NERVES

by

LESTER DEL REY



CHAPTER 1

The jangling of the telephone gnawed at Doc Ferrel's sleep. His efforts to cut
it off by burying his head deeper in the pillow only made him more aware of
it. Across the room, he heard Emma stirring uneasily. He could just make out
her body under the sheets by the dim light of the early morning.
Nobody had any business calling at that hour!
Resentment cut through the last mists of sleep. He groped to his feet and
fumbled for his robe. When a man nears sixty, with gray hair and enlarged
waistline to show for it, he should be entitled to his sleep. But the phone
went on insistently. Then, as he reached the head of the stairs, he began to
fear that it would stop. Reaching it just too late would be the final
aggravation.
He half-stumbled down the stairs until he could reach the receiver. "Ferrel
speaking."
Relief and fatigue were mixed in the voice at the other end. "This is Palmer,
Doc. Did I wake you up?"
"I was just sitting down to supper," Ferrel told him bitterly. Palmer was the
manager of the atomics plant where Doc worked, and at least nominally his
boss. "What's the matter? Your grandson got a stomach-ache, or has the plant
finally blown up? And what's it to me at this hour? Anyhow, I thought you said
I could forget about the plant today."
Palmer sighed faintly, as if he'd expected Doc's reaction and had been bracing
himself for it. "I know. That's what I called about. Of course, if you've made
plans you can't break, I can't ask you to change them. God knows, you've
earned a day off. But. . . ."
He left it hanging. Ferrel knew it was bait. If he showed any interest now, he
was hooked. He waited, and finally Palmer sighed again.
"Okay, Doc. I guess I had no business bothering you. It's just that I don't
trust Dr. Blake's tact. But maybe I can convince him that smart cracks don't
go over well with a junket of visiting congressmen. Go back to sleep. Sorry I
woke you up."
"Wait a minute," Ferrel said quickly. He shook his head, wishing he'd had at
least a swallow of coffee to clear his brain. "I thought the investigating
committee was due next week?"
Palmer, like a good angler, gave him a second's grace before he set the hook.
"They were, but I got word the plans are changed. They'll be here, complete
with experts and reporters, some time this forenoon. And with that bill up
before Congress . . . Well, have a good day, Doc."
Ferrel swore to himself. All he had to do now was to hang up, of course.
Handling the committee was Palmer's responsibility; it was his plant that
would be moved to some wasteland if the cursed bill was passed. Doc's job was
concerned only with the health and safety of the men. "I'll have to talk it
over with Emma," he growled at last. "Where'll you be in ten minutes? Home?"
"I'm at the plant."
Doc looked at the clock. Just after six. If Palmer thought things were that
serious . . . Yet it was the last day of Dick's brief visit home from medical
school, and they'd been planning on this day all week! Emma had her heart set
on making it a happy family affair.
A sound from the head of the stairs made him look up. Emma was standing there
in a cotton robe and worn old slippers. Without make-up and with her hair
hanging loose, she looked like a little girl who had grown old overnight
without quite understanding it. Her face was carefully stripped of expression;
she'd learned to conceal her feelings back in the days when Ferrel had
maintained a general practice. But the tautness of her throat muscles and the
way she cinched the belt around her too-thin figure showed that she had heard
and how she felt.
She shrugged and nodded, trying to smile at him as she started down the
stairs, favoring her bad hip.
"Breakfast will take a little time," she said quietly. "Try to get some sleep.
I'll wake Dick and explain it to him."
She was heading for the kitchen as he turned back to the phone. "All right,
Palmer. I'll be out. Nine okay?"
"Thanks, Doc. Nine will be fine," Palmer answered. Emma was already starting
coffee in the kitchen. Doc turned toward her, and then hesitated. She was
right; he needed the extra sleep.
Sleep wouldn't come, though. The resiliency of youth was long gone, and now
even the sound habits of his middle life seemed to be failing. Maybe Blake was
right in his kidding; maybe he was growing old! He had caught himself
wondering as he looked at the firm-muscled figure of his son, so like Doc's
memory of himself at the same age, and so unlike what the mirror showed now.
The situation at plant kept gnawing at his mind. He'd neglected of it, though
aware of the growing tension, this sudden revival of the fear of atomic plants
after so many years. Citizens' protest meetings. Bills submitted to Congress-
bills that would force most atomic plants to move far from inhabited
territory. But he'd put that all down to the normally noisy crackpot fringe.
Still, if Palmer took it seriously, maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe things had
really got worse since the breakdown of the Croton atomic plant a few months
ago. It was only a minor mishap there, really. But it had resulted in a mild
dose of radiation contamination over a hundred square miles or more; it seemed
to be nobody's fault, but it had been a nine-days' newspaper scandal, and it
might have served as a focal point for all the buried superstitions and fears
about atomics.
