Page 45 of Daikon

He began to breathe deeply, trying to make himself calm.

The dryness of the air flowing through his mask didn’t help.

To divert his mind, he counted the aircraft’s ribs visible in the compartment and estimated how many there were in the entire length of the airframe.

Were they made of aluminum? He contemplated the element, its nucleus of fourteen protons and thirteen neutrons, its outer shell of thirteen orbiting electrons, its melting point of 606 degrees, its vaporization point of 2,500 degrees.

The detonation of the bomb would generate temperatures much greater than this, temperatures perhaps greater even than the surface of the sun.

It would turn the plane into vapor and him along with it, and Yagi beside him and Onda up front with the rest of the crew.

Kan and these men, already parts of a single machine, would then become united in the most intimate way, transformed into a gas and their atoms commingled, some to drift down to become part of the ocean, some to be carried along with the air currents.

By this time tomorrow, remnants of his being could be in China or Russia or back home in Japan.

He could be wafted across the Pacific to Hawaii or America or the Amazon jungles, or on to Europe, India, Australia, Tibet.

Or would he drift higher? Kan looked up through the glass panel in the fuselage over his head, at the stars, a wash of tiny points of light.

A blurred line cut across them from the crack in the lens of his glasses, the result of Colonel Sagara’s blow.

Perhaps he would float his way up there, beyond the bounds of the Earth, on and on through the desolation…

He continued on like this as the minutes crept by, then an hour.

Yagi remained motionless beside him, his eyes occasionally open, occasionally closed, his right hand going through the motions of rolling the dice.

What was he thinking? It occurred to Kan that they were trapped in a version of hell—an iron-ribbed, claustrophobic version of hell where the roar of the engines was the howling of demons.

Finally, after an eternity, Kamibeppu’s voice in his earphones:

“Twenty-five degrees.”

Captain Onda turned off the autopilot and eased the Renzan onto its new heading for the second leg of the journey, almost due south to Tinian’s latitude of 14.5.

He checked his watch. A quarter after three o’clock in the morning. Only fifteen minutes behind schedule. The headwind they were facing was more moderate than he had allowed for, largely offsetting the poor performance of the engines.

Confidence rising, Onda leveled out the plane onto heading 170 degrees. They had now passed the halfway mark of the mission, 1,300 kilometers behind them, just over one thousand to go. If their luck held for another three hours, they would reach Tinian on schedule, at dawn.

In his position behind the cockpit, flight engineer Otani began pumping fuel from the outboard tanks into the dedicated inboard tanks for Engines Two and Three, which were now down to 25 percent. The larger dedicated tanks for Engines One and Four would be good for another hour.

Engine Three began throbbing. Otani increased the fuel-air mixture but could not coax it back to smooth function. Instead, the engine started to knock—so loud it was audible in the cockpit over the roar of the other three engines.

It was the fuel from one of the outboard tanks, starboard side, numbers six to nine. Something was wrong. Otani could visualize what was happening inside the engine, the premature combustion of gasoline inside the chambers. He could see the results on the rising pressure and temperature gauges.

He started shutting the outboard tanks down, trying to isolate the problem.

The knocking continued.

Captain Onda was watching the airspeed and altitude gauges.

The Renzan, robbed of even more power, was slowing and drifting lower.

A dozen possible causes flashed through his mind.

Blocked fuel line. Broken fuel pump. Failed fuel injector.

Clogged air filter. Clogged strainer. Or was the problem the fuel itself?

One of the mechanics back at Tama Airfield had made a guarded comment about it.

But the barrels pumped into the tanks had been clearly marked Number One gasoline.

Onda had inspected the labels himself. Number One gasoline was the reduced standard for top-grade aviation fuel set the previous year but was still perfectly sufficient, octane 91.

The descent continued. They were now skimming the wispy tops of clouds at 6,000 meters. Then the clouds swallowed them and the night sky disappeared.

Navigator Kamibeppu turned back from his position in the nose. “I can’t see anything! I can’t get a fix in this!”

Onda flashed a glance at Yoshino. If they couldn’t stay above the clouds for Kamibeppu to take star sightings, that would mean continuing on dead reckoning alone, which would make finding Tinian almost impossible.

They had to stay above the clouds. But that would mean pushing the engines even harder. And that could be fatal.

Onda set his hand on the throttles.

Keizo Kan stared at the guillotine switch.

It had become hateful to him. He wanted to smash it.

He wanted to rip it from its mounting and stomp on it with his boots.

Then his anger gave way again to his fear and he heard his heartbeat running wild in his ears.

Then another surge of anger—at himself, at his fear, at his weakness.

He took deep breaths to steady himself.

You coward! Just do it!

It would be over so fast he wouldn’t feel a thing. A flash of light and he would be gone.

He pulled off the fur-lined glove from his injured right hand. He wanted to feel the pain. He leaned forward and lifted the locking bracket from the switch, the metal brittle with cold.

He settled back in his seat and resumed his contemplation. The Daikon’s trigger was now unencumbered. A single motion would end it all.

Do it. Just do it. One second and it will be over.

Kan continued to stare at the switch, not noticing the increasing whine of the engines, not noticing PO Yagi’s eyes open beside him.

Yagi looked up through the glass over his head. They seemed to be flying in clouds. He could feel the Renzan slowly climbing.

He glanced across at Kan. The scientist was staring straight ahead, an intense look on his face, completely absorbed. And his glove was off, revealing his swollen right hand.

Yagi followed Kan’s gaze to the trigger. He saw that the locking bracket had been lifted.

Kan leaned forward. He was reaching for the switch.

Yagi lurched out of his seat. “What are you doing!” He was pulled back by the plug of his flight suit.

He yanked it out of the rheostat and threw himself at Kan.

A shudder passed through the plane.