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
The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein Page 8
