Ron Moosic just stared at them and felt helpless. His first day on the job and this happened. He looked at the status line again and noticed that there were two small blinking areas in it on the right. “What are they?” he asked Riggs.
“The area is far too dangerous to risk. Those are last-resort items. There is enough explosive in the walls to fry and liquefy the whole lower complex. They’re on a failsafe mechanism, though. We can fire them, but we can’t arm them. Only the President or the collective Joint Chiefs can do that. If the left one stops blinking, it means the system is armed and at our discretion. If both go solid, we have twenty minutes to clear out, or so they told us.”
At that moment the left one stopped blinking.
TIMELY DECISIONS
Ron Moosic suddenly felt like the President faced with Armageddon on the day of his inaugural. He didn’t even know the names of most of these people or the way to the nearest men’s room, yet here he was, facing what might quickly become the shortest job he’d ever had.
Riggs looked over at him. “Well? What do you think?”
I think I want to know the location of the men’s room, he thought sourly, but aloud he said, “You say there’s no way they can operate the time machine or whatever from down there?”
Riggs nodded. “There’s no bypassing that outside code, and nobody down there or even up here knows what it is.”
Moosic sighed. “Then all you’ve got here, when all is said and done, is a classic hostage situation. Sooner or later they’ll threaten to shoot the hostages one by one if we don’t come up with the code, but if we blow it we just as surely kill them all. They’ve trapped themselves, and even if they eventually go suicidal, we’re no worse off than if we push their button. I’d say let’s string ’em along and work at getting them. They have the counters for a lot of the nasty stuff, but they still have to get air down there from somewhere.”