The big milling machine was working on the final large beryllium component, a large metallic hyperboloid about fifty centimeters in length, with a maximum width of twenty. The eccentric shape made for difficult machining, even with computer-assisted tools, but that could not be helped.

"As you see, the initial neutron flux will be a simple spherical expansion from the Primary, but it will be trapped by the beryllium," Fromm explained to Qati. "These metallic elements actually reflect neutrons. They are gyrating about at approximately twenty percent of the speed of light, and we will leave them with only this exit into the core. Inside the hyperboloid will be this cylinder of tritium-enriched lithium deuteride."

"It happens so fast?" the Commander asked. "The explosives will be destroying everything."

"It requires a new way of thinking. As fast as the actions of the explosives are, you must remember that we require only three shakes for the bomb to complete the detonation process."

"Three what?"

"Shakes." Fromm allowed himself another of his rare smiles. "You know what a nanosecond is - that is one billionth of a second,;'a? In that span of time, a beam of light goes only thirty centimeters. The time it takes a beam of light to go from here to here." He held his hands out about a foot apart.

Qati nodded. Surely that was a very brief time indeed.

"Good. A "shake" is ten nanoseconds. The time for light to go three meters. The term was invented by the Americans in the 1940s. They mean the time for a shake of a lamb's tail - a technical joke, you see. In other words, three shakes, the time needed for a beam of light to go approximately nine meters, the bomb has begun and ended the detonation process. That is many thousands of times the time required for chemical explosives to do anything."

"I see," Qati said, speaking both the truth and a lie. He left the room, allowing Fromm to return to his ghastly reveries. Gunther was waiting out in the open air.

"Well?"

"I have the American side of the plan," Bock announced. He opened up a map and set it on the ground. "We will place the bomb here."

"What is this place?" Bock answered the question. "How many?" the Commander asked next.

"Over sixty thousand here. If the bomb's yield is as promised, the lethal radius will encompass all of this. Total dead will number between one and two hundred thousand."

"That is all? For a nuclear bomb, that is all?"

"Ismael, this is merely a large explosive device."

Qati closed his eyes and swore under his breath. Having only a minute before been told that it was something completely out of his experience, now he was being told the reverse. The Commander was bright enough to understand that both experts were correct.

"Why this place?" Bock explained that, too.

"It would be very gratifying indeed to kill their President."

"Gratifying, but not necessarily beneficial. We could take the bomb into Washington, but I evaluate the risks of detection as serious, far too serious. Commander, my plan must take into consideration the fact that we have only one device and only one chance. We must therefore minimize the risk of detonation and base our target-selection on convenience more than any other factor."