strike-breakers," Melroy warned."They hadn't got security-cleared to enter the reactor area when thishappened."
"What do you think happened?" Cronnin asked. "One of theDoernberg-Giardanos let go?"
"Yes. Your man Crandall. If he survived that, it's his bad luck," Melroysaid grimly. "Last night, while Fred Hausinger was pulling thefissionables and radioactives out of the Number One breeder, he found abig nugget of Pu-239, about one-quarter CM. I don't know what was donewith it, but I do know that Crandall had the maintenance gang repackthat reactor, to keep my people from working on it. Nobody'll ever findout just what happened, but they were in a hurry; they probably shovedthings in any old way. Somehow, that big subcritical nugget must havegot back in, and the breeding-cans, which were pretty ripe by that time,must have been shoved in too close to it and to one another. You knowhow fast those D-G's work. It just took this long to build up CM for abomb-type reaction. You remember what I was saying before the lightswent out? Well, it happened. Some moron--some untested and undetectedmoron--made the wrong kind of a mistake."
"Too bad about Crandall. He was a good kid, only he didn't stop to thinkoften enough," Cronnin said. "Well, I guess the strike's off, now;that's one thing."
"But all those people, out there!" Womanlike, Doris Rives was thinkingparticularly rather than generally and of humans rather thanabstractions. "It must have killed everybody for miles around."
Sid Keating, Melroy thought. And Joe Ricci, and Ben Puryear, and SteveChalmers, and all the workmen whom he had brought here from Pittsburgh,to their death. Then he stopped thinking about them. It didn't do anygood to think of men who'd been killed; he'd learned that years ago, asa kid second lieutenant in Korea. The people to think about were themillions in Greater New York, and up the Hudson Valley to Albany, and asfar south as Trenton, caught without light in the darkness, without heatin the dead of winter, without power in subways and skyscrapers and onrailroads and interurban lines.
He turned to the woman beside him.
"Doris, before you could get your Board of Psychiatry and Neurologydiploma, you had to qualify as a regular M.D., didn't you?" he asked.
"Why, yes--"
"Then you'd better report to the nearest hospital. Any doctor at all isgoing to be desperately needed, for the next day or so. Me, I still havea reserve major's commission in the Army Corps of Engineers. They'reprobably calling up reserve officers, with any radios that are stillworking. Until I hear differently, I'm ordering myself on active duty asof now." He looked around. "Anybody know where the nearest Armyheadquarters is?"
"There's a recruiting station down on the thirty-something floor,"Quillen said. "It's probably closed, now, though."
"Ground Defense Command; Midtown City," Leighton said. "They have amedical section of their own; they'll be glad to get Dr. Rives, too."
Melroy helped her on with her coat and handed her her handbag, thenshrugged into his own overcoat and belted it about him, the weight ofthe flashlight and the automatic sagging the pockets. He'd need both,the gun as much as the light--New York had more than its share ofvicious criminals, to whom this power-failure would be a perfectdevilsend. Handing Doris the light, he let her take his left arm.Together, they left the room and went down the hallway to the stairs andthe long walk to the darkened street below, into a city that hadsuddenly been cut off from its very life-energy. A city that had put allits eggs in one basket, and left the basket in the path of anyblundering foot.
THE END
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