Purple-6 by Henry Brinton

Author:Henry Brinton [Brinton, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi
Publisher: Walker & Company
Published: 1962-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

11

Something like a gleam of satisfaction passed across Potter’s face. It was so transient that it was hard to analyse; but I had a faint inkling that he was enjoying himself, and my repulsion grew at the hint of intellectual sadism, though I could have wronged him.

He said: ‘I should like to carry you along with me. Would you perhaps give me a rough idea of the chronology of this device? I’ve been briefed on it at the Ministry, but I should like to check with you.’

‘Chronology?’ C.H. thought for a moment. ‘We’ve been working on some of the basic principles for several years. It would be hard to say at exactly which moment our researches took a concrete form.’

‘Perhaps we might take it from the point where you began on an actual design,’ Potter suggested. ‘I understand that the design itself was made here and that Barnham only came in at . the testing stage.’

‘That’s true enough. I suppose we were about six months on .the design, including the laboratory tests which we did here. That’s about it.’

‘And Barnham came in on it how long ago? Four months? Six months?’

‘It’s hard to give a date. Naturally various people there and at the Ministry — Painter, for instance, and Turton, who was working on the propellant — they knew the general form of our progress all along.’

‘But I take it that a general knowledge of that kind would be only in the most general terms? The crucial moment, surely, would be when you handed over the designs? Could you give me a date for that?’

G.H.' looked at me. ‘About four months, would you say, Will?’

I said: ‘I can give you the exact date, as it happens. We did more than hand over the designs; we’d made a prototype and C.H. and I took that and the design over to Barnham early in May.’

‘That’s what I understood.’ Potter sounded satisfied. ‘There’s one thing I’m not clear about. As a layman it seems almost incredible to me that in a little over four months it should have been possible to make and test a largish number of rockets from the moment of handing over a prototype. Isn’t that very quick indeed?’

‘Not really.’ C.H. took up the running again. ‘The rockets themselves had been ready in advance together with a supply of DKN7—that’s Turton’s new propellant. There was an earlier and less satisfactory guidance system available. The essence of an anti-missile is the guidance. I don’t want to be technical; but you can see for yourself the magnitude of the problem of two missiles approaching one another at around ten thousand miles an hour. If you can get an efficient guidance system, there’s no particular problem about the rocket.’

C.H. paused and lit the cigarette which he had been holding in his hand, and then remembered his manners and passed the box across to Potter. It was a sign that he was getting over the shock.

Potter shook his head. ‘No, thank you, Sir Charles. What it comes to is this.

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