Ferrel finally gave up and began dressing, surprised at how much time had gone
already. The house was filled with the smell of hot biscuits, and he realized
Emma was making a production of their last meal together on their only
vacation. He heard her waking Dick and explaining the situation while he
shaved. The boy sounded a lot less disappointed over the changed plans than
she did; somehow, children seemed to care less than their parents about such
things.
The boy was already at the table when Doc came down, poring over the pages of
the early edition of the Kimberly Republican. He glanced up and passed over
half of the paper. "Hi, Dad. Tough about today. But Mom and I decided we'd
drive you to work in my car, so we'll see a little more of you. I guess this
anti-atom craze is getting serious, eh?"
"Palmer's worried, that's all. It's his job to be overcautious." At the
moment, Doc was more interested in the biscuits and honey.
Dick shook his head. "Better look at the editorial," he advised.
Ferrel turned to it, though he usually had no use for the canned editorials in
the Guilden papers. Then he saw that this was signed and individual. It
concerned the bill to evacuate all plants engaged in atomic transmutation or
the creation of radioactive isotopes to areas at least fifty miles from any
city of over ten thousand population. Superficially, the editorial was an
unbiased study of the bill, but it equated such things as the wealth the
industry had built on one side against the health of children, menaced by
accidental release of radioactives on the other. Intellectually, it proved the
plants must stay; emotionally, it said the exact opposite; and most of the
readers here would think with their emotions first.
On the front page, the feature story was on a citizens' meeting for the bill.
The number reported in attendance and the list of speakers was a second shock.
Before National Atomics Products had been built near the city, Kimberly had
been only a small town like many others in Missouri. Now it numbered nearly a
hundred thousand, and depended for its prosperity almost entirely on National;
there were other industries, but they were National's children. Even those
which didn't depend on artificial isotopes still needed the cheap power that
came almost as a byproduct.
No matter what the other Guilden papers screamed, or how crazy other cities
went, it was incredible to find such a reaction here.
He threw aside his paper in disgust, not even bothering with the ball scores.
He glanced grumpily at the time. "I guess I'd better get going."
Emma refilled his coffee, then limped up the stairs to finish dressing. Ferrel
watched her slow steps unhappily. Maybe they should have bought one of the
single-story houses that were coming back in fashion. A private escalator
would be even better, but Dick's education didn't leave enough for that. Maybe
in another year, though, when the boy was through school. . . .
"Dad." Dick's face was serious now, and his voice had dropped to hide his
words from his mother. "Dad, we've been discussing this stuff at school. After
all, medicine has to have some of the isotopes National makes, so it's
important to all of us. And something's been bothering me. Suppose you get
called up before Congress to testify on the danger?"
Ferrel hadn't thought of that. "Suppose I do?" It could happen; he was as well
known as anyone else in the field. "I don't have anything to hide. It won't
hurt me to give them the truth."
"If that's what they want. And if the man running it isn't after good
publicity in the Guilden press." Dick started to go on indignantly, then threw
a look toward the stairs and subsided. Emma was just starting down.
Doc swallowed the rest of his coffee and followed out to the boy's little
turbine-powered convertible. Normally he preferred the slower but dependable
bus to the plant, but he couldn't argue with Emma's wishes now. He climbed
into the back, muttering to himself as the wind whipped at him. Conversation
was almost impossible, between the sound of the air screaming around the
sporty windshield and the muffled roar of the turbine, stripped of half its
muffler to give a sound of false power. Well, maybe the girls at school who
found such things attractive would outgrow it; Doc hoped so, though he had his
doubts. Or maybe-he thought again-he was just growing old.
He watched the houses along the fifteen-mile road change from apartments to
the endless rows of development huts that had grown up on all sides of
Kimberly- prefabricated boxes with convertible rooms, set down on tiny lots
that looked alike. Most of them showed evidence that the trailer had been
their ancestor, and a few even had the wheels on which they'd been shipped-
possibly indicating a lack of faith in the permanence of the owner's
employment.
The road was jammed, and in places they slowed to a crawl. From a neighboring
car, Doc heard the swearing against "ignorant Hoosiers" that was still almost
a trademark of some Missourians. A horn blasted out and another driver yelled,
"Get off the road, you damned atomjerks! We don't want you here!"
Atomjerks! Three years ago, being an atomjack was almost enough to insure good
credit and respect. Times, it seemed, had changed.
There were other significant changes as they began to near the plant. More and
more Vacant signs were in front of houses. Once there had been a premium on
locations along the highway, but now apparently the nearness to the atom plant
was changing all that.
He was almost relieved when they swung off the main road onto the private
highway that led to the main gates. The sprawling, haphazard cluster of
utilitarian buildings, offices and converter-housings covered acres of ground
and was set back nearly a mile from the turnpike. Here the land was deserted,
cared for only by the ground crews who kept down the weeds. Laws had already
forced a safety zone around the plants, though it had been no great hardship
to National. Behind the plant, lay a great tract of barren land, stretching
back down a brackish little stream to a swamp further away. That, at least,
was useful, since it served as a dumping ground for their wastes. Even the
spur line from the main railroad was nearly two miles long.
