"Murray Leinster - The Nameless Something" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

CHAPTER II
Miracles Without Work

LIKE everybody else in the United States, Dr. David Murfree of the Bureau of Standards, in
Washington, felt rather sick at the prospect of war under any circumstances, and especially under the
conditions obtaining. The point was that the United States literally could not make a sneak atomic attack
on anybody. Its prospective enemy could. Nobody in America had authority to issue an order for the
beginning of war.
In the European Power's government there was one man who could simply nod his head and have
guided missiles go keening up into the stratosphere to fall thousands of miles away upon the cities of the
United States.
If Congress took his note as it deserved to be taken—as a threat of war—he would nod his head
and possibly half of the population in America would be dead within hours. The United States was as
well-armed as any other Power in the world, perhaps better-armed.
But the United States could not shoot first. It simply, literally, could not. And in atomic war, the one
who shoots first wins. So the situation was that the enemy had made a threat which struck at the very
roots of American civilization, and if the United States took measures to meet it, it would be destroyed.
Most of the people who really understood the danger went into hidden panic. There was a sudden
quiet movement of well-informed people out of the larger cities. The movement spread. It ceased to be
quiet. It became a mass exodus—more or less orderly, to be sure, but a movement of whole
populations.
Terror lived in the cities, but not in the open country so the cities became practically abandoned and
the European Power watched with sardonic amusement as the greatest nation on earth seemed to go into
a blue funk at the very notion of the European Power's displeasure.
Two-thirds of Congress found excuses to leave Washington, which would certainly be bombed in
case of war. It was impossible to secure a quorum in the Capital either to enact laws to resist the threat
or to yield to it. The government of the United States was paralyzed by a mere verbal menace.
But Doctor David Murfree stayed at his post. He kept his head. The menace held, but for nearly a
week nothing happened. The State Department replied to the note it had received. It asked the European
Power for the agenda of the discussion it proposed and for an outline of the reasons why the European
Power feared aggression from the United States. It used all the normal tricks to stall and gain time. Which
was exactly in line with the desires of the head of the threatening nation.
So long as there was a crisis in being, there would be terror and confusion in America. Large
numbers of the population would be uprooted, the cities would be nearly or quite deserted, commerce
would stop and generally such a state of affairs would exist that —so a European would
reason—presently the American public would be willing to accept any possible surrender of principle just
to get things going again. It would be willing even to surrender democracy.
There were times when it seemed likely in America, too. Some people stayed on at their posts. Some
sent their families to safety and carried on. But very many fled. Still there was a skeleton semblance of
city life still going on.
Many factories closed, but some florists stayed in business. Police and newspapers here and there
and radio stations and delicatessen stores and a few taxicabs, and generally a small percentage of every
sort of activity continued to function. But it was a very small percentage.
Murfree, however, grimly made the most of what was left. He stayed at his desk in the Bureau of
Standards and urgently and persistently hounded the moribund clipping-bureaus for newspaper accounts
of odd events. That paradoxic activity, he felt, was the only hope that the United States could have to
avoid either complete social and economic collapse, or else bombardment by atomic bombs which
would reduce its cities to ruins.
He'd been collecting such clippings for months. It was a good deal of a strain on his finances too,