East and West -- Fiction; Giants -- Fiction; Science fiction
And then we saw them. A great fleet of heavy bombers, flying
high, far beyond even Kazu's reach. Baker seized the glasses to look,
and then gave a cry of warning. The leading plane had dropped
something--a black spherical object above which blossomed a parachute. I
think that Kazu realized what it was as soon as we, but he still stood
quietly. Baker lost whatever calm he had left and screamed, "Run,
run--it's the H-bomb!" but still Kazu did not move. In a moment another
of the deadly spheres appeared, directly over us, and then a third. Now
at last Kazu moved, but not toward safety. He walked slowly until he was
directly beneath the first bomb, and reached up, until his hand was a
thousand feet in the air. Down came the bomb, quite rapidly, for the
parachute was not very large.
"What's the matter with the fool," yelled Martin. But now Baker seemed
to get Kazu's idea.
"It has barometric fusing--it's set to detonate at a certain altitude.
If that's below a thousand feet, and Kazu can catch it, it won't go
off!"
Martin started something about detonation at two thousand feet, when
Kazu gave a slight jump and his hand closed about the deadly thing, as
though he had caught a fly. We cowered, expecting the flash that would
mean the end, but nothing happened. In Kazu's crushing grip the firing
mechanism was reduced to wreckage before it could act. When Buddha
opened his palm, it contained only a wad of crumpled metal inside of
which was a now harmless sphere of plutonium.
In quick succession Kazu repeated this performance with the other two
bombs, wadded the whole together and flung it to the ground. Then he
turned to the north.
By the time we had cleared the city, it was quite light, and we could
see a dark pall of smoke in the northeast. The armies which had been
poised last night had finally met, and a great battle was underway. Kazu
hurried towards it, and presently we could hear the crackle of small
arms fire and the heavier explosions of mortars and rockets. It took a
moment or so for Kazu to get his bearings. Evidently we were approaching
Mao's legions from the rear. Still keeping from the roads to avoid
killing anyone, Kazu advanced to near the battle line, and there
stopped.
"My brothers," his voice thundered above the heaviest cannon, "my poor
brothers on both sides, listen to me. Stop this killing. Stop this
useless slaughter. No one can win, and all will--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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