The Planet on the Table (21 page)

Less than an hour. They were at thirty thousand feet, bombing altitude. Fitch gave him altimeter readings to dial into the bombsight. Matthews gave him windspeeds. Sweat got in his eye and he blinked furiously. The sun rose behind them like an atomic bomb, glinting off every corner and edge of the Plexiglas, illuminating his bubble compartment with a fierce glare. Broken plans jumbled together in his mind, his breath was short, his throat dry. Uselessly and repeatedly he damned the scientists, damned Truman. Damned the Japanese for causing the whole mess in the first place, damned yellow killers, they had brought this on themselves. Remember Pearl. American men had died under bombs when no war had been declared; they had started it and now it was coming back to them with a vengeance. And they deserved it. And an invasion of Japan would take years, cost millions of lives—end it now, end it, they deserved it, they deserved it steaming river full of charcoal people silently dying damned stubborn race of maniacs!

“There’s Honshu,” Fitch said, and January returned to the world of the plane. They were over the Inland Sea. Soon they would pass the secondary target, Kokura, a bit to the south. Seven-thirty. The island was draped more heavily than the sea by clouds, and again January’s heart leaped with the idea that weather would cancel the mission. But they did deserve it. It was a mission like any other mission. He had dropped bombs on Africa, Sicily, Italy, all Germany… He leaned forward to take a look through the sight. Under the X of the crosshairs was the sea, but at the lead edge of the sight was land. Honshu. At two hundred and thirty miles an hour that gave them about a half hour to Hiroshima. Maybe less. He wondered if his heart could beat so hard for that long.

Fitch said, “Matthews, I’m giving over guidance to you. Just tell us what to do.”

“Bear south two degrees,” was all Matthews said. At last their voices had taken on a touch of awareness, even fear.

“January, are you ready?” Fitch asked.

“I’m just waiting,” January said. He sat up, so Fitch could see the back of his head. The bombsight stood between his legs. A switch on its side would start the bombing sequence; the bomb would not leave the plane immediately upon the flick of the switch, but would drop after a fifteen-second radio tone warmed the following planes. The sight was adjusted accordingly.

“Adjust to a heading of two sixty-five,” Matthews said.

“We’re coming in directly upwind” This was to make any side-drift adjustments for the bomb unnecessary. “January, dial it down to two hundred and thirty-one miles per hour.”

“Two thirty-one.”

Fitch said, “Everyone but January and Matthews, get your goggles on.”

January took the darkened goggles from the floor. One needed to protect one’s eyes or they might melt. He put them on, put his forehead on the headrest. They were in the way. He took them off. When he looked through the sight again there was land under the crosshairs. He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. Up and reading the papers, drinking tea.

“Ten minutes to AP,” Matthews said. The aiming point was Aioi Bridge, a T-shaped bridge in the middle of the delta-straddling city. Easy to recognize.

“There’s a lot of cloud down there,” Fitch nodded. “Are you going to be able to see?”

“I won’t be sure until we try it,” January said.

“We can make another pass and use radar if we need to,” Matthews said.

Fitch said. “Don’t drop it unless you’re sure, January.”

“Yes, sir.”

Through the sight a grouping of rooftops and gray roads was just visible between broken clouds. Around it green forest. “All right,” Matthews exclaimed, “here we go! Keep it right on this heading, Captain! January, we’ll stay at two thirty-one.”

“And same heading,” Fitch said. “January, she’s all yours. Everyone make sure your goggles are on. And be ready for the turn.”

January’s world contracted to the view through the bomb sight. A stippled field of cloud and forest. Over a small range of hills and into Hiroshima’s watershed. The broad river was mud brown, the land pale hazy green, the growing network of roads flat gray. Now the tiny rectangular shapes of buildings covered almost all the land, and swimming into the sight came the city proper, narrow islands thrusting into a dark blue bay. Under the crosshairs the city moved island by island, cloud by cloud. January had stopped breathing, his fingers were rigid as stone on the switch. And there was Aloi Bridge. It slid right under the crosshairs, a tiny T right in a gap in the clouds. January’s fingers crushed the switch. Deliberately he took a breath, held it. Clouds swam under the crosshairs, then the next island. “Almost there,” he said calmly into his microphone. “Steady.” Now that he was committed his heart was humming like the Wrights. He counted to ten. Now flowing under the crosshairs were clouds alternating with green forest, leaden roads. “I’ve turned the switch, but I’m not getting a tone!” he croaked into the mike. His right hand held the switch firmly in place. Fitch was shouting something—Matthews’ voice cracked across it— “Flipping it b-back and forth,” January shouted, shielding the bombsight with his body from the eyes of the pilots. “But
still
—wait a second—”

He pushed the switch down. A low hum filled his ears. “That’s it! It started!”

