The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [295]
It should have been expected. Things had gone too smoothly, and reality does not often allow perfection. A small mistake in one of the fittings for the Primary had been detected, and that fitting had to be removed and remachined, a process that set them back by thirty hours, of which forty minutes had been required for the machining, and the rest for disassembly and reassembly of the weapon. Fromm, who should have been philosophical, had been livid during the whole procedure, and insisted on doing the fix himself. Then had come the laborious replacement of the explosive blocks, all the more onerous for having already been done once.
"Only three millimeters," Ghosn noted. Just a mistaken setting on one of the controls. Since it had been a manual job, the computers hadn't caught it. One of Fromm's figures had been misread, and the first visual inspection of the assembly hadn't caught it. "And we had that extra day."
Fromm merely grumbled behind his protective mask, as he and Ghosn lifted the plutonium assembly and gently set it in place. Five minutes later, it was clear that they had it correctly located. The bars of tungsten-rhenium next fit into their own places, then the beryllium segments, and finally, the heavy depicted-uranium hemisphere that separated the Primary from the Secondary. Fifty more explosive blocks, and they were done. Fromm ordered a pause - what they had just accomplished was heavy work, and he wanted a short rest. The machinists were already gone, their services no longer required.
"We should have been done by now," the German said quietly.
"It is unreasonable to expect perfection, Manfred."
"The ignorant bastard couldn't read!"
"The number on the plans was smudged." And that was your fault, Ghosn did not have to say.
"Then he should have asked!"
"As you say, Manfred. You pick a poor time to be impatient. We are on schedule."
The young Arab just didn't understand, Fromm knew.
The culmination of his life's ambitions, and it should have been done by now! "Come on."
It required ten additional hours until the seventieth and last explosive block sat in its resting place. Ghosn attached its wire lead to the proper terminal, and that was that. He extended his hand to the German, who took it.
"Congratulations, Herr Doktor Fromm."
"Ja. Thank you, Herr Ghosn."
"Now we only need to weld the case shut, draw the vacuum - oh, excuse me, the tritium. How did I forget that? Who does the welding?" Manfred asked.
"I will. I'm very good at that." The top half of the bombcase had a wide flange to ensure the safety of that procedure, and it had already been checked for a perfect fit. The machinists had not merely handled the precise work on the explosive part of the device. Every single part - except for the single mis-trimmed fitting - had been cut and shaped to Fromm's specifications, and the bomb-case had already been checked. It fit as tightly as the back of a watch.
"Doing the tritium is easy."
"Yes, I know." Ghosn motioned for the German to go outside. "You are fully satisfied with the design and the assembly?"
"Completely," Fromm said confidently. "It will function exactly as I predict."
"Excellent," Qati said, waiting outside with one of his bodyguards.
Fromm turned, noting the Commander's presence, along with one of his ubiquitous guards. Dirty, scruffy people, but he had to admire them, Fromm told himself, as he turned to look at the darkened valley. There was a quarter moon, and he could just make out the landscape. It was so dry and harsh. Not these people's fault that they looked as they did. The land here was hard. But the sky was clear. Fromm looked up at the stars on this cloudless night. More stars than one could see in Germany, especially the Eastern part, with all its air pollution, and he thought about astrophysics, the path he might have taken, so closely related to the path he had.
Ghosn stood behind the German. He