Once it had been only a power plant, one of several built to feed electricity
to St. Louis, modeled on the first successful commercial plant constructed by
General Electric to use atomic power. But early in its life, two young
scientists named Link and Hokusai had discovered a whole new field of atomics
and had come here to try it out. It was known that atoms heavier than uranium-
such as plutonium and neptunium-could be made but generally grew increasingly
unstable with added weight. The two men had found, however, that if the
packing of new particles could be continued, eventually a new level could be
reached that was again fairly stable. Such atoms-super-heavies-had never
existed in nature, but many proved far more valuable than the natural forms.
National had grown to its present size on the development of the heavy
isotopes, and power was now only a sideline, though the plant supplied all of
Kimberly's power requirements.
Ferrel saw Emma stiffen as they neared the gate, but Dick had remembered and
was already braking. She had an almost pathological fear of going inside,
based on an unrealistic belief that her second child was stillborn because of
radiation here. Her worst nightmares centered around the plant. But Doc had
long since given up any attempt to reason with her, and she had learned to
accept his continuing employment there.
He got out, self-consciously shaking Dick's hand, and watched them hurriedly
drive off again. Then abruptly the solid familiarity of his surroundings
snapped the blue funk he'd been in. The plant was a world by itself, busy and
densely populated. Nothing could uproot it. He waved at the grinning guard and
went inside, soaking up the sight, sound and smell of it.
The graveled walks were crowded with the usual nine-o'clock mass of young
huskies just going on shift, and the company cafeteria was jammed to capacity
with men seeking a last-minute cup of coffee. But the men made way for him
good-humoredly as he moved among them. That pleased Doc, as always, and all
the more because they didn't bother to stop their horseplay as they might have
done for another company official. He'd been just Doc to them too long for
that.
He nodded back at them easily, pushed through, and went down the walk toward
the Infirmary, taking his own time; at his age a man could begin to realize
that comfort and relaxation were worth cultivating. Besides, he could see no
reason for ruining the good food in his stomach by rushing around in a flurry
that gave him no time to digest it. He let himself in the side entrance,
palming his cigar out of long habit, though he'd had the No Smoking signs
removed years ago, and passed through the surgery to the door marked:

ROGER T. FERREL
Physician in Charge.

As always, the little room was heavy with the odor of stale smoke and littered
with scraps of this and that. His assistant was already there, rummaging
busily through Ferrel's desk with the brass that was typical of the man;
Ferrel had no objection to it, though; Blake's rock-steady hands and unruffled
brain were always dependable in a pinch of any sort.
Blake looked up and grinned confidently. "Hi, Doc. Where the deuce do you keep
your lighter fluid? Never mind, got it! . . . Thought you were taking the day
off?"
"Fat chance." Ferrel stuck the cigar back in his mouth and settled into the
old leather chair, shaking his head. "Palmer phoned me at the crack of dawn.
We've got an emergency again."
"So you're stuck with it. I don't see why any of us has to show up here-
nothing serious ever pops up. Look at yesterday. I had three cases of
athlete's foot-better send a memo down to the showers to use extra
disinfectant-a boy with a running nose, the usual hypochondriacs, and a guy
with a sliver in his thumb! They bring everything to us except their babies,
and they'd have them here if they could. Nothing that couldn't wait a week or
a month." He snapped his fingers. "Hey, I almost forgot. If you're free
tonight, Anne and I are celebrating sticking together ten years. She wants you
and Emma with us. Let the kid handle the office tonight."
"Sounds like a good idea. But you'd better stop calling Jenkins the kid."
Ferrel twitched his lips in a stiff smile, remembering the time when he'd been
as dead-serious as the new doctor; after only a week of real practice it was
too soon to learn that destiny hadn't really singled him out to save the
world. "He had his first real case yesterday. Handled it all by himself, so
he's now Doctor Jenkins, if you please."
Blake had his own memories. "Yeah? Wonder when he'll realize that everything
he did by himself came from you? What was it, anyway?"
"Same old story-simple radiation burns. No matter how much we tell the men
when they first come in, most of them can't see why they should wear three
ninety-five-percent efficient shields when the main converter shield cuts off
all but one-tenth per cent of the radiation." Mathematically, it was good
sense that three added shields would cut the radiation down to a mere eighty-
thousandth of full force, but it was hard to convince the men that multiplying
poor shields by the one good one could make that difference. "He managed to
leave off his two inner shields and pick up a year's burn in six hours. Now
he's probably home, sweating it out and hoping we won't get him fired."
It had been at Number One, the first converter around which National Atomic
had built its present control of artificial radioactives, back in the days
before Wemrath at Caltech found a way to use some of the superheavy isotopes
as ultra-efficient shielding. Number One had the old, immense concrete shield,
but converters were expensive and they still kept it for the gentler
reactions; if reasonable precautions were taken there was no serious danger.
