Minor Detail

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  _General Webb had a simply magnificent idea for getting ground forces into the enemy's territory despite rockets and missiles and things like that. It was a grand scheme, except for one_

  MINOR DETAIL

  By JACK SHARKEY

  The Secretary of Defense, flown in by special plane from the new CapitolBuilding in Denver, trotted down the ramp with his right handoutstretched before him.

  At the base of the ramp his hand was touched, clutched and hidden by theright hand of General "Smiley" Webb in a hearty parody of a casualhandshake. General Webb did everything in a big way, and that includedeven little things like handshakes.

  Retrieving his hand once more, James Whitlow, the Secretary of Defense,smiled nervously with his tiny mouth, and said,

  "Well, here I am."

  This statement was taken down by a hovering circle of news reporters,dispatched by wireless and telephone to every town in the forty-ninestates, expanded, contracted, quoted and misquoted, ignored andmisconstrued, and then forgotten; all this in a matter of hours.

  The nation, hearing it, put aside its wonted trepidations, took an extratranquilizer or two, and felt secure once more. The government was ingood hands.

  * * * * *

  Leaving the reporters in a disgruntled group beyond thecyclone-fence-and-barbed-wire barriers surrounding Project W, GeneralWebb, seated beside Whitlow in the back of his private car, sighed andfolded his arms.

  "You'll be amazed!" he chortled, nudging his companion with a bonyelbow.

  "I--I expect so," said Whitlow, clinging to his brief case with bothhands. It contained, among other things, a volume of mystery stories anda ham sandwich, neatly packaged in aluminum foil. Whitlow didn't want tochance losing it. Not, at least, until he'd eaten the sandwich.

  "Of course, you're wondering where I got the idea for my project," said"Smiley" Webb, adding, for the benefit of his driver, "Keep your eyes onthe road, Sergeant! The WAC barracks will still be there when you getoff duty!"

  "Yes, sir," came a hollow grunt from the front seat.

  "Weren't you?" asked General Webb, gleaming a toothy smile in Whitlow'sdirection.

  "Weren't I _what_?" Whitlow asked miserably, having lost the thread oftheir conversation due to a surreptitious glance backward at the WACbarracks in their wake.

  "Wondering about the project!" snapped the general.

  "Yes. We _all_ were," said the Secretary of Defense, appending somewhattartly, "That's why they _sent_ me here."

  "To be sure. To be sure," General Webb muttered. He didn't much liketartness in responses, but the Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, washardly a subordinate, and therefore not subject to the general's choler.Silly little ass! he said to himself. Rather liking the sound of thewords--albeit in his mind--he repeated them over again, addingembellishments like "pompous" and "mousy" and "squirrel-eyed." Afterthree or four such thoughts, the general felt much better.

  "_I_ thought the whole thing up, myself," he said, proudly.

  "I wish you'd stop being so ambiguous," Whitlow protested in a smallvoice. "Just what _is_ this project? How does it work? Will it help uswin the war?"

  "_Sssh!_" said the general, jerking a quivering forefinger perpendicularbefore pursed lips. "Security!"

  He closed one eye in a broad wink and wriggled a thumb in the directionof the driver. "He's only cleared for Confidential material," said thegeneral, his tone casting aspersions on the sergeant's patriotism,ancestry and personal hygiene. "This project is, of course, _TopSecret_!" He said the words reverently, his face going all noble andbrave. Whitlow half-expected him to remove his hat, but he did not.

  * * * * *

  They drove onward, then, in silence, until they passed by a large field,in the center of which Whitlow could discern the outlines of an immensebull's-eye, in front of a tall, somewhat rickety khaki-colored reviewingstand, draped in tired bunting.

  "What's that?" asked Whitlow, relinquishing his grip on his brief caselong enough to point toward the field.

  "_Ssssh!_" said "Smiley" Webb. "You'll find out in a matter of hours."

