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The water around the Device is lethal, polluted with plutonium oxide. Water has penetrated the casing, flooding the guidance and control system, rendering it useless. Soyuz will never fly. |
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The timer and launch sequencer are powered by a special set of nickel-cadmium batteries. The only requirement of the sequencer system is to count the days and hours. But the lower stages of the Device are all powered by ancillary equipment dependent on the plutonium reactor. It is this reactor, already faulty while the Device was still aboard the Pravda, that exposed the vessel's crew to high doses of radiation. |
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The jolt of being expelled from a launch tube and dropped to the floor of the bay has inflicted further damage to delicate elements in the reactor, and the opening, followed by the imperfect closing, of the hatch from which the message buoy was ejected has allowed more water to flood the guidance system. |
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The gyrostabilizer, spinning at a rate of 22,000 revolutions per minute, has been slowing as the power diminishes. The wave action and the wind blowing against the exposed nose section of the erect Device make impossible demands on the gyrostabilizer system. |
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As the timer inside the warhead changes from 00:13:09 to 00:13:10, Universal Time, the gyro tumbles. There is no longer an analog of the horizon for the onboard computer to use as a reference. The swiftly turning gyro wheel screeches to a halt, smoking and sparking against its stainless steel casing. The Device is now balanced only on the bracing struts. And the struts are anchored only in the alluvial sea bottom. |
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A seventy-mile-per-hour gust of wind catches the Device on the exposed nose, swiftly followed by the heavy impact of a block of sea ice thrusting its weight against the exposed casing, crushing it. |
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The Device leans and then topples into the darkness. It smashes soundlessly into the mud on the bottom of the bay. The white, decomposed carrion of fishes, eels, and crustaceans swirl inside the cloud of black, given a kind of brief life before |
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