Blake chuckled. "You're getting old, Doc; you used to give them something to
sweat about! Well, I'd better check up on the staff-someone might be a minute
late, and then where'd we be?"
Ferrel followed him out, spotting young Jenkins in his office, intent over
some book. The boy nodded a tight-lipped greeting. Doc returned it, being
careful not to intrude on whatever he was studying. Jenkins was at least
intelligent and willing to work. A week was too little to tell whether he had
the stuff to stay on here or not, but he probably would if his nerves didn't
get in the way. He seemed to be nothing but sinews with taut skin drawn over
them, and his shock of blond hair fell over the deepest-set blue eyes Doc had
ever seen. He looked like a garret-starving young poet, and his nerves seemed
as fine-drawn, but he had an amazingly good background of practical studies.
For a moment Doc considered going back to his office and catching a nap in the
old chair. There was nothing to do that Blake couldn't handle. The Infirmary
was already run the way he wanted it, and he saw no need to change for
inspection. He could catch a few winks before Palmer called him. He started to
turn back, then hesitated at the sight of Jenkins. At his stage, the boy might
not understand sleeping on the job.
"If anyone needs me, I'll be at Palmer's office," he called out. Jenkins
nodded, and Doc went through the side door and down the long walk toward the
Administration building, overshadowed by the ugly bulk of the power-generating
station-the oldest building on the grounds.
Palmer's office had been designed to look like a proper place for an
executive, including a built-in bar. But in the middle of it, serving as desk,
was an old draftsman's table, littered with graphs, stained with ink and
loaded with baskets. One corner showed the years of whittling where Palmer had
chipped off improvised toothpicks, before he got his complete plates. The man
himself was like his office: Tasteful, expensive clothes, a well-barbered look
and the obvious intelligence in the heavy face suggested the good executive.
But now his suit coat lay on a leather couch and he was wearing a battered
leather jacket. His hands bore the marks of hard labor, which had thickened
the veins and swelled the knuckles; and he remained hard-muscled and active in
body as a working construction engineer. He nodded Ferrel to a chair, but
continued standing himself.
"Thanks for coming, Doc. I got the word late last night. There's even an AEC
inspector with them, ready to snatch our power license if we aren't good boys.
I don't mind him; the AEC plays as straight as anyone in government can. But
the rest of them-the Guilden reporters, anyhow-are probably looking for
trouble. I need every good man here I can get."
"It doesn't make sense," Doc protested. "They can't get along without the
plants now; every hospital in the country would go crazy if we stopped
production, and it's just as bad with the other users. They can't move the
plants out where no workers would come."
Palmer sighed wearily. "They couldn't pass prohibition, either, Doc. But they
did."
"But atomic plants aren't that dangerous!"
"Unfortunately, they could be," Palmer said. He looked dead with fatigue, and
his reddened eyes indicated that he'd probably had no sleep at all. "We've had
atomic power for a quarter-century, now. That means some of the early plants,
built before we knew what we were doing-I helped build some of them-are
probably in bad condition. It also means a whole generation of engineers and
workers have been taking atomics for granted and getting careless. Since that
accident at Croton, inspections have shown too much radioactive contamination
around half a dozen plants. They need policing."
He dropped onto the couch, shoving piles of government bulletins aside, and
massaging his temples. "I think we're clean here, Doc. But it's just our tough
luck that old man Guilden got a tiny dose of poisoning from one of our early
products he was misusing. He's gunning for us, using this as a front, and he
swings a lot of weight. Oh, hell, I didn't want you for sympathy. I want to
check on a probable ringer."
During the early days the companies had been plagued by suits alleging ruined
health from radiation poisoning. A few had been legitimate, but most had been
phonies trying to force a settlement with the threat of publicity for the
company-ringers.
"Plant worker?" Doc asked. They were the hardest to check, since almost any
worker would have some slight trace of contamination.
"Delicatessen worker in Kimberly. I talked to her at her place last night, and
I think she believes she's been poisoned. But somebody's using her. Expensive
lawyer. He wouldn't give her doctor's name. I got her to give her symptoms-and
she looks sick."
He passed over a piece of paper, covered with his square, heavy writing.
Ferrel studied it, trying to make sense out of what a layman considered the
facts. Yet there was something of a pattern there. "I'd need more than that,
at least a good blood sample, as a start," he protested.
"I've got it. I had that nurse of yours-Dodd-come with me, posing as my
secretary. She bullied the woman into giving a sample while I was outside
pretending settlement with the lawyer. Here!" He handed over a bottle, and Doc
could see that Dodd had been careful to make a good job of it. She would, just
as she'd be able to persuade the woman to do anything. "I'll expect a report
on that, after this inspection mess. But what's your guess now?"
