The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Part 5

"I believe I will!"

Steinke's face appeared again on the screen. "Harper and Erickson are here, chief."

"I'm busy."

"They are pretty urgent about seeing you."

"Oh ... all right," King said in a tired voice, "show them in. It doesn't matter."

They breezed in, Harper in the van. He commenced talking at once, oblivious to the superintendent's morose preoccupation. "We've got it, chief, we've got it--and it all checks out to the umpteenth decimal!"

"You've got what? Speak English."

Harper grinned. He was enjoying his moment of triumph, and was stretching it out to savor it. "Chief, do you remember a few weeks back when I asked for an additional allotment--a special one without specifying how I was going to spend it?"

"Yes. Come on--get to the point."

"You kicked at first, but finally granted it. Remember? Well, we've got something to show for it, all tied up in pink ribbon. It's the greatest advance in radioactivity since Hahn split the nucleus. Atomic fuel, chief, atomic fuel, safe, concentrated, and controllable.

Suitable for rockets, for power plants, for any d.a.m.n thing you care to use it for."

King showed alert interest for the first time. "You mean a power source that doesn't require the bomb?"

"The bomb? Oh, no, I didn't say that. You use the bomb to make the fuel, then you use the fuel anywhere and anyhow you like, with something like ninety-two percent recovery of the energy of the bomb.

But you could junk the mercury-steam sequence, if you wanted to."

King's first wild hope of a way out of his dilemma was dashed; he subsided.

"Go ahead. Tell me about it."

"Well--it's a matter of artificial radioactives. Just before I asked for that special research allotment, Erickson and I--Dr. Lentz had a finger in it, too--found two isotopes of a radioactive that seemed to be mutually antagonistic. That is, when we goosed 'em in the presence of each other they gave up their latent energy all at once--blew all to h.e.l.l. The important point is, we were using just a gnat's whisker of ma.s.s of each--the reaction didn't require a big ma.s.s like the bomb to maintain it."

"I don't see," objected King, "how that could--"

"Neither do we, quite--but it works. We've kept it quiet until we were sure. We checked on what we had, and we found a dozen other fuels Probably we'll be able to tailor-make fuels for any desired purpose. But here it is."

Harper handed King a bound sheaf of typewritten notes which he had been carrying under his arm. "That's your copy. Look it over."

King started to do so. Lentz joined him, after a look that was a silent request for permission, which Erickson had answered with his only verbal contribution, "Sure, doc."

As King read, the troubled feelings of an acutely hara.s.sed executive left him. His dominant personality took charge, that of the scientist.

He enjoyed the controlled and cerebral ecstasy of the impersonal seeker for the elusive truth. The emotions felt in the throbbing thalamus were permitted only to form a sensuous...o...b..igato for the cold flame of cortical activity. For the time being, he was sane, more nearly completely sane than most men ever achieve at any time.

For a long period there was only an occasional grunt, the clatter of turned pages, a nod of approval. At last he put it down.

"It's the stuff," he said. "You've done it, boys. It's great; I'm proud of you."

Erickson glowed a bright pink and swallowed. Harper's small, tense figure gave the ghost of a wriggle, reminiscent of a wire-haired terrier receiving approval. "That's fine, chief. We'd rather hear you say that than get the n.o.bel Prize."

"I think you'll probably get it. However"--the proud light in his eyes died down--"I'm not going to take any action in this matter."

"Why not, chief?" Harper's tone was bewildered.

"I'm being retired. My successor will take over in the near future; this is too big a matter to start just before a change in administration."

"You being retired! Blazes!"

"About the same reason I took you off the bomb--at least, the directors think so."

"But that's nonsense! You were right to take me off the bomb; I was getting jumpy. But you're another matter--we all depend on you."

"Thanks, Cal--but that's how it is; there's nothing to be done about it."

He turned to Lentz. "I think this is the last ironical touch needed to make the whole thing pure farce," he observed bitterly. "This thing is big, bigger than we can guess at this stage--and I have to give it a miss."

"Well," Harper burst out, "I can think of something to do about it!"

He strode over to King's desk and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the ma.n.u.script. "Either you superintend the exploitation or the company can d.a.m.n well get along without our discovery!" Erickson concurred belligerently.

"Wait a minute." Lentz had the door. "Dr. Harper, have you already achieved a practical rocket fuel?"

"I said so. We've got it on hand now."

"An escape-speed fuel?" They understood his verbal shorthand--a fuel that would lift a rocket free of the Earth's gravitational pull.

"Sure. Why, you could take any of the Clipper rockets, refit them a trifle, and have breakfast on the Moon."

"Very well. Bear with me--" He obtained a sheet of paper from King and commenced to write. They watched in mystified impatience. He continued briskly for some minutes, hesitating only momentarily.

Presently he stopped and spun the paper over to King. "Solve it!" he demanded.

