“Sir, if I might suggest,” the captain said, “why don’t I assign Sergeant Peña to the security of the bomb itself. That will give him a plausible reason to be with Dr. Oppenheimer.”

“Whatever, get up there,” Groves ordered.

Rain pulled at Joe and the cold steps swayed. At one hundred feet, the tower seemed to be on a fixed tilt. The shed’s sixty-watt bulb illuminated a floor of pulleys, cables and ropes, striped walls of corrugated steel and the bomb in its cradle. Since he had last seen it, the bomb had lost its lunar smoothness because two exterior detonator boxes had been bolted on. Cables connected the sphere’s sixty-four detonator ports to the boxes, and out of the boxes’ switchboard backs an equal number of cables hung down to the firing unit, a padlocked aluminum case between the cradle’s feet. Out on the open platform, Oppy clung to the hoist with one hand and to his hat with the other.

“You look like fucking Ahab in the rigging.” Joe stepped out with him.

From the platform it appeared that lightning was striking everywhere, as if the low clouds, black as smoke from a fire, were launching a climactic attack. In every arc of the horizon a bolt was hitting. One report of thunder overlapped and muffled another. A mile off, the silver barrage balloon that had been earthbound before was now lifted by winds. The balloon was anchored to a jeep, which dangled below, only its rear wheels touching the ground. Two men were trying to save the jeep, but the lightning built static charges that ran down the steel cable and exploded like cannon under the bouncing wheels.

“General Groves has dismissed the meteorologists.” Oppy wiped the rain from his face and grinned. “The general is the new weatherman of the Trinity shot.”

“It’s your decision, though, isn’t it?”

“That’s what the general tells me.” Oppy twisted his eyes away. He bent his head, fumbled, and lifted a match to a cigarette. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Call it off.” Joe watched the two men running from the jeep.

“It’s not as if we could just do it tomorrow. To get to the same pitch, to ready the men and the equipment again would take at least a week.”

“You said this bomb was a dud. You said you wanted an extra week anyway.”

“Like Ahab?” Oppy laughed.

“That’s what you looked like.”