Doc gave it reluctantly. "It might be radiation. We can't police every place
that uses our stuff. But it's probably leukemia. If she found some slipshod
doctor who'd stopped keeping up with progress as well as with professional
ethics, he might decide it could fool a jury. It wouldn't, of course."
"It wouldn't have to. We can't take a thing like this to court now. The
publicity would ruin us, even if we were proved innocent later. And we can't
settle, that would only make us look as if we were guilty." Palmer got up and
started pacing about. "That's the trouble, Doc. One little accident that
happens-or that might happen-is enough to prove danger. But there's no way to
prove the absence of danger in a spectacular fashion that will hit the press.
And I can't even swear that there is no danger! . . . Leukemia . . . cancer of
the blood cells. . . ."
 "Well, something like that. It used to be one hundred percent fatal. It still
will be if she has it and doesn't get treatment soon."
Palmer breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Whew! At least there's a chance,
then. If that's it, we can get a specialist who'll scare her with the facts.
She ought to jump at a chance to ditch her lawyer for free treatment. Thanks,
Doc. And let me know as soon as you find out for sure."
Ferrel went back to the Infirmary, frowning. If some unethical quack was
trying to use the woman, he wanted the man's name. It took only a few of those
to ruin the carefully built reputation of the whole profession! He was almost
to the corner of the building before he saw Jenkins. He was outside, arguing
with Jorgenson, one of the top production engineers. The man was huge, built
like an ox, and almost as strong, from the stories told about him, but his
mind wasn't secondary to his body.
Jenkins said something quickly, indicating a piece of paper in his hands, but
Jorgenson brushed it aside with a flip of his finger. "And I say to hell with
you, sonny, until you can make it stick. Go peddle your nostrums!"
The engineer swung around and stalked off. Jenkins stared after him tensely,
then stepped back into the Infirmary.
Doc could make no sense of it, but he didn't like it. If the boy was a
troublemaker . . . Still, he had nothing to go on. Until he knew more, it was
none of his business.
By the time Ferrel was inside, Jenkins had settled back to his usual stiff
calm. He looked up at Doc, and his voice was normal. "I've told the nurses to
expect more minor accidents already, Dr. Ferrel," he said. "I knew you'd want
that, after seeing Mr. Palmer."
Ferrel studied the young man. "Why? Just what was I supposed to have seen
Palmer about, anyhow?"
Jenkins controlled his impatience with the older man's obtuseness by an
effort, but his voice was respectful. "The inspection, of course. It's all
over the plant grapevine. I heard about it when I first came in. It isn't hard
to know what that will do to the accident rate."
"Yeah." Doc grimaced at his own stupidity. He had been obtuse. "Good work,
son. You were quite right."
There'd be accidents, all right. With men getting a major inspection under
these conditions, they'd be under constant tension, and there was no better
breeding ground for mistakes. With luck, there might only be the routine
mishaps. But there was no way of being sure of such good fortune. Almost
anything could happen.
Palmer had indicated that one accident could prove their lack of safety. They
certainly couldn't afford any black marks on the books of the committee now.
But with any operation as complicated as the creation of the superheavy
isotopes, something was sure to go wrong when the men were on edge.
He should have told Palmer to go to hell and stayed home!


CHAPTER 2


Ferrel found Meyers on duty in the dispensary, handling the routine cases with
her usual efficiency. He preferred the grim, hard-faced Dodd in the operating
room, but here Meyers was best. She was hardly thirty and would have been
pretty, except that her face lacked all color. Hair, skin and eyes were all so
dull that no amount of make-up could quite bring them to life.
She was swabbing out the eye of a man as Ferrel came in, and she finished
before turning to the doctor. "He brushed a cigarette against his eye while
putting on his goggles," she reported. "Nothing serious, though. That's the
eleventh report I've filled out in the last half hour."
Doc looked at the stack of cards, and his question was answered. Jenkins had
been right; the accident rate was triple what it should have been. But so far
none of the cases had been serious.
"Not many goldbricks today, though," she said. There were usually a few who
decided the best way to get a day off was to play sick. She giggled faintly.
"Dr. Jenkins got a run of them, but I guess they didn't like his giving out
laxatives. Even the telephone girl wasn't in today."
"She only reports in sick when she's bored. Today she's probably expecting
fireworks," Ferrel observed. He had made it a habit for years to give the girl
a day off about once every four months to encourage her imagination. She was
the only one in the plant who managed to come up with interesting symptoms
when she wanted a day's loafing.
"Jenkins had her yesterday. He diagnosed it as galloping leprosy and gave her
something that made her lips burn for hours," Meyers said. She seemed to
admire the boy. It was the first evidence Doc had that Jenkins possessed a
sense of humor.
He went back into the main part of the building. They were equipped and
staffed beyond any plant set-up he'd ever known, with almost an embarrassment
of riches. Aside from Dodd and Meyers, there were three other nurses, two male
attendants, two drivers for the little three-wheeled emergency litters, a
receptionist, and a secretary for the doctors. The operating room had
everything, and there were even little wards where they could keep patients,
if the need should arise.
