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A pain churns his stomach as the blade scrapes on rock, then breaks free. The machine dips forward into the loose earth. He can feel how the cable suddenly resists its great weight. A hundred tons of steel, pushed with the momentum of a flying wrecking ball, prying against the tensile strength of the wrapped trunk line that supplies all electricity to the base. An 'eternity' passes before him as the machine lurches forward irresistibly, and then rolls free again!
He puts on the breaks, stops the engine, covers his face with his hands, then climbs out of the cab and runs to the crest of a hill. The countdown cannot be stopped. Not now; not by him or by any power known to man. He hears the ignition of a missile. A pillar of smoke shoots from the meadow. For a third time in history the most fearsome weapon ever built by man has been unleashed. The game to save humanity has started! Can its flight fulfill the hopes he has placed on it? What if he has missed one tiny vital point?
The pillar of smoke shoots upwards now, pushed by fire, then broadens over the launch site while the dull howl of the power buildup in the engines becomes a roar that begins to vibrate the ground. Moments later the nose cone appears barely visible behind the smoke and fire. As if drawn by the hand of an invisible giant the huge missile rises out of the silo. Then it is clear. A great thunder, now, coming out of the mouths of its rocket engines, shakes the earth. The thunder displaces the stillness of midnight and the earth tremors as though a cavalry of a million horses was invading the base. Soon the noise abates. The missile recedes into the midnight sky. The silence returns. The smoke fades with the wind.
Boris stands petrified. He stands in awe of what he has done. He keeps watching the flight of his missile until it is but a faint spark in the sky. Soon, it can no longer be seen. He shudders again as he climbs back into the cab of his machine. "Tania, Tania," he wants to cry, but he can no longer utter her name. His thoughts reach out to her, for her comforting touch, for a forgiving gesture, but he can no longer find her in his thoughts. The world has become chilly, cold.
"Now the phones will be ringing," he says to himself, "both in the Kremlin and in Washington. Oh God, let them act prudently for once!"
He starts the engine again and begins to work as hard as he can, digging at a large rock near where the cable had been. He tries to dig the rock out; both to cover his tracks and to keep himself occupied so that he may not go mad over it all. Those had been frightful flames that he saw, flames that illumined the night, flames of hope to stop the greatest of all fires! He should be happy. Strangely, this concept seemed foreign now.
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Stories about
Love
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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