General Sanford, the Chief of the Signal Corps, who stood by my side, grasped my arm, and pointed to the west. Everyone crowded to our side in excitement. Before we could gasp our amazement, the incandescent spot which our Chief had mutely indicated on the distant horizon, zoomed in a blazing arc across our zenith and plunged into the terrain of the English forces which were occupying the little town of Ogallala about six miles to our south. We held our breath. What next?
Only a faint throbbing seemed to pulse in the air above the spot where the missile sank. I was about to pronounce the diagnosis of "a dud," when someone cried, "My God, General, they've turned hell loose this time!" The whole atmosphere for a quarter of a mile radius about the fatal bomb quivered as over a heated griddle. Even as we remarked this, the area began to glow cherry red. A deafening thunder assaulted our ears when to our horror the earth on which had stood the now burning town of Ogallala, rose a gigantic incandescent ball and shot like a meteor into the heavens. Our car was a feather tossed in the ensuing hurricane, but even while we bobbed back and forth there was an ear-splitting explosion as the land that was once an American village burst into a blinding blue flare of hydrogen flame twenty-five miles above us.
The swaying of the car gradually subsided in the tortured atmosphere, and a gentle rain began to fall. Ogallala had been chemically "stepped down" into the most primitive element, combined with the oxygen above and was condensing back to earth again as a few globules of H2O. That day was a sort of crisis; the enemy had discovered and turned upon us the power of atomic degeneration! And I, as assistant chief chemist of the American Army, felt my heart become heavy within me as I soared back to the Central Laboratory.
Even as I watched the advent of the electronic detonator two days previously the inspiration had come to me. What had happened to the doomed Nebraskan town had been so obvious. Through some unexplained agency discovered by the Orientals, the electronic restraint of the normally stable elements had been removed. In a brief time Ogallala had degenerated through all the steps of the periodic table until it became hydrogen, at which point, owing to the terrific air current and incandescent heat, it had recombined with the oxygen of the air as simple molecules of water.
I thought I had a clue as to how it had been accomplished. The Central Chemical Laboratory was the focus of feverish excitement. The air was tense with the expectancy of tremendous things. Every scientist there felt that we were on the verge of discovering the principle of the Mongols' new weapon. "Give us time!" "Time" was the plea we sent daily to the Defense Headquarters. "Only six weeks more, only a month," we begged, "and then we'll make a boomerang out of the enemy's invention." Anderson, Mahaffey, Dr. Spritz—all the great physicists and chemists of the present age—labored at my side endeavoring to trick Nature into giving us that saving secret.
The television 'phone called my name. I immediately hurried to the booth and saw General Loomis, the Commander-in-Chief of the American and Caucasian Armies, standing in his helicopter headquarters. He seemed haggard and worn. "How much longer, Johnson?" he asked. "The enemy has pretty well eaten out the country and with the advent of winter and lack of food, are bending all their efforts to crush us. Besides, we cannot tell just how long it will be before they begin turning out their new bomb in other than experimental quantities. Two weeks, I should estimate, is about all the longer I can hold them."
"If that is the case, General Loomis," I replied, "we may as well give up. Two months will see us ready. But two weeks—!"
I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. Dr. Rutledge, my science chief, had stepped into the booth behind me and overheard the conversation.
"General Loomis," Dr. Rutledge spoke, looking for all the world like a patriarch of olden times, "until five minutes ago what Johnson has just said would have sealed our fate. But now, I think, I believe, we have one more card to play. I have only this moment completed a series of reactions which have resulted (as I calculated they should) in the production of a new protein, similar in appearance to flour. It should, although of course I have not yet had time to verify this statement, be a practical substitute for flour; and indeed, it is my belief that it will easily be mistaken for that substance. Its particles are laminated similar to starch, of an identical size, and the nutritive factor should be greater than that of bread. It is, in short, a new, a foreign protein never before found in this world of men!"