“Three planes—four-engined turbo-prop bombers—now diverted from main wing—
Green-Prairie-River-City destination probable. Approach in Sector two-oh-nine. Repeat: two-zero-nine. Intercept at distance one hundred fifty miles minimum or combat probably ineffective.
Bomb carrier probably equipped to launch medium-range missile. That is all.”
General Boyce began giving orders which were swiftly relayed to all fighters aloft. Then he looked at the mayor of River City, but not with bitterness. “Condition Red,” the general said quietly, “and God pity them!”
The siren stiffened Henry Conner at his desk. He had put in a telephone call and now somebody—he could not remember who—was saying over and over in a faint voice, “Hello?
Hello? What do you want? Hello?”
The great wail of fright went over the city. It rose to a scream. Air raid wardens in Henry’s sector tightened their belts, pulled at their helmets, looked up at the still-bright sky and walked on. “Take cover!” they yelled at all other pedestrians. Men in the rescue squads in the high school playgrounds began rechecking equipment. The engines of bulldozers and cranes roared into trial life and were stilled. In the gymnasium, below Henry, the Radiation Safety volunteers anxiously examined their monitoring gauges. At the hospital on Crystal Lake, the last patients who could be moved safely were taken out. The returning ambulances poised them selves in the parking yard. Superintendents and head nurses began unlocking closets stacked to the ceiling with drugs, medicines, bandages.
At the Broad Street Police Station, all but three men had already reported and half had already been assigned by Lacey to street duties. In the near-by firehouse, the men listened in-credulously. They knew they were as ready as they could be under existing circumstances—and not ready at all.
Henry knew that. He went on with his work.
In the attic, on Walnut Street, the iron shriek hurt Ted’s listening eardrums. “There’s she goes!” he murmured. “Oh, boy!”