  "Many hours?" Whitlow asked, thinking of the ham sandwich.

  General Webb consulted a magnificent platinum timepiece anchored to histhick hairy wrist by a stout leather strap.

  "In exactly one hour, thirty-seven minutes, andforty-three-point-oh-oh-nine seconds!" he said, proudly.

  "Thank you," Whitlow sighed. "You're certainly running thisthing--whatever it is--in an efficient manner."

  "Thank _you_!" General Webb glowed. "We like to think so," he addedmodestly.

  * * * * *

  Passwords, signs, countersigns, combination-locks and electronicrecognition signals were negotiated one by one, until Whitlow wasdespairing of ever getting into the heart of Project W. He said as muchto General Webb, who merely flashed the grin which gave him hisnickname, and opened a final door.

  For a moment, Whitlow thought he was going deaf. The shrill roar ofscreeching metal and throbbing dynamos that pounded at his eardrumsbegan to fuddle his mind, until General Webb handed him a smallcardboard box--also stamped, like every door and wall in the place, "TopSecret"--in which his trembling fingers located two ordinary rubberearplugs, which he instantly put to good use.

  "There she is!" said General Webb, proudly, gesturing over the railingof the small balcony upon which they stood. "The Whirligig!"

  "What?" called Secretary of Defense Whitlow, shaking his head toindicate he hadn't heard a word.

  Somewhat piqued, but resigned, General Webb leaned his wide mouth nearlyup against Whitlow's small pink plugged ear, and roared the sameinformation at the top of his lungs.

  Whitlow, a little stunned by the volume despite the plugs, noddedwearily, to indicate that he'd heard, then asked, in a high, pipingvoice, "What's it for?"

  Webb's eyes bulged in their sockets. "Great heavens, man, can't you_see_?" He gestured down at his creation, his baby, his project, asthough it were self-evident what its function was.

  Whitlow strained his eyes to divine anything that might give a clue asto just what the government had been pouring money into for the pasteight months. All he saw was what appeared to be a sort of ferris-wheel,except that it was revolving in a horizontal plane. The structure wascompletely enclosed in metal, and was whirling too fast for even thecentral shaft to be anything but a hazy, silver-blue blur.

  "I see it," he shouted, squeakily. "But I don't understand it!"

  "Come with me," said General Webb, re-opening the door at their backs.He was just about to step through when, with a quick blush ofmortification, he remembered the "Top Secret" earplugs. Hastily,averting his face lest the other man see his embarrassment, he returnedhis plugs to their box, and did the same with Whitlow's.

  Whitlow was glad when the door closed behind them.

  "My office is this way," said Webb, striding off in a stiff militarymanner.

  Whitlow, with a forlorn shrug, could do nothing but clutch his briefcase and follow.

  * * * * *

  "It's this way," General Webb began, once they were seated uncomfortablyin his office. From a pocket in his khaki jacket, Webb had produced abig-bowled calabash pipe, and was puffing its noxious gray fumes in alldirections while he spoke. "Up until the late fifties, war was a simplething ..."

  Oh, not the March of Science Speech! said Whitlow to himself. He knew itby heart. It was the talk of the Capitol, and the nightmare of militarystrategists. As the general's voice droned on and on, Whitlow barelylistened. The general, Top Secret or no Top Secret, was divulgingnothi
ng that wasn't common knowledge from the ruins of Philadelphia tothe great Hollywood crater ...

  All at once, weapons had gotten _too_ good. That was the whole problem.Wars, no matter what the abilities of the death-dealing guns, cannon,rifles, rockets or whatever, needed one thing on the battlefield thatcould not be turned out in a factory: Men.

  In order to win a war, a country must be vanquished. In order tovanquish a country, soldiers must be landed. And that was preciselywherein the difficulty lay: landing the soldiers.

  Ships were nearly obsolete in this respect. Landing barges could beblown out of the water as fast as they were let down into it.

