el Barfield, I'd
like you to ask Colonel Malinowski, the Russian military attache to see
me here not later than an hour from now. We'll have a full dress
conference here at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning, with written evaluation
reports in detail from all branches. Dr. Forster, consider yourself
assigned to Pentagon duty as of now, and until further notice."

* * * * *

Forster sat, dazed, until he realized that the others had left, and the
general was standing in front of him.

"Go get some rest, Forster," the other man said with surprising
gentleness. "You've had a tough day."

As Forster slept that early summer night, weathermen across the world
were marking their weather maps with thousands of observations--feathery
wind arrows, temperatures, barometric pressures and relative humidities.

Then, as they drew their isobars, the pattern for the northern
hemisphere emerged. A giant high pressure system with its center in
northern Oklahoma promised warm fair weather across America. Another,
centered east of the Ural Mountains, forecast clear weather for most of
Europe and northern Asia.

A low pressure trough between was dropping light warm rain on the green
fields of England, but from Seattle to Washington, D. C, from Stettin to
Vladivostock the sun was rising or setting in clear skies.

Then about 9 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, a thickening mist descended
over warm and drowsy southwest South Carolina. It was a fog that was not
a fog, observers said afterwards, because there was no damp, no
coldness--just a steady loss of visibility until a man couldn't see his
hand held up in front of his face, even though a bright moon was
shining. Most of the reporting night shift at the Aiken hydrogen bomb
plant never reached the tightly-guarded gates. Those who did were not
allowed in.

At the same hour, across the world at the newly-built underground heavy
water factory of Rossilovskigorsk, west of the southern tip of Lake
Baikal, the late morning sun cast deep shadows into the gaping holes in
the hillside which marked the plant entrances and exits. Deep below,
miles of filtration chambers hissed quietly as they prepared their
deadly concentrate.

Then, without warning, the sun grew watery and paled, and within a few
minutes a haze began to form at ground level. It grew thicker and
thicker; the sun became a dim orange sphere, then was blotted out. Total
darkness enveloped the area.

And at th