Suspense.
And the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery and adventure,
William N. Robeson.
Talent is an elusive and mystifying phenomenon, and one of the most curious things about it
is that it manifests itself in the most unexpected places.
One of the most talented sound men in radio broadcasting is Tom Hanley.
We did not know until recently that he possesses another talent.
He is an extraordinarily fine writer.
It is his radio play you are about to hear, Tom Hanley's terrifying story, Misfire.
And now.
Misfire, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Ground zero.
Somewhere in the desert.
We are inside the cab where the bomb, this one called Jack Hammer, awaits the impulse
from control points some 14 miles to the south.
Electronic gossips hum and throb their chatter about the health of the patient.
Suspended 500 feet above the desert floor.
But the unfeeling machines neglect to mention a human factor this morning.
An imprint of carelessness.
A small metal wrench jammed in the track of the electronically controlled door.
A shift of sand occurs against one of the great steel legs gripping the desert.
And a brownback desert tortoise trundles out for a look at his world.
A world of sage and sand and space stretching endlessly off into the darkness.
No man is in sight.
Now that is good.
There have been days of hiding from men, but now they've gone.
And the tortoise tries his morning legs.
And plans his new day.
H minus one.
Place eye protectors in position and turn back to fireballs.
Fifty-five.
Fifty-four.
Fifty-three.
Fifty-two.
From a hundred speakers miles removed from ground zero, the tape recorded voice begins
its countdown.
No margin for error now.
No turning back.
Test shot Jack Hammer is underway.
Fifty-two, forty-one, forty, thirty-nine.
On News Knob, fourteen miles away, a photographer from an Eastern paper nervously adjusts his
goggles and wonders, what would it be without them?
Fourteen miles.
Can it blind across fourteen miles?
A mile and a half from ground zero, a twenty-two year old Marine corporal crouches on a trench
on his knees.
Head rammed into his arms for instructions.
He and nineteen hundred and ninety-nine other Marines there to prove that man is not afraid.
Not really.
But what if something goes wrong?
What if it's bigger than I think?
He hears the endless burning of the taped voice.
Twenty-nine.
Twenty-eight.
Twenty-seven.
Twenty-six.
A little over a mile from ground zero in a concrete bunker with its air conditioning
secured sits a thirty-seven year old Englishman, a civil defense man, remembering another
time he huddled in a shelter.
Only then he was a soldier in London and a buzz bomb screamed overhead.
His uniform now top secret, designed for the future, and he sits on a padded floor with
twelve other men.
They want to know what chance their cities will have against the day that must never
come.
Seventeen.
Sixteen.
Fifteen.
At control point, men sit silently watching instruments designed to tell them how efficiently
Jack Hammer does its job.
And the tortoise lumbers across his front yard in such a breakfast.
Five, four, three, two, one.
It didn't go.
What happened, Doc?
Misfire.
It's a misfire.
Attention all personnel.
Attention all personnel.
This is Dr. Durston.
Test shot Jack Hammer is incomplete due to undetermined failure.
Maintain positions till further notice.
You are still on detonation alert.
Dr. Durston?
What is it, Butler?
Everything was normal on my phase until H minus four nine.
Grant, that would coincide with your variance, wouldn't it?
Yeah, but Frank, you shouldn't have had any reading at all at that time.
On the sub-relay meter, I didn't.
It showed normal and then there was a complete negative to zero response.
Then there it is, Dr. Durston.
It's an on-site rejection of voltage.
In other words, the fault lies at ground zero.
According to these data, yeah.
Well, can correction be made from here?
We can't have anybody going out there.
We'll know after we check the monitor lists.
There's one consolation, Dr. Durston.
What's that?
We put it together.
We ought to be able to take it apart.
Yes.
Yes, we ought to.
But can we?
Yes, we can.
The second act of suspense continues in one minute.
And now we continue with act two of misfire, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
There's no walking away from an atom bomb, no asking who left it there.
So it becomes a story of people, the disarming.
Lee Thurston, MIT graduate, 1932, old enough to have been appalled at the thought of an
atom bomb, scientific enough to accept it, human enough to demand influence and its use.
John Grant, 36, a redheaded giant who daily deals in miracles, believes in them, makes
them work.
Frank Butler, former child prodigy, grown bald at 28, bachelor, attendant now at the
bigamous wedding of electronics, nuclear fission, and power politics.
An on-site test is the only way to check it out.
