The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein

pitchblende to make one bomb. That's disregarding the question of getting

  the company to lend you their one bomb for anything that doesn't pay

  dividends."

  Erickson looked balky. "I don't concede that you've covered all the

  alternatives. What have we got? The early rocket boys went right ahead

  trying to build better rockets, serene in the belief that, by the time they

  could build rockets good enough to fly to the Moon, a fuel would be

  perfected that would do the trick. And they did build ships that were good

  enough ? you could take any ship that makes the antipodes run, and refit it

  for the Moon ? if you had a fuel that was sufficiently concentrated to

  maintain the necessary push for the whole run. But they haven't got it.

  "And why not? Because we let 'em down, that's why. Because they're still

  depending on molecular energy, on chemical reactions, with atomic power

  sitting right here in our laps. It's not their fault ? old D. D. Harriman

  had Rockets Consolidated underwrite the whole first issue of Antarctic

  Pitchblende, and took a big slice of it himself, in the expectation that we

  would produce something usable in the way of a concentrated rocket fuel.

  Did we do it? Like hell! The company went hog-wild for immediate commercial

  exploitation, and there's no fuel yet."

  "But you haven't stated it properly," Harper objected. "There are just two

  forms of atomic power available ? radioactivity and atomic disintegration.

  The first is too slow; the energy is there, but you can't wait years for it

  to come out ? not in a rocketship. The second we can only manage in a large

  mass of uranium. There has only been enough uranium mined for one bomb.

  There you are ? stymied."

  Erickson's Scandinavian stubbornness was just gathering for another try at

  the argument when the waiter arrived with the drinks. He set them down with

  a triumphant flourish. "There you are, suh!"

  "Want to roll for them, Izzy?" Harper inquired.

  "Don' mind if I do."

  The Negro produced a leather dice cup, and Harper rolled. He selected his

  combinations with care and managed to get four aces and jack in three

  rolls. Israfel took the cup. He rolled in the grand manner with a backward

  twist to his wrist. His score finished at five kings, and he courteously

  accepted the price of six drinks. Harper stirred the engraved cubes with

  his forefinger.

  "Izzy," he asked, "are these the same dice I rolled with?"

  "Why, Mistuh Harper!" The Negro's expression was pained.

  "Skip it," Harper conceded. "I should know better than to gamble with you.

  I haven't won a roll from you in six weeks. What did you start to say,

  Gus?"

  "I was just going to say that there ought to be a better way to get energy

  out of ? "

  But they were joined again, this time by something very seductive in an

  evening gown that appeared to have been sprayed on her lush figure. She was

  young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. "You boys lonely?" she asked as she

  flowed into a chair.

  "Nice of you to ask but were not," Erickson denied with patient politeness.

  He jerked a thumb at a solitary figure seated across the room. "Go talk to

  Hanningan;

  he's not busy."

  She followed his gesture with her eyes, and answered with faint scorn:

  "Him? He's no use. He's been like that for three weeks ? hasn't spoken to a

  soul. If you ask me, I'd say that he was cracking up."

  "That so?" he observed noncommittally. "Here" ? he fished out a five-dollar

  bill and handed it to her ? "buy yourself a drink. Maybe we'll look you up

  later."

  "Thanks, boys." The money disappeared under her clothing, and she stood up.

  "Just ask for Edith."

  "Hannigan does look bad," Harper considered, noting the brooding stare and

  apathetic attitude, "and he has been awfully standoffish lately, for him.

  Do you suppose we're obliged to report him?"

  "Don't let it worry you," advised Erickson. "There's a spotter on the job

  now. Look." Harper followed his companion's eyes and recognized Dr. Mott of

  the psychological staff. He was leaning against the far end of the bar, and

  nursing a tall glass, which gave him protective coloration. But his stance

  was such that his field of vision included not only Hannigan, but Erickson

  and Harper as well.

  "Yeah, and he's studying us as well," Harper added. "Damn it to hell, why

  does it make my back hair rise just to lay eyes on one of them?"

  The question was rhetorical; Erickson ignored it. "Let's get out of here,"

  he suggested, "and have dinner somewhere else."

  "O.K."

  DeLancey himself waited on them as they left. "Going so soon, gentlemen?"

  he asked, in a voice that implied that their departure would leave him no

  reason to stay open. "Beautiful lobster thermidor tonight. If you do not

  like it, you need not pay." He smiled brightly.

  "Not sea food, Lance," Harper told him, "not tonight. Tell me ? why do you

  stick around here when you know that the bomb is bound to get you in the

  long run? Aren't you afraid of it?"

  The tavern keeper's eyebrows shot up. "Afraid of the bomb? But it is my

  friend!"

  "Makes you money, eh?"

  "Oh, I do not mean that." He leaned toward them confidentially. "Five years

  ago I come here to make some money quickly for my family before my cancer

  of the stomach, it kills me. At the clinic, with the wonderful new radiants

  you gentlemen make with the aid of the bomb, I am cured ? I live again. No,

  I am not afraid of the bomb; it is my good friend."

