Blowups Happen Part 1

Robert A Heinlein.

Blowups Happen.

"PUT down that wrench!"

The man addressed turned slowly around and faced the speaker. His expression was hidden by a grotesque helmet, part of a heavy, lead-and-cadmium armor which s.h.i.+elded his entire body, but the tone of voice in which he answered showed nervous exasperation.

"What the h.e.l.l's eating on you, doc?" He made no move to replace the tool in question.

They faced each other like two helmeted, arrayed fencers, watching for an opening. The first speaker's voice came from behind his mask a shade higher in key and more peremptory in tone. "You heard me, Harper. Put down that wrench at once, and come away from that 'trigger'. Erickson!"

A third armored figure came from the far end of the control room. "What 'cha want, doe?"

"Harper is relieved from watch. You take over as engineer-of-the-watch. Send for the standby engineer."

"Very well."His voice and manner were phlegmatic, as he accepted the situation without comment.

The atomic engineer whom he had just relieved glanced from one to the other,then carefully replaced the wrench in its rack.

"Just as you say, DoctorSilard , but send for your relief, too. I shall demand an immediate hearing!"

Harper swept indignantly out, his lead-sheathed boots clumping on thefloorplates .

DoctorSilard waited unhappily for the ensuing twenty minutes until his own relief arrived. Perhaps he had been hasty. Maybe he was wrong in thinking that Harper had at last broken under the strain of tending the most dangerous machine in the world-the atomic breeder plant. But if he had made a mistake, it had to be on the safe side-slips must not happen in this business; not when a slip might result in atomic detonation of nearly ten tons of uranium-238, U-235, and plutonium.

He tried to visualize what that would mean, and failed. He had 'been told that uranium was potentially twenty million times as explosive as T.N.T. The figure was meaningless that way. He thought of the pile instead as a hundred million tons of high explosive, or as a thousandHiros.h.i.+mas . It still did not mean anything. He had once seen an A-bomb dropped, when he had been serving as a temperament a.n.a.lyst for the Air Forces. He could not imagine the explosion of a thousand such bombs; his.brain balked.

Perhaps these atomic engineers could. Perhaps, with their greater mathematical ability and closer comprehension of what actually went on inside the nuclear fission chamber, they had some vivid glimpse of the mind-shattering horror locked up beyond that s.h.i.+eld. If so, no wonder they tended to blow up- He sighed. Erickson looked away from the controls of the linear resonant accelerator on which he had been making some adjustment.

"What's the trouble, doc?"

"Nothing.I'm sorry I had to relieve Harper."

Silardcould feel the shrewd glance of the big Scandinavian. "Not gettingthe jitters yourself, are you, doc? Sometimes you squirrel-sleuths blow up, too-"

"Me? I don't think so. I'm scared of that thing in there-I'd be crazy if I weren't."

"So am I," Erickson told him soberly, and went back to his work at the controls of the accelerator.

The accelerator proper lay beyond another s.h.i.+elding barrier; its snout disappeared in the final s.h.i.+eld between it and the pile and fed a steady stream of terrifically speeded up sub-atomic bullets to the beryllium target located within the pile itself. The tortured beryllium yielded up neutrons, which shot out in all directions through the uranium ma.s.s. Some of these neutrons struck uranium atoms squarely on their nuclei and split them in two. The fragments were new elements, barium, xenon, rubidium-depending on the portions in which each atom split. The new elements were usually unstable isotopes and broke down into a, dozen more elements by radioactive disintegration in a progressive reaction.

But these second trans.m.u.tations were comparatively safe; it was the original splitting of the uranium nucleus, with the release of the awe-inspiring energy that bound it together-an incredible two hundred million electron volts-that was important-and perilous.

For, while uranium was used to breed other fuels by bombarding it with neutrons, the splitting itself gives up more neutrons which in turn may land in other uranium nuclei and split them. If conditions are favorable to a progressively increasing reaction of this sort, it may get out of hand, build up in an unmeasurable fraction of a micro-second into a complete atomic explosion-an explosion which would dwarf an atom bomb to pop-gun size; an explosion so far beyond all human experience as to be as completely incomprehensible as the idea of personal death. It could be feared, but not understood.

