The Starter answered: "President Wadsworth, are you ready?"
"Ready," said Jeffrey in a high voice.
Hoshawk heard the Starter's voice: "President Forgacs, are you ready?"
"Ja," came the deep voice of the Hunyas president.
Jeffrey flicked the oxygen valve for a second, snapped it off, and Hoshawk saw him glance down at it. Then Jeffrey sat poised, all the alertness of his incredible mind bearing intently on the map before him.
A bell sounded. The war was on!
Jeffrey did not move. He waited, and watched. Ten trillion electronic tubes would flash their information on the Map. He waited—one minute, two minutes, five minutes. The Map was dark.
So Forgacs wanted him to move first.
Jeffrey flicked the oxygen and his chair shot to the left. His fingers blurred into movement. He shot back to the center of the keyboard and focused his entire intellect on the Map.
A dozen tiny red lights rose off the coast of Newfoundland and raced eastward. Each light represented a thousand rockets loaded with thirty tons of DTN. One of those rockets would wipe Berlin from the earth—if it struck.