Title: Minor Detail
Author: Sharkey, Jack, 1931-
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Minor Detail" ***


    _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 Capitol
Building in Denver, trotted down the ramp with his right hand
outstretched before him.

At the base of the ramp his hand was touched, clutched and hidden by the
right hand of General "Smiley" Webb in a hearty parody of a casual
handshake. General Webb did everything in a big way, and that included
even 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-nine
states, expanded, contracted, quoted and misquoted, ignored and
misconstrued, and then forgotten; all this in a matter of hours.

The nation, hearing it, put aside its wonted trepidations, took an extra
tranquilizer or two, and felt secure once more. The government was in
good hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

"I--I expect so," said Whitlow, clinging to his brief case with both
hands. It contained, among other things, a volume of mystery stories and
a ham sandwich, neatly packaged in aluminum foil. Whitlow didn't want to
chance 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 on
the road, Sergeant! The WAC barracks will still be there when you get
off duty!"

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

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

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

"Wondering about the project!" snapped the general.

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

"To be sure. To be sure," General Webb muttered. He didn't much like
tartness in responses, but the Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, was
hardly a subordinate, and therefore not subject to the general's choler.
Silly little ass! he said to himself. Rather liking the sound of the
words--albeit in his mind--he repeated them over again, adding
embellishments like "pompous" and "mousy" and "squirrel-eyed." After
three 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 small
voice. "Just what _is_ this project? How does it work? Will it help us
win the war?"

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

He closed one eye in a broad wink and wriggled a thumb in the direction
of the driver. "He's only cleared for Confidential material," said the
general, his tone casting aspersions on the sergeant's patriotism,
ancestry and personal hygiene. "This project is, of course, _Top
Secret_!" He said the words reverently, his face going all noble and
brave. 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 immense
bull's-eye, in front of a tall, somewhat rickety khaki-colored reviewing
stand, draped in tired bunting.

"What's that?" asked Whitlow, relinquishing his grip on his brief case
long 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 his
thick hairy wrist by a stout leather strap.

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

Passwords, signs, countersigns, combination-locks and electronic
recognition signals were negotiated one by one, until Whitlow was
despairing of ever getting into the heart of Project W. He said as much
to General Webb, who merely flashed the grin which gave him his
nickname, and opened a final door.

For a moment, Whitlow thought he was going deaf. The shrill roar of
screeching metal and throbbing dynamos that pounded at his eardrums
began to fuddle his mind, until General Webb handed him a small
cardboard box--also stamped, like every door and wall in the place, "Top
Secret"--in which his trembling fingers located two ordinary rubber
earplugs, which he instantly put to good use.

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

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

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

Whitlow, a little stunned by the volume despite the plugs, nodded
wearily, to indicate that he'd heard, then asked, in a high, piping
voice, "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, as
though it were self-evident what its function was.

Whitlow strained his eyes to divine anything that might give a clue as
to just what the government had been pouring money into for the past
eight 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 was
completely enclosed in metal, and was whirling too fast for even the
central 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 of
mortification, he remembered the "Top Secret" earplugs. Hastily,
averting his face lest the other man see his embarrassment, he returned
his 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 military
manner.

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

Oh, not the March of Science Speech! said Whitlow to himself. He knew it
by heart. It was the talk of the Capitol, and the nightmare of military
strategists. As the general's voice droned on and on, Whitlow barely
listened. The general, Top Secret or no Top Secret, was divulging
nothing that wasn't common knowledge from the ruins of Philadelphia to
the 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 that
could not be turned out in a factory: Men.

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

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

Paratroops were likewise hopeless. The slow-moving troop-carrying planes
daren't even peek above the enemy's horizon without chancing an
onslaught of "thinking" rockets that would stay on their trail until
they 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 was
that the first men to try parachuting at that speed were battered to
confetti by the slipstream of their own carriers. That would not do.