  "Suppose it blows up?"

  "When the good Lord needs me, He will take me." He crossed himself quickly.

  As they turned away, Erickson commented in a low voice to Harper, "There's

  your answer, Cal ? if all us engineers had his faith, the bomb wouldn't get

  us down."

  Harper was unconvinced. "I don't know," he mused. "I don't think it's

  faith; I think it's lack of imagination ? and knowledge."

  Notwithstanding King's confidence, Lentz did not show up until the next

  day. The superintendent was subconsciously a little surprised at his

  visitor's appearance. He had pictured a master psychologist as wearing

  flowing hair, an imperial, and having piercing black eyes. But this man was

  not very tall, was heavy in his framework, and fat ? almost gross. He might

  have been a butcher. Little, piggy, faded-blue eyes peered merrily out from

  beneath shaggy blond brows. There was no hair anywhere else on the enormous

  skull, and the apelike jaw was smooth and pink. He was dressed in mussed

  pajamas of unbleached linen. A long cigarette holder jutted permanently

  from one corner of a wide mouth widened still more by a smile which

  suggested unmalicious amusement at the worst that life, or men, could do.

  He had gusto. King found him remarkably easy to talk to.

  At Lentz's suggestion the superintendent went first into the history of the

  atomic power plant, how the fission of the uranium atom by Dr. Otto Hahn in

  December, 1938, had opened up the way to atomic power. The door was opened

  just a crack; the process to be self-perpetuating and commercially usable

  required
an enormously greater mass of uranium than there was available in

  the entire civilized world at that time.

  But the discovery, fifteen years later, of enormous deposits of pitchblende

  in the old rock underlying Little America removed that obstacle. The

  deposits were similar to those previously worked at Great Bear Lake in the

  arctic north of Canada, but so much more extensive that the eventual

  possibility of accumulating enough uranium to build an atomic power plant

  became evident.

  The demand for commercially usable, cheap power had never been satiated.

  Even the Douglas-Martin sun-power screens, used to drive the roaring road

  cities of the period and for a myriad other industrial purposes, were not

  sufficient to fill the ever-growing demand. They had saved the country from

  impending famine of oil and coal, but their maximum output of approximately

  one horsepower per square yard of sun-illuminated surface put a definite

  limit to the power from that source available in any given geographical

  area. Atomic power was needed ? was demanded.

  But theoretical atomic physics predicted that a uranium mass sufficiently

  large to assist in its own disintegration might assist too well ? blow up

  instantaneously,

  with such force that it would probably wreck every man-made structure on

  the globe and conceivably destroy the entire human race as well. They dared

  not build the bomb, even though the uranium was available.

  "It was Destry's mechanics of infinitesimals that showed a way out of the

  dilemma," King went on. "His equations appeared to predict that an atomic

  explosion once started, would disrupt the molar mass inclosing it so

  rapidly that neutron loss through the outer surface of the fragments would

  dampen the progression of the atomic explosion to zero before complete

  explosion could be reached.

  "For the mass we use in the bomb, his equations predict a possible force of

  explosion one seventh of one percent of the force of complete explosion.

  That alone, of course, would be incomprehensibly destructive ? about the

  equivalent of a hundred and forty thousand tons of TNT ? enough to wreck

  this end of the State. Personally, I've never been sure that is all that

  would happen."

  "Then why did you accept this job?" inquired Lentz.

  King fiddled with items on his desk before replying. "I couldn't turn it

  down, doctor ? I couldn't. If I had refused, they would have gotten someone

  else ? and it was an opportunity that comes to a physicist once in

  history,"

  Lentz nodded. "And probably they would have gotten someone not as

  competent. I understand, Dr. King ? you were compelled by the

  'truth-tropism' of the scientist. He must go where the data is to be found,

  even if it kills him. But about this fellow Destry, I've never liked his

  mathematics; he postulates too much."

  King looked up in quick surprise, then recalled that this was the man who

  had refined and given rigor to the calculus of statement. "That's just the

  hitch," he agreed. "His work is brilliant, but I've never been sure that

  his predictions were worth the paper they were written on. Nor,

  apparently," he added bitterly, "do my junior engineers."

  He told the psychiatrist of the difficulties they had had with personnel,

  of how the most carefully selected men would, sooner or later, crack under

  the strain. "At first I thought it might be some degenerating effect from

  the hard radiation that leaks out of the bomb, so we improved the screening

  and the personal armor. But it didn't help. One young fellow who had joined

  us after the new screening was installed became violent at dinner one

  night, and insisted that a pork chop was about to explode. I hate to think

  of what might have happened if he had been on duty at the bomb when he blew

  up."

  The inauguration of the system of constant psychological observation had

  greatly reduced the probability of acute danger resulting from a watch

  engineer cracking up, but King was forced to admit that the system was not

  a success; there had actually been a marked increase in psychoneuroses,

  dating from that time.

  "And that's the picture, Dr. Lentz. It gets worse all the time. It's

  getting me now. The strain is telling on me; I can't sleep, and I don't

  think my judgment is as good as it used to be ? I have trouble making up my

  mind, of coming to a decision. Do you think you can do anything for us?"