He went over to the hypothermy-cryotherapy outfit, looking down at it. Most of
the things here were required by state law, but this was Palmer's own idea. It
was designed to lower the temperature of the body-or any part-to a level where
there would be no response to pain. It was an old idea in medicine and had
been tried for everything, including the attempt to cure cancer. But it had
finally been perfected in form, and a technique had evolved that made it
usable. In emergency operations it served far better than the usual
anesthesia. There was even an attachment for the litter to start freezing
tissue on the way in.
The inspection didn't worry him too much. The state laws had been toughened up
for atomic plants until they were far more severe than any requirements the
AEC might suggest, and he'd passed that inspection less than a month before.
Blake came by, chuckling, and stopped as he spotted Ferrel. "The inspection
committee is here, Doc." He was grinning from ear to ear. "But not the
reporters! Old Palmer's a fox. He put Number One to work first thing this
morning on something the army ordered. It's secret enough so that he could
declare the plant restricted territory-but not too restricted for congressmen.
So the newspaper boys are running around trying to get themselves cleared.
With luck, they'll make it about the time the whole thing's finished."
Doc grinned, but he had his doubts. The men for the Guilden chain would write
up what they wanted to, anyhow, and this would only antagonize the reporters
who might have been friendly. It would also go rather badly with a couple of
the congressmen who apparently were on the committee only for the publicity
they could get. To the larger number of men, who were probably quite sincere,
it would have a suspicious tinge of trying to cover up from the public.
Palmer usually had his reasons for what he did, but Doc could make little
sense of this. It almost seemed that the manager had gone out of his way to
make enemies and lose friends.
But at least it was a good story. Even Dodd was smiling when he saw her. On a
sudden hunch Ferrel went outside and walked down to the cafeteria. There was
only a small crowd there now, but he could catch bits of their conversation as
he waited for his coffee. Most of the talk seemed to be about the fate of the
reporters. And the general reaction was that Palmer had pulled his best trick
in a long time.
Doc headed back, carrying an extra coffee for Meyers, who should need it. She
was the only one who'd really been busy so far. He found her alone. "Business
slacking off?" he asked as he gave her the container.
"Thanks, Dr. Ferrel. You're a life-saver!" She poured in enough sugar to make
a concentrated syrup and sipped the hot stuff gratefully. "I guess I'm losing
my popularity. Nobody's been here for the last twenty minutes."
Ferrel hung around a few minutes more, and then left, convinced that his hunch
had been right. Palmer had been as aware as Jenkins that the men had spread
the story of the inspection and that it was raising hob with morale. He'd been
prepared for it, and had made the only possible move to counteract-give the
men something to laugh about instead of fretting. Whether it would work when
the actual inspection began was another matter.
Dodd brought word of the inspection back. Apparently the group was larger than
Doc had thought. There were half a dozen congressmen and a number of "experts"
with them. Outside, others were moving about with instruments, making spot
checks to find whether the atmosphere and ground around was contaminated. That
part of it, at least, was a sensible precaution, though it merely duplicated
the checks that National ran periodically itself.
They had already gone through two of the converters with no trouble and not
even a minor accident to mar the record. They showed no sign of heading for
the Infirmary yet, though Doc had expected that to be one of the first places
they would visit. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was already noon.
He went out to locate Dodd and ask for further details, but she could add
little to her previous account. They were moving about at random now,
apparently examining the shipping department.
He fumed for fifteen minutes more. It was his bitten cigar that finally made
him realize his tension. He had mangled the end until it finally came to
pieces in his mouth. He spat out the tobacco, muttering to himself.
It wasn't the men who were being inspected who would give trouble, nor those
who'd already passed, he realized. It was the group who would have to go on
waiting, not knowing when their turn would come. He himself had nothing to
fear, and yet it was beginning to get him. . . .
He headed for the front office, wondering whether anyone there had heard
anything about the future schedule. The receptionist and secretary would be
the logical ones to have buddies working in Administration, and even a hint
would be helpful. He came through the door just as a small, wiry little man
entered from outside, taking off his Homburg and fiddling with his tiny
mustache as he approached the receptionist. Ferrel recognized him just as he
looked up.
"Hi, Ferrel, the little man cried.
"Busoni! What are you doing here?" But Doc could guess the answer to that.
It was what he expected. "Serving as expert. I'm your inspector. I've been
looking forward to a crack at you too, ever since I knew you were on the list.
How's blood-washing?"
"Beats general practice-or it did until you came in, bone-breaker." Busoni had
been in Ferrel's class at medical school, specializing in work on fractures.
He'd made something of a reputation from his work in rebreaking and correcting
old, badly knit fractures. Then he'd built a second reputation from his work
in finding ways to wash the radioactive ions out of the calcium of the bones
without hurting the calcium deposits themselves. Doc had sent him a patient
once after the usual routine with blood-exchange and treatment with the
versene group of chemicals had failed.