Next, someone thought of the capsules. Each man was packed into a
break-proof, shock-proof, water-proof, wind-proof plastic capsule, and
ejected safely beyond the slipstream area of the carriers, at which
point, each capsule sprouted a silken chute that lowered the enclosed
men 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 good
skirmish for nearly five years. War was hardly anything but a memory,
what with both sides practically omnipotent. Unless troops could be
landed, war was downright impossible. And, no one could land troops, so
there was no war.

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

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

They _had_ tried simply bombing the other countries, but it hadn't
worked 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 mankind
was doomed to eternal peace ...

Along came General "Smiley" Webb.

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

Congress had voted him the money unanimously, and off he'd gone to work
at Project W. No one knew _quite_ what it was about, but the general had
seemed so self-assured that-- Well, they'd almost forgotten about him
until some ambitious clerk, trying to balance at least _part_ of the
budget, had discovered a monthly expenditure to an obscure base in the
southwest totalling some millions of dollars. Perfunctory checking had
brought out the fact that "Smiley" Webb had been drawing this money
every 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, General
Webb informed them, not only was all the money to be accounted for, but
so was all the time and effort: the project was completed, and about to
be tested. Would someone like to come down and watch?

Someone would.

       *       *       *       *       *

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

"... when all at once, I thought: Speed! Endurance! _That_ is the
problem!" 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 the
smoking cinders rather carelessly into a waste-basket, and leaned
forward to confront the other man face to face, their noses almost
nudging.

"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 safely
from ten feet-- Why not from ten times ten feet!?"

"Because," said Whitlow, "increasing height accelerates the _rate_ of
falling, 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 his
chair 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 the
Whirligig!"

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

"The first day--" said General Webb, "it revolved at _one_ gravity! They
withstood 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 not
possible, he thought.

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

"But--" Whitlow said, weakly.

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

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

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

"Without parachutes?" Whitlow marveled.

"Exactly," said the general, leading the way out into the blinding
desert sunlight. "You see," he remarked, as they strolled toward the
heat-shimmering outlines of the reviewing stand, its bunting hanging
limp and faded in the dry, breezeless air, "it's really so simple I'm
astonished the enemy didn't think of it first. Though, of course, I'm
glad 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 outside
rim--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, and
eating high protein foods. Their legs will be able to withstand _any_
force of landing. If they can do deep knee-bends at thirty
gravities--during which, of course, each of them weighed nearly three
tons--they can jump from any height and survive. Good, huh?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Whitlow was worried as they clambered up into the stands. There seemed
to 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 to
watch this. You're only here because you're _my_ guest."

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

"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 my
office to chat--been transported to the airfield, from which point they
were taken aloft--" he consulted his watch, "five minutes, and
fifty-five-point-six seconds ago."

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

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

Whitlow listened, for the next nine seconds, then, right on schedule, he
heard the muted droning of a plane, high up. Webb joggled him with an
elbow. "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 centripetal, you know, and the
Whirligig is centrifugal. I wondered if it might not make some sort of
difference?"

"Bah!" said General Webb. "Just a minor detail."

"If you say so," Whitlow shrugged.

"There they come!" shouted the general, jumping to his feet.

Whitlow, despite his misgivings, found that he, too, was on his feet,
staring skyward at the tiny dots that were detaching themselves from the
shining bulk of the carrier plane. As he watched, his heart beating
madly, the dots grew bigger, and soon, awfully soon, they could be
distinguished as man-shaped, too.

"There's-- There's something wrong!" said the general. "What's that
they're all shouting? It _should_ be 'Geronimo' ..."

Whitlow listened. "It sounds more like 'Eeeeeyaaaaa'," he said.

And it was.

The sound grew from a distant mumble to a shrieking roar, and the next
thing, each man had landed upon the concrete-and-paint bull's-eye before
the reviewing stand.

Whitlow sighed and re-buckled his brief case.

The general moaned and fainted.

And the men of the Whirligig, all of whom had landed on the target
head-first, did nothing, their magnificently muscled legs waving idly in
a sudden gentle gust of desert breeze.


THE END



Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ November 1959.
    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
    typographical errors have been corrected without note.





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