No, Butler, that would mean two men at ground zero.
But there's no explanation for what we're finding here.
He's right, doctor.
If we accept our data, we have a power failure originating at the cab itself.
With the risk of delayed detonation, Grant.
You can't forget that.
I'm not.
There are 2,000 Marines and 12 CD men out there.
How long can they wait?
Dr. Thurston.
Yes, what is it?
General Matting on the phone, sir.
Wants to know if he can evacuate yet.
No, not until we know more about the cause of the misfire.
I'll let him know.
Yes, sir.
Oh, uh, Winship.
Yes?
Tell the photo lab I can't wait any longer for those final pictures of the patch bay
under the bomb.
I will, sir.
For now, we'll go over those monitor checklists again, gentlemen.
We mustn't have any errors.
News knob has a mathematics of its own.
The bomb plus the names of the men in the control point plus a little background data
equals a story.
Mention that these men were in high school when the first atomic pile was activated.
Mention that it would have taken that first pile 150,000 years to make enough plutonium
to satisfy the bomb.
Point out how the Cold War overcame all that.
But tell mostly of the struggle to stop Jack Hammer this morning.
Hello, New York.
Get me Barney, will you, honey?
Tell him it's fierce.
Yeah, well, then call him at home.
It's important.
Hey, hey, where'd you get the coffee?
I need some.
I'm freezing over here.
Here you go.
Hey, thanks a lot.
Hello, Barney.
Now, listen, you better call that off and go on into the office.
This may develop into something out here.
The bomb didn't go off.
No, not a delay.
It just didn't take.
Well, the rumor we hear is that the last boys to hook it up are going to have to go out
and coax it down.
How do I know who it'll be?
Yeah, yeah, I know that's what I'm here for.
I know.
Yeah, and Barney, don't call me.
I'll call you.
I'll call you.
The Marine lies flat now, permission granted.
He hears wasted advice from his nearest neighbor on how to run an atom bomb test, but he thinks
about Vegas, and he wonders whether he'll ever see her again, that girl with the dark
hair, the dark eyes, the wonderful smile, and the Cadillac convertible.
In the civil defense shelter, it's hot.
No air conditioning for 40 minutes now.
These heavy clothes and sealed up this way.
Somebody better call control.
They've bloody well forgotten us.
Ah, but they haven't.
More important things, like the photo lab with the final pictures of the victim, Jack Hammer,
pictures of the bomb with its viscera displayed, A to B, and yellow to ground.
The proper circuit for agony.
Well, this one's okay.
This one's all right.
The pictures show the patch cords are all okay, Dr. Thurston.
Oh, wait a minute, just a minute now.
We've always assumed that if we got power to the site proper, that it would go on to
the bomb.
Of course.
The door to the Cad completes the circuit.
Voltage to the door, voltage to the bomb.
All right then.
What if the voltage didn't get beyond the door?
Oh, that's impossible.
The monitors show the door completely closed.
All right, but what if it didn't, for some reason?
What reason?
What could go wrong that wouldn't show on the monitors?
I don't know, but it's got to be out there.
Let me go check it.
I can't order anybody out there.
I'm asking to go.
I'll go with you, Frank.
No.
But if anybody goes, it should be two.
You'd need a phone line during the climb in case we found anything here.
You'd need test equipment, tools for opening the door manually, radiation test gear, and
a wrench.
That disconnect would have to be made immediately, Frank.
A wrench.
What's the matter?
You look ill.
No, no, nothing, sir.
I've had no sleep, I guess.
500 feet and no power for the elevator, Frank.
I'll go with you.
All right.
But I ought to go alone.
Act Three of Suspense follows in one minute.
And now.
We continue with Act Three of Misfire, a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
The afterbirth of darkness is light, that insipid gray light of a desert dawn.
And the night animals scurry homeward.
And the day things began their minor motions.
And slowly it begins the gradual creep of light and warmth across the land.
Till its source explodes in the vastness of the desert.
And there it becomes the sudden kiss of heat.
Heat that warms, heat that kills.
And the in-between heat, the heat that expands.
And its product, that awkward wrench, lies in its cramped position on the tower.
Having severed the connection to the bomb, it tries to make amends by stretching, ever
so slightly expanding, expanding in courage for the sun.
The electronic condensers on the door awake their cue, metal on metal.
And that blinding concussion that has no beginning nor any end.
And the tortoise, unaware, accepts his gift from the land and goes in search of his image.
