“Big Eddie? Over.” The Omaha voice, venerable, quavering with age rather than alarm, came dryly across the winter-swept plains: “Big Eddie among other things.”
“Big Eddie” was the term CD ham operators in the region had come to use for “atom bomb.”
Mr. Butts went on. “That, we’re sure of here. Otherwise, conditions normal. Yellow, of course. Evidently nothing headed this way—yet anyhow.” The old man actually sounded disappointed.
Ted cut back one time more: “Is that all you have on Dallas?”
“That’s all, son. Station W5CED reported. He’s outside the city some twenty miles. The blast wave bent his aerial, he claimed. One big flame is all he can actually see. Where Dallas is.
Or was. As the case may be.”
At that point Ted wished the family was at home. It was an awful thing, he thought, to be sitting up there alone in the kind of dim attic room, with tubes glowing and word of practically the end of the world pouring in. But nobody to tell it to.
He considered running over to the Baileys’ and getting Nora. She was darn good company at a time like this, and she would sure like to take the extra headset and listen with him.
However, Nora would be an unauthorized person. That observation reminded him of duty. In Condition Yellow, he was supposed to get on the CD network with other locals and stand by for orders and relays.
He sighed heavily and tuned according to regulations.