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diff --git a/old/61374-h/61374-h.htm b/old/61374-h/61374-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index ea2f9c4..0000000 --- a/old/61374-h/61374-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,615 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Countdown, by Julian F. Grow. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Countdown, by Julian F. Grow - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: Countdown - -Author: Julian F. Grow - -Release Date: February 13, 2020 [EBook #61374] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTDOWN *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="356" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>COUNTDOWN</h1> - -<h2>BY JULIAN F. GROW</h2> - -<p class="ph1">The moment is at hand—the fingers<br /> -are poised—this is what comes next!</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1963.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>10 years of uneasy peace, since the Hour of Tragedy ... ten -apprehensive, uneasy years pungent with fear, with hatred, distrust ... -ten years like ten thousand in the past of man ... ten units out of the -infinite, out of time the eternal, immutable, nonexistent dimension....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>9 planets spinning ... nine spawn of the sun, one of them nascent, a -hairsbreadth from its heritage. But which heritage? It could choose. -The fertile warmth of the parent star ... or the star's pure fire?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>8 periods, in the gibberish of the sifters of chaos ... eight: -Pre-Cambrian to Triassic—while flame cooled and became stone and lay -latent, lambent, pent awaiting release—before from the fetid Jurassic -darknesses the beasts of warm blood crawled.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>7 seas, once the womb of life, then too long its caul ... the common -birthplace, then a strangling wall between. (Once too, briefly a -high road for the courageous, now a new kind of night for marauders, -shadowed shapes armed with pieces of the sun.)</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>6 masses of land, cradles for the genesis of a myriad species ... -and one of them Man. Man the Creator, the Protector, the Destroyer: -builder of shrines, burner of saints, good father, good soldier, good -killer.... Man, the creature of choice.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>5 nations remaining, sparse ruddy fruit of a thousand wars, nurtured by -a billion dead. Five, the bloody consequence of union into pack, into -tribe, into fief, to kingdom, empire and nation. The threads of history -gathered finally into five flags, entwined in alliance at this point in -time by a searing wind: Pan-American, Sino-Russian, Afro-Arabian ... -racial armies, sons of the first beast to kill from anger, fathers of -the unborn. Armies in the terrible truce of the fusion bomb ... waiting.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>4 farflung networks: metal wire and machines, and vacuum. Interlinked -webs of detection and retaliation or attack, within the webs bombs ... -within the bombs targets, mapped and doomed by a spark. Each alliance -a network of aimed and armed missiles, in deserts, on mountaintops, -hidden deep and in the surrounding seas. Each alliance a pattern of -targets, always an instant from obliteration.</p> - -<p>(Such had come to Britain in its Hour of Tragedy when the last savage -hope of Empire Regained dissolved into vapor, and the Isles became -slag. There the fourth network corroded under a shroud of ash; but the -surviving three ceaselessly hummed.)</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>3 men, of one species but riven somehow at this point in time by -pigment, tongue and details of dress: a man from Brownsville, a man -from Vladivostok, a man from Khartoum ... buried deep in the hearts -of the networks, each already entombed, and so safe from death. Each -chosen by his masters to be the nock of the arrow, the final factor; -yet not an arrow, for each network of course was aimed at both the -others. A moment's trust is fatal once the truce is broken, the masters -reasoned, and so the bombs and the men were trained.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>2 buttons, a choice under the fingers of each of these men: one, red, -to loose deliberately the double pronged torrent of bombs if the -masters so decreed. The other, white, to cancel the launching command -broadcast automatically if massive radiation spewed across the -homeland ... a vast, vicious death reflex. Each man, then, if the -detectors tolled, had the decision: error or attack. Fail or be unable -to press the white instantly, and the counter-attack, if such it was, -began. This, then, was the masters' last concession to the human -factor, their grudging one to humanity.</p> - -<p>And like most of the masters' concessions to the masses, it was false. -Identically, in each network, the white button was a dummy. The real -choice was as it always was—red button, kill ... or wait yet a while -more. The men in the tombs, unknowing, knew this was the choice.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>1 man's brain, whosoever, however carefully masters may mold it, is -a fragile thing. Ten thousand years have not fitted man to live with -himself; could a single man live with the lives of two billion? The -choice, distillate of a hundred centuries of pain, the weariness of a -species with race: blame them, blame all. One of the men sitting in a -cold tomb sweated. His finger hovered over the red button, trembled ... -and fell.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Countdown, by Julian F. 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