I better go up first, John.
No, you've got to man the phone.
I'll start first, open the door manually and check for radiation.
Then you shoot in and disconnect the thing.
All right.
Hey, John.
Yeah.
You think we'll ever get off the tower?
We may never get on it if we sit here and talk.
Let's go.
Hello, Barney.
Now listen, they've started climbing the tower.
That's right, 500 feet.
I don't know how many stories that is.
The Washington Monument is 550, I think.
But now look, get this, Barney.
Play this one straight, will you?
No heroics.
This one will stand on its own.
Sure, we're on a detonation alert.
Well, who knows what's going to happen?
Fear of falling.
It never goes away.
It only becomes conditioned to the environment and 500 feet straight up has no relation to
man.
To look down or not to look down, this becomes the problem.
Then what do you look at?
The eyes of the man below you?
No.
No, they reflect the fear of two men.
The expanse of Dry Lake, do you look at that?
No.
It shimmers in the coming heat and brings on the dizziness.
Well, do you look inside?
The fear of God?
Yes, you might look there.
That might help.
But for the most part, you climb.
You lift each aching limb after the other.
The next platform is the last.
The Irish do it in their land.
The traveler never has more than a mile to go, never just beyond that rise, sir.
And then it becomes easier.
The next platform and then the next and the next.
Rest a second, Frank.
How are you doing?
OK.
How much further?
One more platform, Frank.
Just one more.
It's murder.
There's one consolation, though.
What?
Going down.
We'll have power to the elevator afterwards and we'll ride down.
Maybe.
If there isn't afterwards.
Get on the phone and tell Dr. Thurston we're here.
OK.
Dr. Thurston?
Dr. Thurston?
Yes.
We're at the top.
Good.
Have you found anything?
Grant is at the door now.
We'll make a manual entry as soon as we can.
Good.
Frank, tell him to read the voltage sheet on this door.
I don't think it's completely closed.
Check the voltage sheet on the door, doctor.
Hey, Frank, come here.
What is it?
Yes.
Hello.
Were you talking to me?
Hold it, doctor.
Can you see it?
Here.
Look from here.
There's a small wrench.
Oh, no.
It's wedged in the door there.
You see it?
John.
It's mine.
That's my wrench.
I must have dropped it when we were up here arming the bomb.
It can happen.
Look through the glass.
It severed the detonation circuit.
That's what happened.
But it completed the door contact.
Sure.
That's why the monitors didn't show it.
Good Lord, Frank.
Look how close it is to making contact.
John, that's going to go any second.
Take it easy now.
Move and shade that thing.
Heat expansion won't set it off.
How's this?
Give me the phone.
Dr. Thurston.
Dr. Thurston, can you hear me?
Grant, is that you?
Now listen carefully.
We found a problem.
A small hand wrench has been accidentally dropped into the door track.
Good Lord.
Apparently it severed the detonation circuit, but it's so close to making the contact now
that we've got to have power to the door.
Not while you're there.
Come off the tower.
We'll open it.
No, you don't understand.
The door condensers are already loaded with enough power to detonate the bomb.
Well, is the wrench above the contact?
Yes.
Then opening the door, we'll drop the wrench and set it off.
Look, you've got to give me power just enough to make the door jump.
I'm putting a pair of pliers on the wrench.
I'll yank it out as soon as you loosen the door.
What if you miss?
I'll never know about it.
Johnny, I'll do something fast.
The sun is moving.
Thurston, you've got to.
You can't leave us like this.
I can't risk it trying to get back.
No chance.
Now if you can only see it.
All right.
I'll do it.
Windship, give me ground zero power on my count.
Just do it.
I can explain now.
Grant?
Yes.
Are you ready?
Yes.
Grant, I'll give you a ten second count.
Make it five.
All right, five.
I get a good hold on that wrench.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Are we out of it?
Nice going, John.
We're out of it, Thurston.
We're out now.
The bomb can't go off.
The desert sun works its subtle magic on the wrench, expanding ineffectually on the platform
floor.
The marine stands up in the trench.
The seedy man sheds his top secret uniform.
Strips to the cuff unashamed.
The newsmen converge on ground zero.
The redhead and the young bald man hop from the walk-in elevator to see the tortoise scurrying
ponderously toward his burrow.
And they pick him up.
But he pretends not to be there at all.
Ah, but he is, and they know it.
So they take him back to Control Point to live for another day.