He held the door while the other walked in. Busoni moved about, taking in the
equipment, studying the layout, and moving toward the nurses' toilet. He made
a thorough inspection there, nodded, and began marking his sheets. "You pass,
Ferrel. Any man who can keep a ladies' room clean has a good mark in my book."
He smiled as he said it, but Doc wasn't sure but what he meant it. At that,
the man had managed to cover the key points. Then he snapped his book shut and
relaxed. "I got you off lightly, Roger. I told them I knew you, and they
figured you'd spill more dirt to me than anyone else. I know better, but why
disillusion them? But I'm afraid this plant is in for pretty rough treatment.
The committee's mostly pretty honest, but they've been filled with a lot of
dirty rumors about Palmer. How about it-does he stink, or does he deserve a
break?"
"I'm still here," Ferrel told him. "In fact, I'm here when I could have had
the day off."
Busoni grinned. "I'll take that answer. But I don't think I can sell it to
anyone else. He made a bad mistake in getting the reporters kicked out. Oh, I
can guess why. But a couple of the men feel spiteful, and-"
From outside came the rising wail of an electric siren, reaching a shrill
scream that cut through the walls and pierced the ears. Emergency! And from
the warbling that was beginning, it meant an emergency with hot stuff floating
free!
"Dr. Ferrel!" the paging speaker shouted. "Phone!"
He snatched up the receiver. "Ferrel!"
"Point Twenty!" Palmer snapped the words out, and then hung up. But it was
information enough. "Point Twenty"-the pile that gave them their power-and of
all the places for an accident Doc liked that least.
He grabbed his emergency bag from the wall and headed for the rear. Dodd was
with him, holding out his surgeon's smock. He shook his head, but she clutched
it grimly as she ran. In the back receiving room, Beel already had the little
litter equipped with twin stretchers, and the motor turning over. He waited
until Ferrel and Dodd had grabbed the handrails; then he gunned away, while
the second driver was still waiting for Blake and his nurse. Doc ran his eye
over the equipment that had been made ready, and nodded. Jones had proved his
worth as a male attendant long before, and he was still doing the right thing
instantly.
Then for the first time he became aware of the fact that Busoni was riding the
litter with him. "Hot stuff!" Doc shouted warningly over the wail of the
litter siren. But he was glad to have another doctor at his side.
Crowds were heading for the converter heedless of the risk, driven by the
compulsion to witness disaster. Their presence would make rescue operations
more difficult, but the guards were on duty, chasing them back. A vehicle that
looked like a fireman's hook-and-ladder engine gunned past at top speed. Its
complicated superstructure was like a three-dimensional Jacob's ladder, and a
man in heavy shielding rode at each end to steer it.
The emergency truck stopped at the side entrance of the huge building that
housed the pile. At one time this pile had been the largest commercial atomic
reactor in existence, and it still ranked high. It broke U-235 down, using
part of the broken cores of atoms to turn the more common U-238 into
plutonium, from which the pile derived most of its power. Unlike some of the
early plants, the pile was not only a power source, but a breeder pile as
well, and that made it useful for the production of tiny amounts of other
normal radioactive elements.
The heat generated in the process was piped out, first by liquid sodium, then
by exchange to steam, and finally into the huge turbines that generated all
the thousands of kilowatts needed to keep the plant going, maintain Kimberly,
and even serve as an- auxiliary power source for other sections.
But now the red flag was up, which meant that all the damper rods would be in,
cutting its power, and letting the men escape through the entrances.
There was one entrance, however, that seemed to have given trouble. The
complicated grapple was being backed in as the litter came to a stop. It had
to go in, carrying shielding for the men as well as their own shields, and
then to adapt to the angles of the passage. As in all the piles, the escape
halls were built with a number of right-angle turns, on the theory that loose
radiation travels in straight lines, and that little of it would bounce-while
a man could move in zigzag fashion, reaching safer and safer territory.
Abruptly, the grapple began moving out, as rapidly as the men riding the
sections could guide it through the passage. Other guards in shields were
clearing the area, and now one came up to Doc, holding out a huge, heavy suit.
Doc grimaced, but began working his way into it. "What happened?"
"I only got part of it," the guard reported. "Seems they were pulling a
thimble of hot stuff out for the Kimberly hospital. One of the men dropped the
tongs. The stuff ran all over the floor, or something. One guy didn't get
out."
Doc saw that the others were in suits by now, and snapped the helmet shut. The
grapple came free, holding a limp figure at the end of padded tongs. It swung
around, putting the figure into a shielded and padded box.
Busoni was beside Doc as he moved forward. Beel, now also in a suit, was
backing the litter, and equipment was being pulled off before Doc could reach
the casualty.
"How long?" he asked.