  Paratroops were likewise hopeless. The slow-moving troop-carrying planesdaren't even peek above the enemy's horizon without chancing anonslaught of "thinking" rockets that would stay on their trail untilthey were molten cinders falling into the sea.

  So someone invented the supersonic carrier. This was pretty good,allowing the planes to come in high and fast over the enemy's territory,as fast as the land-to-air missiles themselves. The only drawback wasthat the first men to try parachuting at that speed were battered toconfetti by the slipstream of their own carriers. That would not do.

  Next, someone thought of the capsules. Each man was packed into abreak-proof, shock-proof, water-proof, wind-proof plastic capsule, andejected safely beyond the slipstream area of the carriers, at whichpoint, each capsule sprouted a silken chute that lowered the enclosedmen gently down into range of the enemy's rocket-fire ...

  This plan was scrapped like the others.

  And so, things were at a stalemate. There hadn't been a really goodskirmish for nearly five years. War was hardly anything but a memory,what with both sides practically omnipotent. Unless troops could belanded, war was downright impossible. And, no one could land troops, sothere was no war.

  As a matter of fact, Whitlow _liked_ the state of affairs. To beSecretary of Defense during a years-long peace was a soft job to top allsoft jobs. And Whitlow didn't much like war. He'd rather live peacefullywith his mystery stories and ham sandwiches.

  But the Capitol, under the relentless lobbying of the munitionsinterests, was trying to find a way to get a war started.

  They _had_ tried simply bombing the other countries, but it hadn'tworked out too well: the other countries had bombed back.

  This plan had been scrapped as too dangerous.

  And then, just when all seemed lost, when it looked as though mankindwas doomed to eternal peace ...

  Along came General "Smiley" Webb.

  "Land troops?" he'd said, confidently, "nothing easier. With thegovernment's cooperation, I can have our troops in any country in theworld, safely landed, within the space of one year!"

  Congress had voted him the money unanimously, and off he'd gone to workat Project W. No one knew _quite_ what it was about, but the general hadseemed so self-assured that-- Well, they'd almost forgotten about himuntil some ambitious clerk, trying to balance at least _part_ of thebudget, had discovered a monthly expenditure to an obscure base in thesouthwest totalling some millions of dollars. Perfunctory checking hadbrought out the fact that "Smiley" Webb had been drawing this moneyevery month, and hadn't as much as mailed in a single progress report.

  There'd been swift phone-calls from Denver to Project W, and, GeneralWebb informed them, not only was all the money to be accounted for, butso was all the time and effort: the project was completed, and about tobe tested. Would someone like to come down and watch?

  Someone would.

  * * * * *

  And thus it was that James Whitlow, with mystery stories and hamsandwich, had taken the first plane from the Capitol ...

  "... when all at once, I thought: Speed! Endurance! _That_ is theproblem!" said Webb, breaking in on Whitlow's reverie.

  "I beg your pardon?" said the Secretary of Defense.

  Webb whacked the dottle out of his pipe into a meaty palm, tossed thesmoking cinders rather carelessly into a waste-basket, and leanedforward to confront the other man face to face, their noses almostnudging.

  "Why are parachutes out?" he snapped.

  "They go too slow," said Whitlow.

  "Why do we use parachutes at all?"

  "To keep the men from getting killed by the fall."

  "Why does a fall kill the men?"

  "It-- It breaks their bones and stuff."

  "_Bah!_" Webb scoffed.

  "Bah?" reiterated Whitlow. "Bah?"

  "Certainly bah!" said the general. "All it takes is a little training."

  * * * * *

  "All _what_ takes?" said Whitlow, helplessly.

  "Falling, man, falling!" the general boomed. "If a man can fall safelyfrom ten feet-- Why not from ten times ten feet!?"

  "Because," said Whitlow, "increasing height accelerates the _rate_ offalling, and--"

  "_Poppycock!_" the general roared.

