If you were not careful, an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile could lean on you. I B M's seemed to know exactly how to lean and seemed always to be whispering: "We're powerful preventives, chum. You created us and now we have a life of our own. If you don't treat us with respect—awe, even—we may decide to blow up the world!"
Basically it was absurd, perhaps, to think of the I B M's as alive. But were not all the weapons of men a little like fertile ghosts that could walk the world at will, and give birth continuously to offspring more deadly and specialized than themselves?
Had not the rude stone flints of Dawn Man given birth to bows and arrows and arrows to steel-edged weapons? And did not a good many African tribesmen today still think of weapons as the opposite of inanimate?
All forms of animism were primitive perhaps, but just how primitive was the nuclear fission bomb giving birth to the hydrogen bomb? All right—it was only the belief itself which was primitive and the modern world took a dim view of Dawn Age Man's animism. But dim or not, the view could still be frightening.
Clegman was startled out of his somber revery by a shout from outside the Administration Barracks. When a missile is traveling at the speed of sound its sides pick up all kinds of echoes, subsonic, sonic and supersonic. The shout sounded like that, the human voice distorted, shrill with excitement and then dwindling to just below the threshold of ear-perceptible sound and yet remaining somehow chillingly audible.
The same instant there was a buzzing at Clegman's elbow. He leapt up and clicked on the intercom. A voice said inflexibly: "I've just sent out an emergency alert, sir! Didn't dare wait to contact you. You might not have believed it and a delay of even half a minute—"
"Fraser! What the hell are you talking about? Are you drunk, Captain?" Clegman almost shouted the words, an angry flush creeping up over his cheekbones.
"I was never more sober," the voice said, with unruffled firmness. "Go to the window and look out. The south end of the missile area. You can see them from the barracks now, I think. A moment ago I might have had to talk you into going outside and we'd have wasted precious seconds. I'll take all responsibility for the alert, Colonel."
"You certainly will!" Clegman shouted, his shoulders shaking a little as he clicked off the intercom. "Remember that at the court martial!"
He crossed to the window in four long strides and looked out.