He reviewed, quickly, the history of
weapons-development since the beginning of the Atomic Era. The
emphasis, since the end of the Second World War, had all been on
nuclear weapons and rocket-missiles. There had been the H-bomb, itself
obsolescent, and the Bethe-cyle bomb, and the subneutron bomb, and the
omega-ray bomb, and the nega-matter bomb, and then the end of
civilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the new
civilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today,
the small-arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slight
refinements on the weapons of the First Century, and all the modern
nuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at the
Space Navy base on Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills were
almost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as the
secrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historical
curiosity, and there was nobody on Uller who had more than a layman's
knowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. There
were plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but how
long would it take them to design and build a plutonium bomb?
".
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234