Free Triumph by Philip Wylie Page A

station and acknowledged, is now completely covered with dust and smoke, through which can be observed some hundreds of separate fires. From this position, they appear as glowing dots. Assume these to be firestorms in American cities--United States and Southern Canada, only. No fires, Mexico; but Mexico overcast by edge of the dust envelope covering the United States.
    Initial bursts, individually or closely-grouped, visible here, eleven thirty-four, Washington time, and thereafter. Continental obscurity became total during ensuing hour.
    Brilliant flaring, and subsequent occlusion, direction of China and on British Isles and France, indicated thermonuclear strikes, those areas. Nocturnal glow now visible, in evident massive haze, to east, covering all visible portion of Soviet Union, indicated retaliatory weapons have had massively destructive effect there. Clyde reporting.
    Smoller, Dale, and self, okay. Request orders! What further details are desired? Shall we move station? Shall we return to earth? If so, what landing place? No answer, these signals, past twelve hours. Will repeat up-dated message in one hour. This is Commander Clyde. Weather Station Three." The space vehicle's location was restated, also its receiving frequencies. The sign-off words were brief and spoken plaintively, "All A-okay and go, here. But please reply! Repeat. Urgent. Reply-- anybody!"

    From the moment Ben had realized this message would be more than a baffling (or appallingly suggestive) fragment, he had sat at the table, under the banked black boxes, as motionless as a mummy. His imagination visualized with shock the state of mind of the crew of the high-altitude weather satellite: their stunned feelings, their likely predicament. For a while, as happened often with Ben, a fraction of his brain contemplated the electronic circumstances which permitted receiving that distant, short-wave message, on the their present, usable antennas, in the midst of chaos of ions. After the sign-off Ben stirred and saw with surprise that George Hyama had been writing steadily during the broadcast.

    Shorthand. Taking down the words. A singularly cool and very capable young man, Ben thought. George perceived he was watched and looked up, grinning." "Box seat, eh?"

    The weather vehicle was that: a "box seat." But at what a cost! For where would the meteorologists be able to descend, now? Ben gave a somber smile.

    George levered up a typewriter in a covered well and began to copy the message.

    Ben then left the communications room and looked into the smaller chamber beside it, where recording seismographs inked a record of the day's shocks. They were setting forth, at the moment, in wavery, small, saw-toothed lines, proof of a complicated mass of new tremors, some as heavy as the violent quakes made by the uncountable enemy H-bombs. Ben, at first startled, soon began, with steely concentration, to "read"
    the record of oscillation in the earth and to study the dials of associated instruments.
    These foresighted installations of Vance Farr's were both sensitive and rugged. They could register fine and faraway shocks yet still "take" near, mighty quakes; they could also indicate the distance and the intensity through the assist of computer-scanned data from a second set of seismographs located at the end of the most remote tunnel in the subterranean complex. This furnished an approximation of impact points.

    As Ben studied the coded data, he realized that what appeared to be happening was a continuous series of multimegaton explosions along the East Coast, offshore, and though additional "information" was somewhat scrambled by the nearer blasts, it seemed a similar series of much heavier chain-bursts was occurring at sea off the West Coast. For half an hour Ben concentrated perplexedly on the incoming data. Finally he left the seismographic chamber and walked slowly over to and down the long hall, off which, behind closed doors and in separate "rooms"--stone