But a self-perpetuating sequence of nuclear splitting, just wider the level of complete explosion, was necessary to the operation of the breeder plant. To split the first uranium nucleus by bombarding it with neutrons from the beryllium target took more power than the death of the atom gave up. In order that the breeder pile continue to operate it was imperative that each atom split by a neutron from the beryllium target should cause the splitting of many more.

It was equally imperative that this chain of reactions should always tend to dampen, to die out. It must not build up, or the uranium ma.s.s would explode within a time interval too short to be measured by any means whatsoever.

Nor would there be anyone left to measure it.

The atomic engineer on duty at the pile could control this reaction by means of the "trigger", a term the engineers used to include the linear resonant accelerator, the beryllium target, the cadmium damping rods, and adjacent controls, instrument board, and power sources. That is to say he could vary the bombardment on the beryllium target to increase or decrease the level of operation of the plant, he could change the "effective ma.s.s" of the pile with the cadmium dampers, and he could tell from his instruments that the internal reaction was dampened-or, rather, that it had been dampened the split second before.

He could not possibly know what was actually happening now within the pile-subatomic speeds are too great and the time intervals too small. He was like the bird that flew backward; he could see where he had been, but never knew where he was going.

Nevertheless, it was hisresponsibility, and his alone, not only to maintain the pile at a high efficiency, but to see that the reaction never pa.s.sed the critical point and progressed into ma.s.s explosion.

But that was impossible. He could not be sure; he could never be sure.

He could bring to the job all of the skill and learning of the finest technical education, and use it to reduce the hazard to the lowest mathematical probability, but the blind laws of chance which appear to rule in sub-atomic action might turn up a royal flush against him and defeat his most skillful play.

And each atomic engineer knew it, knew that he gambled not only with his own life, but with the lives of countless others, perhaps with the lives of every human being on the planet. n.o.body knew quite what such an explosion would do. A conservative estimate a.s.sumed that, in addition to destroying the plant and its personnel completely, it would tear a chunk out of the populous and heavily traveled Los Angeles-Oklahoma Road-City a hundred miles to the north.

The official, optimistic viewpoint on which the plant had been authorized by the Atomic Energy Commission was based on mathematics which predicted that such a ma.s.s of uranium would itself be disrupted on a molar scale, and therebylimit the area of destruction, before progressive and accelerated atomic explosion could infect the entire ma.s.s.

The atomic engineers, by and large, did not place faith in the official theory. They judged theoretical mathematical prediction for what it was worth-precisely nothing, until confirmed by experiment.

But even from the official viewpoint, each atomic engineer while on watch carried not only his own life in his hands, but the lives of many others-how many, it was better not to think about. No pilot, no general, no surgeon ever carried such a daily, inescapable, ever present weight of responsibility for the lives of others as these men carried every time they went on watch, every time they touched a venire screw, or read a dial.

They were selected not alone for their intelligence and technical training, but quite as much for their characters and sense of social responsibility. Sensitive men were needed-men who could fully appreciate the importance of the charge entrusted to them; no other sort would do. But the burden of responsibility was too great to be borne indefinitely by a sensitive man.

It was, of necessity, a psychologically unstable condition. Insanity was an occupational disease.

Doctor c.u.mmings appeared, still buckling the straps of the armor worn to guard against stray radiation. "What's up?" he askedSilard .

"I had to relieve Harper."

"So I guessed. I met him coming up. He was sore as h.e.l.l-just glared at me."

"I know. He wants an immediate hearing. That's why I had to send for you."

c.u.mmings grunted,then nodded toward the engineer, anonymous in all-enclosing armor. "Who'd I draw?"

"Erickson."

"Good enough.Squareheads can't go crazy-eh, Gus?"

Erickson looked up momentarily, and answered, "That's your problem," and returned to his work.

c.u.mmings turned back toSilard , and commented, "Psychiatrists don't seem very popular around here.

O.K.-I relieve you, sir."

"Very well, sir."

Silardthreaded his way through thezig-zag in the outer s.h.i.+eld which surrounded the control room.

