bomb with his face close to its celluloid stud. He clutched its handles,
and with a sudden gust of determination that the thing should not escape
him, bit its stud. Before he could hurl it over, the monoplane was
slipping sideways. Everything was falling sideways. Instinctively he
gave himself up to gripping, his body holding the bomb in its place.

Then that bomb had exploded also, and steersman, thrower, and aeroplane
were just flying rags and splinters of metal and drops of moisture in
the air, and a third column of fire rushed eddying down upon the doomed
buildings below....

Section 4

Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing
explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only
explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely
to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst
upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.
Those used by the Allies were lumps of pure Carolinum, painted on the
outside with unoxidised cydonator inducive enclosed hermetically in a
case of membranium. A little celluloid stud between the handles by which
the bomb was lifted was arranged so as to be easily torn off and
admit air to the inducive, which at once became active and set up
radio-activity in the outer layer of the Carolinum sphere. This
liberated fresh inducive, and so in a few minutes the whole bomb was a
blazing continual explosion. The Central European bombs were the same,
except that they were larger and had a more complicated arrangement for
animating the inducive.

Always before in the development of warfare the shells and rockets fired