“But where will it land?” Matthews cried.

“Hold steady!” January shouted.

Lucky Strike
shuddered and lofted up ten or twenty feet. January twisted to look down and there was the bomb, flying just below the plane. Then with a wobble it fell away.

The plane banked right and dove so hard that the centrifugal force threw January against the Plexiglas. Several thousand feet lower Fitch leveled it out and they hurtled north.

“Do you see anything?” Fitch cried. .

From the tailgun Kochenski gasped “Nothing.” January struggled upright. He reached for the welder’s goggles, but they were no longer on his head. He couldn’t find them. “How long has it been?” he said.

“Thirty seconds,” Matthews replied.

January clamped his eyes shut.

The blood in his eyelids lit up red, then white.

On the earphones a clutter of voices: “Oh my God. Oh my God.” The plane bounced and tumbled, metallically shrieking. January pressed himself off the Plexiglas. “Nother shockwave!” Kochenski yelled. The plane rocked again bounced out of control, this is it, January thought, end of the world, I guess that solves my problem.

He opened his eyes and found he could still see. The engines still roared, the props spun. “Those were the shockwaves from the bomb,” Fitch called. “We’re okay now. Look at that! Will you look at that sonofabitch go!”

January looked. The cloud layer below had burst apart, and a black column of smoke billowed up from a core of red fire. Already the top of the column was at their height. Exclamations of shock clattered painfully in January’s ears. He stared at the fiery base of the cloud, at the scores of fires feeding into it. Suddenly he could see past the cloud, and his fingernails cut into his palms. Through a gap in the clouds he saw it clearly, the delta, the six rivers, there off to the left of the tower of smoke: the city of Hiroshima, untouched.

“We missed” Kochenski yelled. “We missed it!”

January turned to hide his face from the pilots; on it was a grin like a rictus. He sat back in his seat and let the relief fill him.

Then it was back to it. “God damn it!” Fitch shouted down at him. McDonald was trying to restrain him, “January, get up here!”

“Yes, sir.” Now there was a new set of problems.

January stood and turned, legs weak. His right fingertips throbbed painfully. The men were crowded forward to look out the Plexiglas. January looked with them.

The mushroom cloud was forming. It roiled out as if it might continue to extend forever, fed by the inferno and the black stalk below it. It looked about two miles wide, and a half mile tall, and it extended well above the height they flew at, dwarfing their plane entirely. “Do you think we’ll all be sterile?” Matthews said.

“I can taste the radiation,” McDonald declared. “Can you? It tastes like lead.”

Bursts of flame shot up into the cloud from below, giving a purplish tint to the stalk, There it stood: lifelike, malignant, sixty thousand feet tall. One bomb. January shoved past the pilots into the navigation cabin, overwhelmed.

“Should I start recording everyone’s reactions, Captain?” asked Benton.

“To hell with that,” Fitch said, following January back. But Shepard got there first, descending quickly from the navigation dome. He rushed across the cabin, caught January on the shoulder, “You bastard!” he screamed as January stumbled back. “You lost your nerve, coward!”

January went for Shepard, happy to have a target at last, but Fitch cut in and grabbed him by the collar, pulled him around until they were face to face—

“Is that right?” Fitch cried, as angry as Shepard. “Did you screw up on purpose?”

“No,” January grunted, and knocked Fitch’s hands away from his neck. He swung and smacked Fitch on the mouth, caught him solid. Fitch staggered back, recovered, and no doubt would have beaten January up, but Matthews and Benton and Stone leaped in and held him back, shouting for order. “Shut up! Shut up!” McDonald screamed from the cockpit, and for a moment it was bedlam, but Fitch let himself be restrained, and soon only McDonald’s shouts for quiet were heard. January retreated to between the pilot seats, right hand on his pistol holster.