Once outside this outer s.h.i.+eld, he divested himself of the c.u.mbersome armor, disposed of it in the locker room provided, and hurried to a lift. He left the lift at the tube station, underground, and looked around for an unoccupied capsule. Finding one, he strapped himself in, sealed thegasketed door, and settled the back of his head into the rest against the expected surge of acceleration.

Five minutes later he knocked at the door of the office of the general superintendent, twenty miles away.

The breeder plant proper was located in a bowl of desert hills on the Arizona plateau.Everything not necessary to the immediate operation of the plant-administrative offices, television station, and so forth-lay beyond the hills. The buildings housing these auxiliary functions were of the most durable construction technical ingenuity could devise. It was hoped that, if the tag ever came, occupants would stand approximately the chance of survival of a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Silardknocked again. He was greeted by a male secretary, Steinke.Silard recalled reading his case history. Formerly one of the most brilliant of the young engineers, he had suffered a blanking out of the ability to handle mathematical operations. A plain case of fugue, but there had been nothing that the poor devil could do about it- he had been anxious enough with his conscious mind to stay on duty. He had been rehabilitated as an office worker.

Steinke ushered him into the superintendent's private office. Harper was there before him, and returned his greeting with icy politeness. The superintendent was cordial, butSilard thoughthe .looked tired, as if the twenty-four-hour-a-day strain was too much for him.

"Come in, Doctor, come In. Sit down.Now.tell me about this. I'm a little' surprised. I thought Harper was one of my steadiest men."

"I don't say he isn't, sir."

"Well?"

"He may be perfectly all right, but your instructions to me are not to take any chances."

"Quite right" The superintendent gave the engineer, silent and tense in his chair, a troubled glance,then returned his attention toSilard . "Suppose you tell me about it."

Silardtook a deep breath. "While on watch as psychological observer at the control station I noticed that the engineer of the watch seemed preoccupied and less responsive to stimuli than usual. During my off-watch observation of this case, over a period of the past several days, I have suspected an increasing lack of attention. For example, while playing contract bridge, he now occasionally asks for a review of the bidding which is contrary to his former behavior pattern.

"Other similar data are available. To cut it short, at 3:11 today, while on watch, I saw Harper, with no apparent reasonable purpose in mind, pick up a wrench used only for operating the valves of the water s.h.i.+eld and approach the trigger. I relieved him of duty, and sent him out of the control room."

"Chief!"Harper calmed himself somewhat and continued, "If this witch-doctor knew a wrench from an oscillator, he'd know what I was doing. The wrench was on the wrong rack. I noticed it, and picked it up to return it to its proper place. On the way, I stopped to check the readings!"

The superintendent turned inquiringly to Doctor Shard. "That may be true- Granting that it is true,"

answered the psychiatrist doggedly, "my diagnosis still stands. Your behavior pattern has altered; your present actions are unpredictable, and I can't approve you for responsible work without a complete check-up."

General Superintendent King drummed on the desktop, and sighed. Then he spoke slowly to Harper, "Cal, you're a good boy, and believe me, I know how you feel. But: there is no way to avoid it-you've got to go up for thepsychometricals , and accept whatever disposition the board makes of you." He paused, but Harper maintained an expressionless silence. "Tell you what, son-why don't, you take a few days' leave? Then, when you come back,' you can go up before the board, or transfer to another department away from the bomb, whichever you prefer." He looked to Shard for approval, and received a nod.

But Harper was not mollified. "No, chief," he protested. "It won't do. Can't you' see what's wrong?

It's this constant supervision.Somebody always watching the back of your neck, expecting you to go crazy. A man can't even shave in private. We're jumpy about the most innocent acts, for fear some head doctor, half batty himself, will see it and decide it's a sign we're slipping-good grief, what do you expect!"

His outburst having run its course, he subsided into a flippant cynicism that did" not quite jell.

"O.K.-nevermind the strait jacket; I'll go quietly. You're a good Joe in spite of it, chief," he added, "and I'm glad to have worked under you. Goodbye."

