"Essentially, yes."
"Then strip off the cobalt, you fools!"
"Three minutes," someone said. "We've got to get out of here. The after-burners of the launching charge will cremate us."
"It can be done," one of the technicians told Alan, "but I don't think you have the time."
"How, man? Tell me how!"
"Use your rifle. There's a seam running around the bomb. See? See it. If you can cut around the whole seam, the cobalt should fall away in two hemispheres. A hydrogen bomb alone would be launched at Earth, but it should fall harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean."
"Two minutes, forty seconds."
The technicians moved about uneasily. Two of them began to climb down the scaffold. The rest remained to watch Alan. They would save the Earth or perish with him.
Alan raised his atomic rifle to his shoulder, aimed at the thin welded seam about the huge bomb, and began to fire. At first there was nothing. The pellets hit the bomb, which could only be triggered by an atomic implosion at its core, and exploded there.
"A minute and a half," someone said, his voice hoarse over Alan's suit radio.