The Premier nodded, very humorously.
"Since we accepted their invitation, naturally the Western staff concludes that we are disturbed. That we will wait to see what our rockets learn. It would be interesting, but our scientists tell me that the alleged weapon is impossible. Utterly impossible! So it is merely a trick.... And we will not wait for our rockets to arrive. We might be late for our dinners, and we would not like that!"
The high officials made sounds of amusement.
"So we put our own ending to the comedy," said the Premier blandly. "The circuits are joined?" He asked the question of a craggy-faced service-of-supply colonel. The colonel managed to nod, and was stricken numb by the importance of the gesture.
"Then," said the Premier humorously, "we will destroy our enemy."
He waddled across the room. He put a pudgy forefinger on a button. He pushed it.
Even here, deep underground, there were roaring sounds as rockets took off for the west. All over the Com nations, carefully distributed rocket-firing sites received signals from the one pushbutton. They sent bellowing monsters up into the sky.
Three Com rockets reached their targets, and Nolan never quite forgave himself for it. They were murderous. They wiped out cities. But that was all. The rest of the rockets went off prematurely. A spread of half a hundred, crossing the North Pole, detonated just out of atmosphere. Others went off over the Atlantic. Not a few made temporary suns above the Pacific. Nolan brought moving specks within the thin red circle of his instrument, and pulled the trigger. The points flamed momentarily and left patches of luminosity behind them. And that was that.
But they continued to rise. On Earth they made noises like dragons. There was panic from their starting points. Those first out had not reached their targets! So the Com launching-sites flung more and more missiles skyward. One of them reached a city of the West. A second. A third.