King kept the pain in his eyes out of his voice. 'Wait a minute, Cal-you're not through here. Let's forget about the vacation.' I'm transferring you to the radiation laboratory. You belong in research anyhow; I'd never have spared you from it to stand watches if I hadn't been short on number-one men.

"As for the constant psychological observation, I hate it as much as you do. I don't suppose you know that they watch me about twice as hard as they watch you duty engineers."

Harper showed his surprise, but Shard nodded in sober conflation. "But we have to have this supervision. . . Do you remember Manning? No, he was before your time. We didn't have' psychological observers then. Manning was able and brilliant. Furthermore, he was always cheerful; nothing seemed to bother him.

"I was glad to have him on the pile, for he was always alert, and never seemed nervous about working with it-in fact he grew more buoyant and cheerful the longer he stood control watches. I should have known that was a very bad sign, but I didn't, and there was no observer to 'tell me so.

"His technician had to slug him one night. . . He found him dismounting the, safety interlocks on the cadmium a.s.sembly. Poor old Manning never pulled out of it- he's been violently insane ever since. After Manning cracked up, we worked out the present system of two qualified engineers and an observer for every watch. It seemed the only thing to do."

"I suppose so, chief," Harper mused, his face no longer sullen, but still unhappy. "It's a h.e.l.l of a situation just the same."

"That's putting it mildly." He got up and put out his hand. "Cal, unless you're dead set on leaving us, I'll expect to see you at the radiation laboratory tomorrow. Another thing-I don't often recommend this, but it might do you good to get drunk tonight."

King had signed to Shard to remain after the young man left. Once the door was closed he turned back to the psychiatrist. "There goes another one-and one of the best. Doctor, what am I going to do?"

Silardpulled at his cheek. "I don't know," he admitted. "The h.e.l.l of it is,Harper's absolutely right. It does increase the strain on them to know that they are being watched... and yet they have to be watched.

Your psychiatric staff isn't doing too well, either. It makes us nervous to be around the Big Bomb... the more so because we don't understand it. And it's a strain on us to be hated and despised as we are.

Scientific detachment is difficult under such conditions; I'm getting jumpy myself."

King ceased pacing the floor and faced the doctor. "But there must be some solution-" he insisted.

Silardshook his head. "It's beyond me, Superintendent. I see no solution from the standpoint of psychology."

"No?Hmm-Doctor, who is the top man in your field?" "Eh?"

"Who is the recognized number-one man in handling this sort of thing?"

"Why, that's hard to say. Naturally, there isn't any one, leading psychiatrist in the world; we specialize too much." I know what you mean, though. You don't want the best industrial temperament psychometrician ; you want the" best all-around man for psychoses non-lesionaland situational. That would be Lentz."

"Go on."

"Well- He covers the whole field of environment adjustment. He's the man that correlated the theory of optimum tonicity with the relaxation technique thatKorzybski had developed empirically. He actually workedunder,Korzybski himself, when he was a young student-it's the only thing he's vain about."

"He did? Then he must be pretty old;Koxzybski died in- What year did he die?"

"I started to say that you must know his work insymbology -theory of abstraction and calculus of statement, all that sort of thing-because of its applications to engineering and mathematical physics."

"That Lentz-yes, of course.But I had never thought of him as a psychiatrist."

"No, you wouldn't, in your field. Nevertheless, we are inclined to credit him with having done as much to check and reduce the pandemic neuroses of the Crazy Years as any other man, and more than any man left alive."

"Where is he?"

"Why, Chicago, I suppose.At the Inst.i.tute."

"Get him here."

"Get him down here. Get on thatvisiphone and locate him. Then have Steinke call the Port of Chicago, and hire astratocar to stand by for him. I want to see him as soon as possible-before the day is out." King sat up in his chair with the air of a man who is once more master of himself and the situation.

His spirit knew that warming replenishment that comes only with reaching a decision. The hara.s.sed expression was gone.

Silardlooked dumbfounded. "But, superintendent," he expostulated, "you can't ring for Doctor Lentz as if he were a junior clerk. He's-he's Lentz."

"Certainly-that's why I want him. But I'm not a neurotic clubwoman looking for sympathy, either.