“I suppose he concerns Joe.” Foote craned his neck. “From rumors I’ve heard, I suppose he’d like to nail Joe’s cock to the ground and shoot him through the head.”

“The captain is after bigger game than that,” Joe said.

The bomb shook. A skate rattled down a track, its rope whipping the air until the skate dug itself into the dirt at the tower base. Fifty feet overhead, the bomb slowly yawed from side to side, still attached to the other skate and twisting with a new inertia.

“Fucking Mother of God,” someone said.

“Dear me,” said Foote.

The bones in Oppy’s face seemed to sag.

“The cable’s stuck!” the man on the platform shouted. “Coming off the wheel. I’ll have to free the other skate.”

It was Private Eberly. An ungainly soldier in shorts, but he came down the tower’s steel rungs like a hero, taking each flight of steps Navy style. The second landing put him on a level with the skewed bomb, but one tower leg away. He’d have to walk across a narrow, open horizontal brace of the scaffolding fifty feet above the ground. Diagonal braces would support him most of the way, but in the middle where the braces rose out of reach, he had to be a tightrope walker. Why not? After the most powerful weapon in the world left the hands of Oppy and Fermi and Foote, why shouldn’t its fate hang on the nerve of an ordinary soldier? Let him be the man of the day.

Jaworski ran from the jeep. “Don’t try it!”

“Try it,” Oppy whispered.

Eberly clung to the rising brace as long as he could, then spread his arms for balance. The steel was about four inches across, and Eberly moved on anxious splayed feet. Don’t stop, Joe thought. The soldier tilted, regained his equilibrium and stood motionless in the center of the horizontal brace. Don’t look down, Joe thought. Eyes level, Eberly started again toward the far tower leg. He misstepped. He pulled his foot back onto the steel, but he had come to a stop. His arms waggled like duck wings. He looked down and dove.

Eberly turned in the air and landed on his back in the middle of the mattresses. He slid off the stack to the ground and to his knees, winded but unhurt.

“Joe?” Oppy said.