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Title: The Sling and the Stone
Author: Michael Shaara
Release Date: September 13, 2021 [eBook #66292]
Language: English
Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLING AND THE STONE ***
The Sling And The Stone
By Michael Shaara
Russian scientists knew that open warfare
with America was hazardous. Yet, ironically, a
victory could be gained--via the Hand of God!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
March 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_On the morning of the first day, floating in the cold of space, they
inflated the station. It puffed up tightly to a silvery doughnut, and
four men whose names were Krylov, Mirkov, Stolyakhin and Davchenko went
to live inside. There was no ceremony. Out of a motionless rocket
which hung in space nearby, other men came, trailing long wires. All
the long black afternoon of that day these men clustered on the skin of
the doughnut, fixing curved weightless slabs of carbon-coated aluminum
to the sides. And within the station, where there was air and therefore
a blessed noise, the four men worked with fluttery movements, attaching
wires and steel ribs, adjusting, connecting. After a while there was
nothing more to do. The rocket pulled in its lines, gathered up its
men. When they were all inside it turned over slightly and spat a
silent flame, and began to fall, and fell, and was gone._
_That was the first day._
_The second day was filled with work, and watching, and a great awe._
_The third day began to be lonely._
_On the fourth day they had a visitor...._
* * * * *
The mindless insanity, so carefully by-passed for so many years,
reached out at last and drew him in. Diavilev awoke.
The room was very cold, Pyotr Diavilev struggled into his clothes, not
sleepy at all, while the army man stood silently at the foot of the
bed. Outside the door, stolid and heavy-footed in the darkness, there
were other army men, creaking the floorboards and chuckling.
And so it comes, Diavilev thought. There was nothing at all to say or
do. He hitched his belt tightly and breathed for what seemed like the
first time, and then he nodded to the army man.
He was taken away.
He sat in the dark, in the plush rear seat of a huge car being driven
at great speed through the city. He was surprised; he had expected them
to be more brutal. But they were never, ever, what you expected. In the
darkness he strove to compose himself.
The army man asked him for a cigarette. When he struck the match
Diavilev realized that he had forgotten his glasses.
"My glasses," he said humbly, "please, I have forgotten my glasses."
The army man surprisingly, seemed concerned. Then he said:
"Never mind. We will get them."
He leaned forward and spoke into a radio. There was a brief reply
which Diavilev could not hear and the army man sat back comfortably,
satisfied.
"Your glasses will be there," he said.
Diavilev thanked him. Because of the unexpected courtesy the level of
his fear began to go down. _Perhaps it will not be so bad_, he thought.
_Maybe after all it is only interrogation._ But again he thought that
you never knew what to expect, that in all the long years of yessing
and bowing and applauding he had never understood them.
Well then, now was the time to understand.
_I will say whatever they want me to say, I will not resist in the
least. What does it matter? The world belongs to them, and if a man
wishes to live he must be logical and agree. Let them do what they
will, and I will applaud every step of the way._
He folded his hands in his lap.
After a long while the car stopped. The first army man gave him over to
another army man whom he could not see in the darkness, and after many
a salute he was conducted through a black iron gate. Within minutes he
was aboard a plane with four more army men. No one would say anything.
Pyotr Diavilev slept.
* * * * *
This of course he could not believe.
He saw the thing clearly in the late morning sun, rising in an
enormous, shining tube from the hard-baked floor of the desert, but it
was obviously impossible. He was taken on an elevator one hundred feet
into the air and ushered through a door into the side of the thing,
not believing any of it for an instant. He was told, rather kindly
for once, that he was to be taken up in this thing and not to worry,
because it had been tested. Many times. But he was so completely
overwhelmed that he could not ask a question. There was nothing but
army men now, one of whom conducted him to a foam rubber hammock and
strapped him in. To his utter astonishment, the thing actually did take
off.
There were some very bad minutes. For a while he weighed several tons
and could not move, and then he weighed nothing at all and was sick.
Someone else unstrapped him and gave him pills, and then thoughtfully
tied him to a handring on the wall. And at long last his mind began to
accept it.
The incredible Soviet had succeeded. His Russian contemporaries had put
a manned vessel in outer space.
Diavilev sat quietly stupefied.
That the spouting, unshaven, preposterous baboons with whom he had
worked could have built this thing seemed to him blankly impossible.
Being one himself, Pyotr Diavilev had no great respect for what Russian
scientists the great many purges had left. But of course there the
thing was. Built by Germans perhaps, with secrets stolen from the
Americans while they haggled about peace; nevertheless, there the thing
was.
