shook, burst open in places, then the hill
collapsed. Everyone began reading instruments and checking Geiger
counters.
28 Finally Mountain Glory straightened out. "It did even worse," she
sighed, "than we thought! The power is incredible! We have destroyed
everything beneath us. It works! The damned thing works!"
29 They sat off three more bombs before they finally went to Thundering
Boar. "We've got your atom bomb," they told him, "but Lords help us if
we
use it! We will poison the ground and the water where the bombs are
dropped, for thousands of years.
30 Thousands of people will be killed by the initial blast, the rest
will die slow, agonizing deaths from the poison the bombs make. And it
will show no favors...men, women, children ...they'll ALL die!"
31 "Then you're telling me," snapped Thundering Boar, "we've got a
weapon but we can't use it? What do you expect me to do?"
32 The other two looked at him as if to say 'We don't know!" Thundering
Boar rose and began to pace the room.
33 "If the enemy's working on this," he continued, "and they've got a
bomb, too, THEY'LL use it! THEY won't care what it will do!
They'll just drop the damned thing! How many do you have ready?"
34 "We can make about twelve bombs," Gray Boar informed him.
35 "Well, the enemy's only got ten cities," remarked Thundering Boar,
"that should be quite enough! Is there any place," he inquired, "where
we could set one of these things off without harming everybody?"
36 "Someplace deep in the desert. Wait a minute! There's an old city we
tried to build one time deep in the desert on the edge of the
mountains, to the west of Rail. It would be the perfect place to set
off a bomb!