Yes, we studied that LCVP that had seemed to be a funnel by which the Shadow Men coalesced into one shadow and vanished, but could find no key to the means or manner of their strange escape.
We were resting one afternoon, and Haggerty had just said this was the most unsatisfactory duty he had ever performed in twenty-some years of landing with the marines around the world, while Hoose suggested we ought to have a name for this nameless area, and Trumpeter Krane offered "Outpost Zero" as the most appropriate—when Preble erupted: "My God! Look!"
He was pointing up through the dome. Spinning down toward us from an empty sky was a ball of something that looked like metal—or perhaps crystal. It glistened and shone in the sun. It almost hurt the eyes.
Nobody said anything as that ball came closer and closer. I think we all knew what it was, though none of us had been at Hiroshima that fatal day.
We saw the A-bomb disintegrate, almost lazily, directly above our dome.
No one who has seen the Hiroshima pictures needs a further explanation of what we all saw. Only, this A-bomb was far more powerful than the first one. Only one nation, we all thought, could have it.
Why would our own people be so intent on wiping us out?
In a split second we were in the midst of the cloud, in the heart of the explosion, each one of us trying to convince himself, by pinching, that he was actually going through an A-bomb explosion—absolutely unscathed. Not even a sound came through.
We were sitting in the middle of the perfect defense against the A-bomb, but we didn't know what it was or who had made it—and we couldn't get out of it!
There was comfort in the knowledge that someone knew, else how did it happen that the A-bomb made what would have been a direct hit on the dome if it hadn't been detonated about a thousand feet above? There was design here, all right—but whose?