Hell-Fire
There was a stir as of a very polite first-night audience. Only a handful of scientists were present, a sprinkling of high brass, some Congressmen, a few newsmen.
Alvin Homer of the Washington Bureau of the Continental Press found himself next to Joseph Vincenzo of Los Alamos, and said, "Now we ought to leam something. "
Vincenzo stared at him through bifocals and said, "Not the important thing. "
Homer frowned. This was to be the first super-slow-motion films of an atomic explosion. With trick lenses changing directional polarization in flickers, the moment of explosion would be divided into billionth-second snaps. Yesterday, an A-bomb had exploded. Today, those snaps would show the explosion in incredible detail.
Vincenzo looked tormented. "It will work. We've run pilot tests. But the important thing-"
"Which is?"
"That these bombs are man's death sentence. We don't seem to be able to learn that. " Vincenzo nodded. "Look at them here. They're excited and thrilled, but not afraid. "
The newsman said, "They know the danger. They're afraid, too. "
"Not enough," said the scientist. "I've seen men watch an H-bomb blow an island into a hole and then go home and sleep. That's the way men are.
For thousands of years, hell-fire has been preached to them, and it's made no real impression. "
"Hell-fire: Are you religious, sir?"
"What you saw yesterday was hell-fire. An exploding atom bomb is hell-fire. Literally. "
That was enough for Homer. He got up and changed his seat, but watched the audience uneasily. Were any afraid? Did any worry about hell-fire? It didn't seem so to him.
The lights went out, the projector started. On the screen, the firing tower stood gaunt. The audience grew tensely quiet.
A man cried out chokingly, then others. A hoarse babble of noise, followed by thick silence. Horner could smell fear, taste terror in his own mouth, feel his blood freeze.
The oval fireball had sprouted projections, then paused a moment in stasis, before expanding rapidly into a bright and featureless sphere.
That moment of stasis-the fireball had shown dark spots for eyes, with dark lines for thin, flaring eyebrows, a hairline coming down V-shaped, a mouth twisted upward, laughing wildly in the hell-fire-and horns.