Krylov waved a fat hand smoothly.
"By a series of hydrogen bomb explosions, placed at intervals along the leading face. We have already begun. The bombs are here comrade. The thrust of each bomb is known, each will slow the moonlet to a certain extent. The last one, which you will time, will slow it too much and it will begin to fall. And then," Krylov grinned, "the hand of God."
Diavilev removed his glasses, wiped them slowly. Futile to fight, futile to oppose. The thing would work, he thought, and this hairy, itching maniac knew it. Futile to tell him anything. But he had to say something.
"Have you any idea of the explosive power the moonlet will have?"
"Some," Krylov said calmly, turning to watch him now with rock-like eyes. "At the speed with which it will hit it can have no tensile strength. Therefore the kinetic energy will be transformed into an explosive energy. The thing will blow up. It will devastate an area several hundred miles wide. It will kill quite a few million people." Krylov chuckled. "And it can never be traced to us. It will be an act of Providence."
Krylov roared again, waving his arms. "Think of the reaction, consider the necessary psychology! At this most crucial point in the history of the world, at this time when the enemy is preparing for a 'holy war', suddenly a meteor will fall on the center of their land. A meteor like none that has ever been dreamed of, and it will be so great a coincidence that it should fall at this time, in this place, that they will be forced to their knees. The fools—the fat, weak, superstitious fools!—will say that it is God's will!"
Krylov roared again. And then he reminded Diavilev that it was his own idea.
There was more. Krylov even suggested that the moonlet would be humane. It was, after all, only a bomb. And if there was a war there would be many bombs. But now the Americans would not dream of bombs. There need not be a war at all.
Diavilev sat very still, yessing the rain of incredible logic. It was clear to him only that this man was not human at all, that none of them were, and that the destruction of civilization was the most inevitable thing that ever was.