silent interconnecting corridors.