And if he was going up now there could be only one place to go and
therefore he was not a prisoner at all. The wonder and relief of it
was too much at once. He surrendered himself to awe. When the time came
to board the satellite he was poised and ready.
* * * * *
In the midst of a curving room hung and inset with a thousand shining
gadgets, Pyotr Diavilev floated in the air. A black-browed man took his
arm carefully and pulled him to the floor, placed magnetic-soled shoes
on his feet. Diavilev could not help grinning delightedly. The dark
man, whose name was Krylov, stood thoughtfully and absently scratching
his cheek.
"Now as to why you are here," he said, and Diavilev tensed and waited.
There were three other men in the room, but no one moved.
"You understand of course what this station is, and that the building
of it places us, our people, in control of the world."
Diavilev nodded.
"Atomic missiles launched from this base may be guided exactly to any
point on the surface of the Earth that we select, yet the station
itself represents so small and distinct a target as to be virtually
invulnerable. Russia, my friend, need fear no country on Earth. Not,"
he added quickly, "that she ever did, of course."
Diavilev, with the inbred habit of years, gave his congratulations.
Krylov stood looking at him closely, half-smiling, rubbing again at
his cheek. There was something infinitely chilling in the moment, but
Diavilev was able to smile back.
"This station has been in existence," said Krylov, "for slightly more
than a week. There are not fifty people in the entire world who know of
it. You have become one. You are therefore most important."
Diavilev was becoming nervous.
"But you are important," Krylov went on slowly, "for other reasons. To
be exact, you are perhaps as important at this moment as any man who
ever lived."
Diavilev, dazed, struggled to digest that while Krylov held him with
his eyes and the three other men spoke lowly among themselves.
"I am saying all this to impress upon you the vastness of the work with
which you have been entrusted. I want you to understand clearly that
the accuracy of your work could mean the collapse of all our enemies,
of the entire capitalistic empire. Therefore you _will_ be accurate."
There was a fixity to Krylov's face which was unsettling. Diavilev
waited, uneasy and bewildered. The dark man smiled.
"You are a Russian," he stated powerfully. "We know that you will do
your best."
"Of course," Diavilev said.
Krylov turned and pulled open a drawer. Out of the drawer he drew a
chart and handed it to Diavilev.
"Do you recognize that?"
Diavilev stared.
"That is the plotted orbit," Krylov said carefully, "of a moon. It is
not of course the moon with which you are familiar. But it is a moon
circling the Earth, a _second_ moon.
"It is a moon of which no one knows, excepting ourselves and
the Kremlin. We discovered it shortly after we arrived, when it
passed quite near the station. It is small and dark, too small and
non-reflecting to be seen from Earth. It is approximately five miles
wide.
"Do you understand?"
Diavilev who had had to digest a great many things in a very short
while, was able to nod. Because this was, after all, Diavilev's field.
A second moon, he told Krylov, speaking with some excitement, had long
been predicted by astrophysicists everywhere. Since the Earth had
been attracting meteors for something like two billion years, it was
inevitable that _some_ at least should be captured as moons.
Krylov broke in, nodding with impatience.
"Exactly. And now as to your work. You will see this moon shortly, when
it crosses our path again. At that time you will correct the orbit we
have plotted. You will also give us the exact mass and speed of that
moon. The instruments you will need are already here. Let me emphasize
this: You will be accurate. Is that clear?"
Diavilev nodded.
"Do you have any questions?"
Diavilev had none. He wanted to ask why, of course, but he knew from
long experience of army men that Krylov was not ready to tell him. He
set himself, as always, to be patient. And now as well he wanted to
think, he wanted to be alone. The magnificent fact of where he was had
begun at last to envelope him. Now he wanted to _see_.
"Very well," said Krylov, "the moon will be here in three hours."
The interview ended. The army men moved away awkwardly, through the
air. A young man named Stolyakhin, clearly showing his contempt for
intellectuals and scientists, was left to show him around.
And for the Universe, for Creation, for the most magnificent sight that
any man would ever see, Diavilev had three hours.
* * * * *
At three twenty-three in the black afternoon the moonlet came within
radar range. The alarm claxon screamed. Pyotr Diavilev sat poised and
ready, holding himself tightly, while the thing came by with a great
curving rush. There was very little time, but Diavilev worked with
care and precision, and when he was done he looked into the television
screen and saw the moonlet go by.
In that moment he felt the presence of God.
The thing was so huge, so incredibly immense, that Diavilev was
terrified. Jagged, pitted, revolving slowly like a great rolling stone,
the ball rushed by in the awful silence, blotting out the stars. To
Diavilev there was never anything so cold, or dark, or ominous, never
anything at all like it in all the history of man, or the world. _Like
a stone_, Diavilev thought _from the sling of God_. It bore off into
the west, reflecting dimly the cold yellow rays of the sun. It was gone
in seconds.
