A bell sounded. The war was on!
Jeffrey did not move. He waited, and watched. Ten trillion electronic tubes would flash their information on the Map. He waited—one minute, two minutes, five minutes. The Map was dark.
So Forgacs wanted him to move first.
Jeffrey flicked the oxygen and his chair shot to the left. His fingers blurred into movement. He shot back to the center of the keyboard and focused his entire intellect on the Map.
A dozen tiny red lights rose off the coast of Newfoundland and raced eastward. Each light represented a thousand rockets loaded with thirty tons of D.T.N. One of those rockets would wipe Berlin from the earth—if it struck.
But Hoshawk knew the President did not expect them to reach Europe.
They did not. Near the coast of Holland they began to wink out. One got as far as Cologne.
If the Chamber had been above ground instead of three hundred feet deep in solid rock, they would have felt the concussion, for D.T.N. ’s powerful waves traveled at the speed of light.
Still there was no answer.
Jeffrey’s fingers played for an instant on the keys. Red lights rose from Labrador, from near Boston, from Florida, and streaked east—not for Berlin this time, but for Marseilles.
Jeffrey was testing Forgacs’ explosive screen. It was wholly effective; one after the other, the trains of red lights winked out.