King studied the paper. Lentz had a.s.signed symbols to a great number of factors, some social, some psychological, some physical, some economic. He had thrown them together into a structural relations.h.i.+p, using the symbols of calculus of statement. King understood the paramathematical operations indicated by the symbols, but he was not as used to them as he was to the symbols and operations of mathematical physics. He plowed through the equations, moving his lips slightly in unconscious subvocalization.

He accepted a pencil from Lentz and completed the solution. It required several more lines, a few more equations, before the elements canceled out, or rearranged themselves, into a definite answer.

He stared at this answer while puzzlement gave way to dawning comprehension and delight.

He looked up. "Erickson! Harper!" he rapped out. "We will take your new fuel, refit a large rocket, install the bomb in it, and throw it into an orbit around the Earth, far out in s.p.a.ce. There we will use it to make more fuel, safe fuel, for use on Earth, with the danger from the bomb itself limited to the operators actually on watch!"

There was no applause. It was not that sort of an idea; their minds were still struggling with the complex implications.

"But, chief," Harper finally managed, "how about your retirement?

We're still not going to stand for it."

"Don't worry," King a.s.sured him. "It's all in there, implicit in those equations, you two, me, Lentz, the board of directors--and just what we all have to do to accomplish it."

"All except the matter of time," Lentz cautioned.

"Eh?"

"You'll note that elapsed time appears in your answer as an undetermined unknown."

"Yes ... yes, of course. That's the chance we have to take. Let's get busy!"

Chairman Dixon called the board of directors to order. "This being a special meeting, we'll dispense with minutes and reports," he announced "As set forth in the call we have agreed to give the retiring superintendent three hours of our time."

"Mr. Chairman--"

"Yes, Mr. Thornton?"

"I thought we had settled that matter."

'We have, Mr. Thornton, but in view of Superintendent King's long and distinguished service, if he asks a hearing, we are honor bound to grant it. You have the floor, Dr. King."

King got up and stated briefly, "Dr. Lentz will speak for me." He sat down.

Lentz had to wait till coughing, throat clearing and sc.r.a.ping of chairs subsided. It was evident that the board resented the outsider.

Lentz ran quickly over the main points in the argument which contended that the bomb presented an intolerable danger anywhere on the face of the Earth.

He moved on at once to the alternative proposal that the bomb should be located in a rockets.h.i.+p, an artificial moonlet flying in a free orbit around the Earth at a convenient distance--say, fifteen thousand miles--while secondary power stations on Earth burned a safe fuel manufactured by the bomb.

He announced the discovery of the Harper-Erickson technique and dwelt on what it meant to them commercially. Each point was presented as persuasively as possible, with the full power of his engaging personality.

Then he paused and waited for them to blow off steam.

They did. "Visionary--"

"Unproved--"

"No essential change in the situation--" The substance of it was that they were very happy to hear of the new fuel, but not particularly impressed by it. Perhaps in another twenty years, after it had been thoroughly tested and proved commercially, and provided enough uranium had been mined to build another bomb, they might consider setting up another power station outside the atmosphere. In the meantime there was no hurry.

Lentz patiently and politely dealt with their objections. He emphasized the increasing incidence of occupational psychoneurosis among the engineers and the grave danger to everyone near the bomb even under the orthodox theory.

He reminded them of their insurance and indemnity-bond costs, and of the "squeeze" they paid State politicians.

Then he changed his tone and let them have it directly and brutally.

"Gentlemen," he said, "we believe that we are fighting for our lives--our own lives, our families and every life on the globe. If you refuse this compromise, we will fight as fiercely and with as little regard for fair play as any cornered animal." With that he made his first move in attack.

It was quite simple. He offered for their inspection the outline of a propaganda campaign on a national scale, such as any major advertising firm could carry out as a matter of routine. It was complete to the last detail, television broadcasts, spot plugs, newspaper and magazine coverage with planted editorials, dummy "citizens' committees" and--most important--a supporting whispering campaign and a letters-to-Congress organization.

Every businessman there knew from experience how such things worked.

But its object was to stir up fear of the bomb and to direct that fear, not into panic, but into rage against the board of directors personally, and into a demand that the government take action to have the bomb removed to outer s.p.a.ce.

"This is blackmail! We'll stop you!"

"I think not," Lentz replied gently. "You may be able to keep us out of some of the newspapers, but you can't stop the rest of it. You can't even keep us off the air--ask the Federal Communications Commission." It was true. Harrington had handled the political end and had performed his a.s.signment well; the president was convinced.

Tempers were snapping on all sides; Dixon had to pound for order. "Dr. Lentz," he said, his own temper under taut control, "you plan to make every one of us appear a black-hearted scoundrel with no other thought than personal profit, even at the expense of the lives of others. You know that is not true; this is a simple difference of opinion as to what is wise."

"I did not say it was true," Lentz admitted blandly, "but you will admit that I can convince the public that you are deliberate villains.

As to it being a difference of opinion--you are none of you atomic physicists; you are not ent.i.tled to hold opinions in this matter.