Diavilev tried to relax. He put a cigarette into his mouth and lighted
it, but as usual the heated gasses did not rise and the cigarette put
itself out. Diavilev did not notice. Before he could think, before he
could even begin to realize the thought that was forming in his mind,
Krylov was beside him, speaking with restrained exultation.
"Were you successful?"
Diavilev looked up shakily.
"Yes."
"You will check your figures, of course."
"They are accurate."
"Doubtless. But you will check them. When you are certain that there
is no possibility of error, you will be given your final work. I will
not tell you that until you have finished here, since what we plan may
affect the clarity of your thinking. That must not happen."
Diavilev could not stop the question.
"What are you going to do?"
"You will know when there is a need. Your figures must be accurate."
Krylov was gone.
Diavilev sat for a long time without thinking, then he reached up
slowly and turned off the television, and the Earth and the stars
were gone. Now he must begin to think; now, really, he must try to
understand. Twenty-four hours ago he had been in his bed in his home,
sleeping, and now he was in outer space. It was too much for him.
He could not understand why they had brought him here and before the
stupendous fact of what was _outside_ he was helpless even to think.
He had only a fear, a cold growing fear deep inside, because this
station was the most potent military weapon the world had ever known,
and because there was no hope now for the rest of the world. Always
before he had thought, as a matter of course, that the army men would
never last, would be swallowed eventually in the Russian soil just as
had all the other conquerors before them. But now he saw that there was
no chance, and the power of these men, their overwhelming power, was a
fact he could not deny.
Yet the habit of obedience was great, and this thing too Diavilev
could forget. For in the end what mattered was only this: Diavilev was
outside.
No more time to think.
He reached back up, turned on the screen. He surrendered himself with
awe to watch the shining movements.
And the moonlet was forgotten.
There were many, many things which the moonlet would end, and Pyotr
Diavilev was one of them, but of this of course he could not know,
and so he continued to watch while the moonlet swung out over Russia,
Denmark, and the northern tip of England. Just as it had been passing,
silently, for a hundred million years. Just as it would pass, still
silently, for a few more days....
* * * * *
The moonlet came round twice more, and each time Pyotr Diavilev
carefully checked his figures. They were true. The thing was roughly
circular, something less than five miles in diameter, had an orbital
speed approaching that of the station. Because of its weight Diavilev
was certain that it was virtually solid nickel iron. A cold whirling
mass of iron, five miles thick, come out of eternity and the endless
reaches of space.
It occurred to Diavilev, with fascination, that no one as yet had
boarded the thing. He was about to ask when Krylov came up, but now the
end came, and he had no time.
Krylov wanted to know if he was now certain. Diavilev said yes.
"Good. Now we may begin."
Krylov looked into the television screen, again rubbing his face with
thick hairy hands. They were just passing over the northwestern coast
of America; Diavilev waited.
"If you were to take a pail of water," Krylov said calmly, "and whirl
it around over your head, what would happen to the water?"
Diavilev looked at him queerly.
"It would remain in the pail," Krylov said, smiling.
"If you were swinging it fast enough."
"Exactly."
Krylov turned back to stare at the screen. Below them was the pale
gleaming blue of the Pacific.
"But if you were to slow it down, comrade," Krylov said gently. "What
would happen then?"
"It would fall." And then, all of a sudden, Diavilev understood.
Time stopped. Diavilev began to feel sick.
Krylov laughed at his amazement.
"Now take the case of this moon. If we were to slow it down, would it
not fall?"
"But how...?"
"Would it not?"
"Yes."
"Ha!" Krylov laughed delightedly. "It was my own idea, you know.
Although I am not a scientific man, this I could do myself. Are you
amazed? I see that you are."
He clapped a rough hand on Diavilev's knee. Diavilev strove to keep the
horror from his face.
"Now one thing more. The moon, or moonlet, as you say, passes along a
definite line over certain areas of the Earth. If we were able to slow
it down when and where we wanted, the moon could be made to fall at a
predetermined point along that line. That is obvious.
"You have already computed that path, along with all the necessary
data. We, my friend, have picked the target. Your further work,
therefore, is this: you will determine the point and the time at which
the moonlet must be slowed in order to fall upon the target. It is a
simple question of trajectory. And that is your mission, your trust."
Diavilev could not speak. This man was clearly mad.
Krylov was laughing again, his teeth bared into Diavilev's eyes.
