The military had been there for a while already, sowing the desert soil with dynamite while its flyboys practiced murder in their delicate craft: the heroes of Europe, of the Pacific, trained their hands, hearts, eyes above this desert, while artillerymen yanked on the lanyards endlessly and waited for the puff of smoke on the distant hill. This too had become normal since the first war: it was as good a reason as any for a town. But one day in the summer of 'forty-five, a strange thing happened here: the sun rose twice, first in the west, and a little later in the east. A couple of weeks after, strange news came from Japan: and the rest of the people of Alamogordo knew what a few had known already: that not too far out of town, in a valley whose name translates from the Spanish as "Deadman's Journey," at a pair of map coordinates code named Trinity, mankind had exploded the first of the 100,000 or so atom bombs so soon to be assembled. And an old town had a new reason to be there.
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