“The city was in the crosshairs when I flipped the switch,” he said. “But the first couple of times I flipped it nothing happened—”

“That’s a lie!” Shepard shouted. “There was nothing wrong with the switch, I checked it myself. Besides, the bomb exploded
miles
beyond Hiroshima, look for yourself! That’s
minutes
.” He wiped spit from his chin and pointed at January. “You did it.”

“You don’t know that,” January said. But he could see the men had been convinced by Shepard, and he took a step back. “You just get me to a board of inquiry, quick. And leave me alone till then. If you touch me again,” glaring venomously at Fitch and then Shepard, “I’ll shoot you.” He turned and hopped down to his seat, feeling exposed and vulnerable, like a treed raccoon.

“They’ll shoot
you
for this,” Shepard screamed after him. “Disobeying orders—treason—” Matthews and Stone were shutting him up.

“Let’s get out of here,” he heard McDonald say. “I can taste the lead, can’t you?”

January looked out the Plexiglas. The giant cloud still burned and roiled. One atom… Well, they had really done it to that forest. He almost laughed but stopped himself, afraid of hysteria. Through a break in the clouds he got a clear view of Hiroshima for the first time. It lay spread over its islands like a map, unharmed. Well, that was that. The inferno at the base of the mushroom cloud was eight or ten miles around the shore of the bay and a mile or two inland. A certain patch of forest would be gone, destroyed—utterly blasted from the face of the earth. The Japs would be able to go out and investigate the damage. And if they were told it was a demonstration, a warning—and if they acted fast— well, they had their chance. Maybe it would work.

The release of tension made January feel sick. Then he recalled Shepard’s words and he knew that whether his plan worked or not he was still in trouble, In trouble! It was worse than that. Bitterly he cursed the Japanese, he even wished for a moment that he
had
dropped it on them. Wearily he let his despair empty him.

A long while later he sat up straight. Once again he was a trapped animal. He began lunging for escape, casting about for plans. One alternative after another. All during the long grim flight home he considered it, mind spinning at the speed of the props and beyond. And when they came down on Tinian he had a plan. It was a long shot, he reckoned, but it was the best he could do.

The briefing hut was surrounded by MPs again. January stumbled from the truck with the rest and walked inside. He was more than ever aware of the looks given him, and they were hard, accusatory. He was too tired to care. He hadn’t slept in more than thirty-six hours, and had slept very little since the last time he had been in the hut, a week before. Now the room quivered with the lack of engine vibration to stabilize it, and the silence roared. It was all he could do to hold on to the bare essentials of his plan. The glares of Fitch and Shepard, the hurt incomprehension of Matthews, they had to be thrust out of his focus. Thankfully he lit a cigarette.

In a clamor of question and argument the others described the strike. Then the haggard Scholes and an intelligence officer led them through the bombing run. January’s plan made it necessary to hold to his story: “…and when the AP was under the crosshairs I pushed down the switch, but got no signal. I flipped it up and down repeatedly until the tone kicked in. At that point there was still fifteen seconds to the release.”

“Was there anything that may have caused the tone to start when it did?”

“Not that I noticed immediately, but—”

“It’s impossible,” Shepard interrupted, face red. “I checked the switch before we flew and there was nothing wrong with it. Besides, the drop occurred over a minute—”

“Captain Shepard,” Scholes said. “We’ll hear from you presently.”

“But he’s obviously lying—”

“Captain Shepard! It’s not at all obvious. Don’t speak unless questioned.”

“Anyway,” January said, hoping to shift the questions away from the issue of the long delay, “I noticed something about the bomb when it was falling that could explain why it stuck, I need to discuss it with one of the scientists familiar with the bomb’s design.”

“What was that?” Scholes asked suspiciously.

January hesitated. “There’s going to be an inquiry, right?”

Scholes frowned. “This is the inquiry, Captain January. Tell us what you saw.”

“But there will be some proceeding beyond this one?”

“It looks like there’s going to be a court-martial, yes, Captain.”

“That’s what I thought. I don’t want to talk to anyone but my counsel, and some scientist familiar with the bomb.”

“
I’m
a scientist familiar with the bomb,” Shepard burst out. “You could tell me if you really had anything, you—”