"Can you conceive it, comrade? Can you imagine it? The hand of God!
They will call it the hand of God!"
He leaned back and roared almost upsetting himself in the weightless
air. The other crewmen heard him laugh and turned to look. They were
all grinning.
Diavilev felt his clothes becoming sodden. Krylov was serious. More
than that, they were all serious. The Leader himself must know of all
this and must have approved, or Diavilev would not be here.
_But they cannot have fallen this far_, Diavilev told himself, _not in
so little a time_.
But they would do it. Observing Krylov, Diavilev understood at last
that they would, and a great wave of despair cut through him.
"How will you slow it down?"
Krylov waved a fat hand smoothly.
"By a series of hydrogen bomb explosions, placed at intervals along the
leading face. We have already begun. The bombs are here comrade. The
thrust of each bomb is known, each will slow the moonlet to a certain
extent. The last one, which you will time, will slow it too much and it
will begin to fall. And then," Krylov grinned, "the hand of God."
* * * * *
Diavilev removed his glasses, wiped them slowly. Futile to fight,
futile to oppose. The thing would work, he thought, and this hairy,
itching maniac knew it. Futile to tell him anything. But he had to say
something.
"Have you any idea of the explosive power the moonlet will have?"
"Some," Krylov said calmly, turning to watch him now with rock-like
eyes. "At the speed with which it will hit it can have no tensile
strength. Therefore the kinetic energy will be transformed into an
explosive energy. The thing will blow up. It will devastate an area
several hundred miles wide. It will kill quite a few million people."
Krylov chuckled. "And it can never be traced to us. It will be an act
of Providence."
Krylov roared again, waving his arms. "Think of the reaction, consider
the necessary psychology! At this most crucial point in the history of
the world, at this time when the enemy is preparing for a 'holy war',
suddenly a meteor will fall on the center of their land. A meteor
like none that has ever been dreamed of, and it will be so great a
coincidence that it should fall at this time, in this place, that they
will be forced to their knees. The fools--the fat, weak, superstitious
fools!--will say that it is God's will!"
Krylov roared again. And then he reminded Diavilev that it was his own
idea.
There was more. Krylov even suggested that the moonlet would be humane.
It was, after all, only a bomb. And if there was a war there would be
many bombs. But now the Americans would not dream of bombs. There need
not be a war at all.
Diavilev sat very still, yessing the rain of incredible logic. It was
clear to him only that this man was not human at all, that none of them
were, and that the destruction of civilization was the most inevitable
thing that ever was.
Krylov said that he knew Diavilev was overwhelmed, that he should rest
before he completed the final figures. He clapped Diavilev on the
shoulder and, before leaving, gave him the name of the target area.
Accuracy, after all, was not so important. If the moonlet hit within a
few hundred miles that would be enough.
Krylov went off and Diavilev was alone.
The light of the room was electric and undying. There was no blessed
darkness to come. Diavilev sat in the glare until he could not endure
it, and then found relief at the screen. With the Universe spread out
before him, Diavilev made his decision.
For out of the crumbling insanity, up from the measureless ignorance
which was his home, his nation, and his time, Diavilev had risen into
the only peace and order he had ever known. There down below him was
the beautiful Earth and off to his right was the Moon, and above him
there was nothing for ever and ever, nothing on out to infinity, the
utter open nothing of deep space. He could never go back to the great
sickness below. He realized that with great clarity, and a deep calm
peace came over him. The decision was simple. To everything there is
an end.
He thought about it for a long while, and then he smiled and it was
done.
There was very little time. In the few moments that there were he went
to the telescope. Maybe after all, with no atmosphere to hinder, he
could really see the canals on Mars....
* * * * *
Pyotr Diavilev handed in his figures. The blasting was done in the
daytime, so that there was little chance of it being seen from Earth.
Bit by bit, the moonlet slowed. After a while there was only one more
bomb to go.
With Krylov, in the waning moments, Diavilev rode out with the timing
equipment. In one of the small, light shuttle craft they went from the
station to the main rocket from Earth, which was following the moonlet
along its shortening curve. There was one more hour.
"Very soon now, eh?" smiled Krylov, looking quite deep into Diavilev's
eyes.
"Yes," said Diavilev.
"We will see it go all the way down. I have arranged for a picture to
be relayed to a television screen on the rocket. You will have the seat
of honor."
"Thank you," said Diavilev.
"Yes, you will have the seat of honor." Krylov was still staring at him.
Diavilev looked away. Outside the moonlet seemed stationary in space,
huge and black and permanent. Diavilev could see the men on one face of
her, setting the final bomb, which Diavilev would detonate with a radio
signal. There was one more thing which Diavilev wanted to do.
