The Past Through Tomorrow

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “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 stand-offish 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.

  “No sea food, Lance,” Harper told him, “not tonight. Tell me—why do you stick around here when you know that the pile is bound to get you in the long run? Aren’t you afraid of it?”

  The tavernkeeper’s eyebrows shot up. “Afraid of the pile? 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 Big Bomb, I am cured —I live again. No, I am not afraid of the pile; 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 job 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 overly 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 ape-like jaw was smooth and pink. He was dressed in mussed pajamas of unbleached linen. A long cigaret 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‘ suggestion the Superintendent went first into the history of atomic power plants, 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 knowledge than there was available in the entire civilized world at that time.

  In 1938 the amount of separated uranium-235 in the world was not the mass of the head of a pin. Plutonium was unheard of. Atomic power was abstruse theory and a single, esoteric laboratory experiment. World War II, the Manhattan Project, and Hiroshima changed that; by late 1945 prophets were rushing into print with predictions of atomic power, cheap, almost free atomic power, for everyone in a year or two.

  It did not work out that way. The Manhattan Project had been run with the single-minded purpose of making weapons; the engineering of atomic power was still in the future.

  The far future, so it seemed. The uranium piles used to make the atom bomb were literally no good for commercial power; they were designed to throw away power as a useless byproduct, nor could the design of a pile, once in operation, be changed. A design—on paper—for an economic, commercial power pile could be made, but it had two serious hitches. The first was that such a pile would give off energy with such fury, if operated at a commercially satisfactory level, that there was no known way of accepting that energy and putting it to work.

  This problem was solved first. A modification of the Douglas-Martin power screens, originally designed to turn the radiant energy of the sun (a natural atomic power pile itself) directly into electrical power, was used to receive the radiant fury of uranium fission and carry it away as electrical current.

  The second hitch seemed to be no hitch at all. An “enriched” pile—one in which U-235 or plutonium had been added to natural uranium—was a quite satisfactory source of commercial power. We knew how to get U-235 and plutonium; that was the primary accomplishment of the Manhattan Project.

  Or did we know how? Hanford produced plutonium; Oak Ridge extracted U-235, true—but the Hanford piles used more U-235 than they produced plutonium and Oak Ridge produced nothing but merely separated out the 7/10 of one percent of U-235 in natural uranium and “threw away” the 99%-plus of the energy which was still locked in the discarded U-238. Commercially ridiculous, economically fantastic!

  But there was another way to breed plutonium, by means of a high-energy, unmoderated pile of natural uranium somewhat enriched. At a million electron volts or more U-238 will fission; at somewhat lower energies it turns to plutonium. Such a pile supplies its own “fire” and produces more “fuel” than it uses; it could breed fuel for many other power piles of the usual moderated sort.

  But an unmoderated power pile is almost by definition an atom bomb.

  The very name “pile” comes from the pile of graphite bricks and uranium slugs set up in a squash court at the University of Chicago at the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. Such a pile, moderated by graphite or heavy water cannot explode.

  Nobody knew what an unmoderated, high-energy pile might do. It would breed plutonium in great quantities—but would it explode? Explode with such violence as to make the Nagasaki bomb seem like a popgun?

  Nobody knew.

  In the meantime the power-hungry technology of the United States grew still more demanding. The Douglas-Martin sunpower screens met the immediate crisis when oil became too scarce to be wasted as fuel, but sunpower was limited to about one horsepower per square yard and was at the mercy of the weather.

  Atomic power was needed—demanded.

  Atomic engineers lived through the period in an agony of indecision. Perhaps a breeder pile could be controlled. Or perhaps if it did go out of control it would simply blow itself apart and thus extinguish its own fires. Perhaps it would explode like several atom bombs but with low efficiency. But it might—it just might—explode its whole mass of many tons of uranium at once and destroy the human race in the process.

  There is an old story, not true, which tells of a scientist who had made a machine which would instantly destroy the world, so he believed, if he closed one switch. He wanted to know whether or not he was right. So he closed the switch—and never found out.

  The atomic engineers were afraid to close the switch.

  “It was Destry’s mechanics of infinitesimals that showed a way out of the dilemma,” King went on. “His equations appeared to predict that such an atomic explosion, once started, would disrupt the molar mass enclosing it so rapidly that neutron loss through the outer surface of the fragments would dampen the progression of the atomic e
xplosion to zero before complete explosion could be reached. In an atom bomb such damping actually occurs.

  “For the mass we use in the pile, 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—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 neutron radiation that leaks out through the shielding, 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 pile 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, or 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 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‘ 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 cigaret 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 think not-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 that 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 through fission. There must be some way to bottle that power, and serve it out when we need it—and the answer is some place 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.”

  “Okay; 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 job 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 tolerated because he was a friend of the superintendent. He even poked his nose into the commercial power end of the plant, and had the radiation-to-electric-power sequence explained to him in detail. This alone would have been sufficient to disarm any suspicion that he might be a psychiatrist, for the staff psychiatrists paid no attention to the hard-bitten technicians of the power-conversion unit. There was no need to; mental instability on their part could not affect the pile, nor were they subject to the mankilling strain of social responsibility. Theirs was simply a job personally dangerous, a type of strain strong men have been inured to since the jungle.

  In due course he got around to the unit of the radiation laboratory set aside for Calvin Harper’s use. He rang the bell and waited. Harper answered the door, his anti-radiation helmet shoved back from his face like some grotesque sunbonnet. “What is it?” he asked. “Oh—it’s you, Doctor Lentz. Did you want to see me?”

  “Why, yes, and no,” the older man answered, “I was just looking around the experimental station and wondered what you do in here. Will I be in the way?”

  “Not at all. Come in. Gus!”

  Erickson got up from where he had been fussing over the power leads to their trigger—a modified betatron rather than a resonant accelerator. “Hello.”

  “Gus, this is Doctor Lentz—Gus Erickson.”