"As a matter of facT" he went on callously, "the only doubt in my mind is whether or not an enraged public will destroy your precious power plant before Congress has time to exercise eminent domain and take it away from you!"

Before they had time to think up arguments in answer and ways of circ.u.mventing him, before their hot indignation had cooled and set as stubborn resistance, he offered his gambit. He produced another layout for a propaganda campaign--an entirely different sort.

This time the board of directors was to be built up, not torn down.

All of the same techniques were to be used; behind-the-scenes feature articles with plenty of human interest would describe the functions of the company, describe it as a great public trust, administered by patriotic, unselfish statesmen of the business world. At the proper point in the campaign, the Harper-Erickson fuel would be announced, not as a semiaccidental result of the initiative of two employees, but as the long-expected end product of years of systematic research conducted under a fixed policy of the board of directors, a policy growing naturally out of their humane determination to remove forever the menace of explosion from even the spa.r.s.ely settled Arizona desert.

No mention was to be made of the danger of complete, planet-embracing catastrophe.

Lentz discussed it. He dwelt on the appreciation that would be due them from a grateful world. He invited them to make a n.o.ble sacrifice and, with subtle misdirection, tempted them to think of themselves as heroes. He deliberately played on one of the most deep-rooted of simian instincts, the desire for approval from one's kind, deserved or not.

All the while he was playing for time, as he directed his attention from one hard case, one resistant mind, to another. He soothed and he tickled and he played on personal foibles. For the benefit of the timorous and the devoted family men, he again painted a picture of the suffering, death and destruction that might result from their well-meant reliance on the unproved and highly questionable predictions of Destry's mathematics. Then he described in glowing detail a picture of a world free from worry but granted almost unlimited power, safe power from an invention which was theirs for this one small concession.

It worked. They did not reverse themselves all at once, but a committee was appointed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p power plant. By sheer bra.s.s Lentz suggested names for the committee and Dixon confirmed his nominations, not because he wished to, particularly, but because he was caught off guard and could not think of a reason to refuse without affronting those colleagues.

The impending retirement of King was not mentioned by either side.

Privately, Lentz felt sure that it never would be mentioned.

It worked, but there was left much to do. For the first few days after the victory in committee, King felt much elated by the prospect of an early release from the soul-killing worry. He was buoyed up by pleasant demands of manifold new administrative duties. Harper and Erickson were detached to G.o.ddard Field to collaborate with the rocket engineers there in design of firing chambers, nozzles, fuel stowage, fuel metering and the like. A schedule had to be worked out with the business office to permit as much power of the bomb as possible to be diverted to making atomic fuel, and a giant combustion chamber for atomic fuel had to be designed and ordered to replace the bomb itself during the interim between the time it was shut down on Earth and the later time when sufficient local, smaller plants could be built to carry the commercial load. He was busy.

When the first activity had died down and they were settled in a new routine, pending the shutting down of the bomb and its removal to outer s.p.a.ce, King suffered an emotional reaction. There was, by then, nothing to do but wait, and tend the bomb, until the crew at G.o.ddard Field smoothed out the bugs and produced a s.p.a.ce-worthy rockets.h.i.+p.

They ran into difficulties, overcame them, and came across more difficulties They had never used such high reaction velocities; it took many trials to find a nozzle shape that would give reasonably high efficiency. When that was solved, and success seemed in sight, the jets burned out on a time-trial ground test. They were stalemated for weeks over that hitch.

Back at the power plant Superintendent ing could do nothing but chew his nails and wait. He had not even the release of running over to G.o.ddard Field to watch the progress of the research, for, urgently as he desired to, he felt an even stronger, an overpowering compulsion to watch over the bomb more lest it--heartbreakingly!--blow up at the last minute.

He took to hanging around the control room. He had to stop that; his unease communicated itself to his watch engineers; two of them cracked up in a single day--one of them on watch.

He must face the fact--there had been a grave upswing in psychoneurosis among his engineers since the period of watchful waiting had commenced.

At first, they had tried to keep the essential facts of the plan a close secret, but it had leaked out, perhaps through some member of the investigating committee. He admitted to himself now that it had been a mistake ever to try to keep it secret--Lentz had advised against it, and the engineers not actually engaged in the change-over were bound to know that something was up.

He took all of the engineers into confidence at last, under oath of secrecy. That had helped for a week or more, a week in which they were all given a spiritual lift by the knowledge, as he had been. Then it had worn off, the reaction had set in, and the psychological observers had started disqualifying engineers for duty almost daily. They were even reporting each other as mentally unstable with great frequency; he might even be faced with a shortage of psychiatrists if that kept up, he thought to himself with bitter amus.e.m.e.nt. His engineers were already standing four hours in every sixteen. If one more dropped out, he'd put himself on watch.

That would be a relief, to tell himself the truth.

Somehow, some of the civilians around about and the nontechnical employees were catching on to the secret. That mustn't go on--if it spread any farther there might be a nation-wide panic. But how the h.e.l.l could he stop it? He couldn't.