"Krylov," he said suddenly.
When he turned back he saw that Krylov's eyes were still on him.
"Yes?" Krylov asked.
"I wonder--would you mind if I went aboard the moonlet? I would like
to see what it is like, really, up close. No scientist has ever had a
chance like this. Perhaps I might learn something. Would you mind?"
Krylov frowned, lowered his eyes slightly.
"Is there time?"
"There is an hour."
Krylov thought for a long moment. Then he straightened, smiling.
"Of course. You will go. We will both go."
* * * * *
Diavilev stepped out onto the surface of the moonlet. That Krylov was
with him did not matter. He had set foot on an alien world.
He stood upon metal, gazing with wide shining eyes at the crags and
the cracks, the dark jagged peaks of the thing out of space. This was
something of which, in his life, he had never dreamed. Now that he had
done this his life was complete. He moved forward carefully down a
ragged cleft, turning to speak to Krylov....
... who was not there.
"Krylov!"
Emptiness.
He turned and ran back, beginning to understand. In the lack of gravity
he almost threw himself out into space, caught hold of a spur and
pulled himself down.
"Krylov!"
He sat down. There was no need to call again. He lifted his head
and looked once again through the glass of his helmet at the clean,
brilliant stars.
"_Idiot._"
It was Krylov's voice, flat and dispassionate, coming through the radio
in his helmet. Diavilev shuddered.
"Did you think we trusted you? Did you think that we did not know your
kind can never be trusted? Did you think you could _fool_ us?"
Diavilev did not answer.
"I will not ask why," Krylov said flatly, "that is known only to your
miserable self." He waited. When Diavilev did not speak his voice came
again quickly.
"Have you nothing to say, idiot? No epitaph, no begging?"
His voice had become too loud and Diavilev turned the radio down.
"A German checked your figures, Diavilev. Do you understand? A German
who is now dead found you out, fool. Your trajectory was radioed to
Earth and checked and corrected, and the meteor will not fall in the
ocean, Diavilev. It will land on the capitol of the United States!
"And you will be on it. All the way down you will be on it. Is that not
a fitting end? We are a great people, Diavilev, a poetic and powerful
people. Is your ending not poetic?..."
Diavilev rose wearily and clambered up the iron walls to a higher
place, a place from which he could see the sun. Krylov was beginning to
rave, working himself into a frenzy. Diavilev turned him off, waited
patiently in the black silence.
There was nothing heroic about him. If he had it to do now he would not
do it at all, but it was fixed and irrevocable and now he would have to
wait, afraid and unutterably lonely, until the end.
The stars above him were a billion icy eyes.
After a while there was a flash, and the moonlet kicked under his feet.
He held on as the metal rocked. He waited, waited, waited, until he
could feel it beginning to fall. Then he took a deep breath and spoke:
"Krylov."
"Goodbye."
"Krylov," Diavilev said quietly, "listen, my army friend. You gave me
a problem. The problem had two parts. Two parts, army man. And if the
first part is wrong the other does not matter."
At the other end of the radio, borne through space and the rushing
emptiness, Diavilev sensed the beginning of fear. He was able to smile.
"What?..." came faintly.
"When you checked the trajectory, did you also bring some German up to
compute the size of the moonlet all over again?"
Nothing. Diavilev chuckled.
"You didn't, did you, Krylov?"
There was nothing on the radio but an aching, brittle static.
"You used the speed _I_ gave you; you used the mass _I_ gave you. The
moon will not fall on America, Krylov."
Gradually now, over the weakening radio, came back the sounds which
were to be the last pleasure of Pyotr Diavilev's life. Rage first,
and a vast incoherence, and then Krylov began to change in an ugly,
despairing, dirty way, whimpering, and all Diavilev could understand
was: "... _my idea, it was my idea!_"
But now Diavilev could not listen, because the moon was falling and
there was very little time. An end in fire, the little man thought, a
blessed quick end as I hit the air. He shouted, trying to make himself
heard.
"We are both dying, army man. Soldier boy, my captain, _do you know
where the moon will fall_?"
Krylov knew. He went mad.
"Watch me go!" and now Diavilev was laughing, "take your seat of honor
and watch me all the way. Here I go, Krylov, watch me! Watch your
world!"
He stopped, out of breath, to hang on, while the moon fell away beneath
him, faster, faster, and the stars began to whirl, and a poetic end,
he thought, a lovely end, let there be an end. And eventually the
end came and Diavilev was dust, and his dust mingled evenly with the
fire-blasted soil of Russia.
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