AND THEN then we saw them. A great fleet of heavy bombers, flying high, far beyond even Kazu's reach. Baker seized the glasses to look, and then gave a cry of warning. The leading plane had dropped something—a black spherical object above which blossomed a parachute. I think that Kazu realized what it was as soon as we, but he still stood quietly. Baker lost whatever calm he had left and screamed, "Run, run—it's the H-bomb!" but still Kazu did not move. In a moment another of the deadly spheres appeared, directly over us, and then a third. Now at last Kazu moved, but not toward safety. He walked slowly until he was directly beneath the first bomb, and reached up, until his hand was a thousand feet in the air. Down came the bomb, quite rapidly, for the parachute was not very large.
"What's the matter with the fool," yelled Martin. But now Baker seemed to get Kazu's idea.
"It has barometric fusing—it's set to detonate at a certain altitude. If that's below a thousand feet, and Kazu can catch it, it won't go off!"
Martin started something about detonation at two thousand feet, when Kazu gave a slight jump and his hand closed about the deadly thing, as though he had caught a fly. We cowered, expecting the flash that would mean the end, but nothing happened. In Kazu's crushing grip the firing mechanism was reduced to wreckage before it could act. When Buddha opened his palm, it contained only a wad of crumpled metal inside of which was a now harmless sphere of plutonium.
In quick succession Kazu repeated this performance with the other two bombs, wadded the whole together and flung it to the ground. Then he turned to the north.
By the time we had cleared the city, it was quite light, and we could see a dark pall of smoke in the northeast. The armies which had been poised last night had finally met, and a great battle was underway. Kazu hurried towards it, and presently we could hear the crackle of small arms fire and the heavier explosions of mortars and rockets. It took a moment or so for Kazu to get his bearings. Evidently we were approaching Mao's legions from the rear. Still keeping from the roads to avoid killing anyone, Kazu advanced to near the battle line, and there stopped.
"My brothers," his voice thundered above the heaviest cannon, "my poor brothers on both sides, listen to me. Stop this killing. Stop this useless slaughter. No one can win, and all will—"
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light, a thousand times brighter than the newly appeared sun. It came from behind us, and in the terrible instant that it remained we could see Buddha's enormous shadow stretching out across the battlefield. Kazu stopped speaking and braced his shoulders for the blast. Subconsciously I was counting seconds. Four, five, six, seven—A sudden, insane hope gripped me. If we were far enough from the burst—and then the blast hit us, and with it, the sound. Kazu pitched forward a hundred yards, and stumbled on as far again. Then he recovered. One hand reached behind him, to the back that had taken the full brunt of heat and gamma radiation, and a half animal cry escaped from his lips. Over his shoulder we got a glimpse of the fireball, of the fountain of color which would presently form the terrible mushroom cloud. The thunder of the explosion reverberated, and was replaced by silence. The crackle of rifles, the thud of field pieces had ceased. From our perch we looked down at a scene straight from Dante's Inferno. About Kazu's feet was a shallow ravine in which a thousand or so communist troops had taken cover. These were now scrambling and clawing at the sides like ants trying to get away. Vehicles were abandoned, rifles thrown away. A few had been burned, but it seemed that for the most part the soldiers had been sheltered from direct radiation by the wall of their canyon, and by Kazu's great shadow.
For an eternity, it seemed, Kazu stood there, swaying slightly, one hand still pressed against his back, while the little men writhed about his ankles. Then, quite slowly, he raised one foot. I thought that he was going to walk away, but instead, the foot moved deliberately until it was directly over the ravine, and then, like a tremendous pile driver, it descended. A faint and hideous screaming came up to us, which abruptly ended. The foot came up, and again descended, turning back and forth in the yielding earth. Slowly Kazu brought his hand up, and lifted our box so that he could look at us. As he did so, I saw that half of his hand was the color of charcoal, and I smelled a horrible odor of tons of burnt flesh. Now at last he spoke, in a voice that we could scarcely understand.