  "Yes, sir," said Whitlow, somewhat cowed.

  "Muscle-building. That's the secret. Endurance. Stress. Strain.Tension."

  "If-- If you say so ..." said Whitlow, slumping lower and lower in hischair as the general's massive form leaned precariously over him."But--"

  "Of _course_ you are puzzled," said the general, suddenly chummy."Anyone would be. Until they realized the use to which I've put theWhirligig!"

  "Yes. Yes, I suppose so ..." said Whitlow, thinking longingly of his hamsandwich, and its crunchy, moist green smear of pickle relish.

  "The first day--" said General Webb, "it revolved at _one_ gravity! Theywithstood it!"

  "What did? Who withstood? When?" asked Whitlow, with much confusion.

  "The men!" said the general, irritably. "The men in the Whirligig!"

  Whitlow jerked bolt upright. "There are _men_ in that thing?" It's notpossible, he thought.

  "Of course," said Webb, soothingly. "But they're all right. They've beenin there for thirty days, whirling around at one gravity more each day.We have constant telephone communication with them. They're all feelingfine, just fine."

  "But--" Whitlow said, weakly.

  General Webb had him firmly by the arm, and was leading him out of theoffice. "We must get to the stands, man. Operation Human Bomb in tenminutes."

  "Bomb?" Whitlow squeaked, scurrying alongside Webb as the larger manstrode down the echoing corridor.

  "A euphemism, of course," said Webb. "Because they will fall much like abomb does. But they will not explode! No, they will land, rifles inhand, ready to take over the enemy territory."

  "Without parachutes?" Whitlow marveled.

  "Exactly," said the general, leading the way out into the blindingdesert sunlight. "You see," he remarked, as they strolled toward theheat-shimmering outlines of the reviewing stand, its bunting hanginglimp and faded in the dry, breezeless air, "it's really so simple I'mastonished the enemy didn't think of it first. Though, of course, I'mglad they didn't-- Ha! ha!" He oozed self-appreciation.

  "Ha ha," repeated Whitlow, with little enthusiasm.

  "When one is whirled at one gravity, you see, the wall--the outsiderim--of the Whirligig, becomes the floor for the men inside. Each day,they have spent up to ten hours doing nothing but deep knee-bends, andeating high protein foods. Their legs will be able to withstand _any_force of landing. If they can do deep knee-bends at thirtygravities--during which, of course, each of them weighed nearly threetons--they can jump from any height and survive. Good, huh?"

  * * * * *

  Whitlow was worried as they clambered up into the stands. There seemedto be no one about but the two of them.

  "Who else is coming?" he asked.

  "Just us," said Webb. "I'm the only one with a clearance high enough towatch this. You're only here because you're _my_ guest."

  "But--" said Whitlow, observing the heat-baked wide-open spacesextending on all sides of the reviewing stand and bull's-eye, "the menon this base can surely watch from almost anywhere not beyond thehori
zon."

  "They'd _better_ not!" was the general's only comment.

  "Well," said Whitlow, "what happens now?"

  "The men that were in that Whirligig have--since you and I went to myoffice to chat--been transported to the airfield, from which point theywere taken aloft--" he consulted his watch, "five minutes, andfifty-five-point-six seconds ago."

  "And?" asked Whitlow, casually unbuckling the straps of his brief caseand slipping out his sandwich.

  "The plane will be within bomb vector of this target in just tenseconds!" said Webb, confidently.

  Whitlow listened, for the next nine seconds, then, right on schedule, heheard the muted droning of a plane, high up. Webb joggled him with anelbow. "They'll fall faster than any known enemy weapon can track them,"he said, smugly.

  "That's fortunate," said Whitlow, munching desultorily at his sandwich."Bud dere's wud thig budduhs bee."

  "Hmmf?" asked the general.

  Whitlow swallowed hastily. "I say, there's one thing bothers me."

  "What's that?" asked the general.

  "Well, it's just that gravity is