  But Lentz had no immediate relief for his anxiety. "Not so fast,

  superintendent," he countered. "You have given me the background, but I

  have no real data as yet. I must look around for a while, smell out the

  situation for myself, talk to your engineers, perhaps have a few drinks

  with them, and get acquainted. That is possible, is it not? Then in a few

  days, maybe, we'll know where we stand."

  King had no alternative but to agree.

  "And it is well that your young men do not know what I am here for. Suppose

  I am your old friend, a visiting physicist, eh?"

  "Why, yes ? of course. I can see to it that that idea gets around. But say

  ? " King was reminded again of something that had bothered him from the

  time Silard had first suggested Lentz's name ? "may I ask a personal

  question?"

  The merry eyes were undisturbed.

  "Go ahead."

  "I can't help but be surprised that one man should attain eminence in two

  such widely differing fields as psychology and mathematics. And right now

  I'm perfectly convinced of your ability to pass yourself off as a

  physicist. I don't understand it."

  The smile was more amused, without being in the least patronizing, nor

  offensive. "Same subject," he answered.

  "Eh? How's that ? "

  "Or rather, both mathematical physics and psychology are branches of the

  same subject, symbology. You are a specialist; it would not necessarily

  come to your attention."

  "I still don't follow you."

  "No? Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he

  cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics

  of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be

  it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely

  reaction to symbols, and only negligibly to phenomena. As a matter of

  fact," he continued, removing the cigarette holder from his mouth and

  settling into his subject, "it can be demonstrated that the human mind can

  think only in terms of symbols.

  When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set

  fashions ? rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have

  been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they

  stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order

  to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our

  logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we do not

  think sanely.

  "In mathematical physics you are concerned with making your symbology fit

  physical phenomena. In psychiatry I am concerned with precisely the same

  thing, except tha
t I am more immediately concerned with the man who does

  the thinking than with the phenomena he is thinking about. But the same

  subject, always the same subject."

  'We're not getting anyplace, Gus." Harper put down his slide rule and

  frowned.

  "Seems like it, Cal'' Erickson grudgingly admitted. "Damn it, though ?

  there ought to be some reasonable way of tackling the problem. What do we

  need? Some form of concentrated, controllable power for rocket fuel. What

  have we got? Power galore in the bomb. There must be some way to bottle

  that power, and serve it out when we need it ? and the answer is someplace

  in one of the radioactive series. I know it." He stared glumly around the

  laboratory as if expecting to find the answer written somewhere on the

  lead-sheathed walls.

  "Don't be so down in the mouth about it. You've got me convinced there is

  an answer; let's figure out how to find it. In the first place the three

  natural radioactive series are out, aren't they?"

  "Yes ? at least we had agreed that all that ground had been fully covered

  before."

  "O. K.; we have to assume that previous investigators have done what their

  notes show they have done ? otherwise we might as well not believe

  anything, and start checking on everybody from Archimedes to date. Maybe

  that is indicated, but Methuselah himself couldn't carry out such an

  assignment. What have we got left?"

  "Artificial radioactives."

  "All right. Let's set up a list of them, both those that have been made up

  to now, and those that might possibly be made in the future. Call that our

  group ? or rather, field, if you want to be pedantic about definitions.

  There are a limited number of operations that can be performed on each

  member of the group, and on the members taken in combination. Set it up."

  Erickson did so, using the curious curlicues of the calculus of statement.

  Harper nodded. "All right ? expand it."

  Erickson looked up after a few moments, and asked, "Cal, have you any idea

  how many terms there are in the expansion?"

  "No ? hundreds, maybe thousands, I suppose."

  "You're conservative. It reaches four figures without considering possible

  new radioactives. We couldn't finish such a research in a century." He

  chucked his pencil down and looked morose.

  Cal Harper looked at him curiously, but with sympathy. "Gus," he said

  gently, "the bomb isn't getting you, too, is it?"

  "I don't think so. Why?"

  "I never saw you so willing to give up anything before. Naturally you and I

  will never finish any such job, but at the very worst we will have

  eliminated a lot of wrong answers for somebody else. Look at Edison ? sixty

  years of experimenting, twenty hours a day, yet he never found out the one

  thing he was most interested in knowing. I guess if he could take it, we

  can."

  Erickson pulled out of his funk to some extent. "I suppose so," he agreed.

  "Anyhow, maybe we could work out some techniques for carrying a lot of

  experiments simultaneously."

  Harper slapped him on the shoulder. "That's the ol' fight. Besides-we may

  not need to finish the research, or anything like it, to find a

  satisfactory fuel. The way I see it, there are probably a dozen, maybe a

  hundred, right answers. We may run across one of them any day. Anyhow,

  since you're willing to give me a hand with it in your off watch time, I'm

  game to peck away at it till hell freezes."

  Lentz puttered around the plant and the administration center for several

  days, until he was known to everyone by sight. He made himself pleasant and

  asked questions. He was soon regarded as a harmless nuisance, to be