That highway was made for speed. So were those machines. Each rider, as he got into the flat, lay down along his tank, tucked his chin behind the cross-bar, and twisted both throttles out against their stops. They were in a hurry. They had a long way to go; and if they did not get there in time to stop those trans-polar atomic missiles, all hell would be out for noon.
Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers stationed permanently at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait—wait in instant readiness—until she was actually attacked. Because every good Techno in America had his assigned place in some American Defense Plan; of which Operation Bullfinch was only one. Because, without the presence of those Technos at their every-day jobs, all ordinary technological work in America would perforce have stopped.
A branch road curved away to the right. Scarcely slowing down, Kinnison bulleted into the turn and through an open, heavily-guarded gate. Here his mount and his lights were passwords enough: the real test would come later. He approached a towering structure of alloy—jammed on his brakes—stopped beside a soldier who, as soon as Kinnison jumped off, mounted the motorcycle and drove it away.
Kinnison dashed up to an apparently blank wall, turned his back upon four commissioned officers holding cocked forty-fives at the ready, and fitted his right eye into a cup. Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered; any imposter would have died instantly, without arrest or question. For every man who belonged aboard that rocket had been checked and tested—how he had been checked and tested!—since one spy, in any one of those Technos' chairs, could wreak damage untellable.
The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large, but crowded, Operations Room.
"Hi, Teddy!" a yell arose.
"Hi, Walt! Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!" and so on. These men were friends of old.
"Where are they?" he demanded. "Is our stuff getting away? Lemme take a peek at the Ball!"
"I'll say it is! O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!"
He squeezed in. It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and centered approximately by the North Pole. A multitude of red dots moved slowly—a hundred miles upon that map was a small distance—northward over Canada; a closer-packed, less numerous group of yellowish-greens, already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south.