Mervin, the pile superintendent, had been checking, and now answered, his
voice muffled through the diaphragm on his helmet. "Six minutes. The alarm
wasn't tripped at once, for some reason. Best I can find out is that he saw
the thimble falling and caught it in his gloves. He threw it into the hot-pot,
clamped the lid down, and then headed for the port that hadn't been closed to
the pile. He must have got at least half a minute's dose."
Doc felt sick. Half a minute! It might have been better for him to have died
in the chamber.
They were working together now, Dodd, Busoni and Blake with him, fitting the
unconscious body with all the things to begin exchanging his blood, pumping
out the old and replacing it completely with freshened blood, according to the
tattooed type on his wrist. Dodd had him stripped, and the shielded box was
being fitted with sprays to wash him free of outside contamination, if any.
Then Doc stopped, gazing at him more closely. The man was Clem Mervin, the
super's son! The face of Mervin was almost invisible behind his helmet, but
now he nodded slowly at Doc's sudden questioning glance. He'd known all along.
"We'll save him," Doc promised. It was almost certainly true-as far as his
life was concerned. Men could be saved from tremendous doses now. But just
staying alive was not everything; the boy would go through a year of hell, as
a bare beginning, and would certainly be sterile. And his mind was likely to
be irreparably harmed.
There was no use lying about that to Mervin; the super knew that himself.
A tiny tanklike car had gone into the passage, dragging hoses to wash out the
chamber. Now it came out, and the red flag on the pile building began going
down. Apparently the radiation was down to safe levels in the pile chamber,
thanks to the sacrifice Clem Mervin had made. Getting the thimble of precious
but deadly stuff into the disposal hamper and shutting the port that was open
into the pile had kept the level from going too high.
Mervin seemed to gather himself together. "Doc, do what you can, anyway! I've
got to get back and salvage that potassium before somebody at the hospital
dies for lack of it."
He moved off, collecting his crew. Doc signaled the waiting ambulance and men
began to lift the heavy casket-like box containing the unconscious man while
Ferrel and the others shucked off their armor. This was a case for the
Kimberly hospital radiation ward. It was smaller than the Infirmary, but they
were better equipped for the long, slow process of keeping the man alive.
Doc started to climb into the truck, but Blake stopped him. "Go on back, Doc.
I'll take this hitch."
It was just as well. Doc stepped back, watching the vehicle roll off with a
scream from its siren. He'd have to drop by the hospital from time to time,
but there was nothing more he could do at the moment. Tissue that badly
damaged could be repaired only by months of treatment.
Busoni walked beside him silently as they headed back to the litter. But a
group of half a dozen men stood in their way. One of them stepped forward.
"Is this the way you usually handle cases, Doctor?" he asked savagely. "Give
them a lick and promise and then turn them over to someone else?"
The other men gasped, and moved toward the man. But Busoni was there first.
"Shut up, damn you!" he said harshly, and his little figure was shoving the
heavy-jowled man aside, pushing him back and out of Ferrel's way. He climbed
onto the litter with Doc, leaving the congressional committee staring after
him. The others turned to the man who had spoken, but Doc had no interest in
what they might say or do.
"He'll ache for my scalp for a while, but Morgan will calm him down, Roger,"
Busoni said. He was grinning wryly now. "Tomorrow we'll both have to apologize
and shake hands. And the funny thing is, with them that probably will end it.
I won't get into trouble, so forget it. Just be thankful that most of our
representatives aren't like him. The committee will go along with me when I
say you did a damned fine job. And they'll probably make sure that young
Mervin gets a medal."
Doc nodded wearily; it didn't matter too much. He hadn't been worried about
any report that might be issued on his work in the affair. Technically it had
been a routine accident, and the handling had been efficient and normal. He
knew that, and he knew his staff would take it for granted. They simply hadn't
been able to work the miracle needed to give immediate assurance of life and
health to a boy who'd proved his right to them. No present amount of medical
knowledge could do that. But until such miracles could be made to order, the
rewards of his job would always be too small for him.
Then he shrugged it off, burying it with the other bitter cases that lay
stored in the back of his mind. Some day they might pile up beyond what he
could stand, and then he'd be old. But so far he could carry them. He shook
Busoni's hand when the litter came to a stop, making the usual meaningless
remarks about getting together at the next medical convention. But they
probably never would. The difference between a practicing and a lapsed
physician was too great.
He watched carefully to see that the equipment that had come too near young
Mervin was put into the decontamination chamber. And finally he turned toward
the administration building to report to Palmer. The manager would already
have received the general report, but he'd want to know more of what chance
the injured man might have and what could be done for him.
And maybe he'd need someone he knew near him as he realized that the one
accident that could spell the end of all chances to establish the plant's
safety had already occurred. It might be routine here, but to the men who had
never seen any atomic accident before, it could be nothing but the final proof
that everything related to atomics was dangerous and that the plants weren't
safe near civilization.
Doc wondered how Emma would take the move-if the plant could be moved.


CHAPTER 3


Allan Palmer had learned long before that the place for a manager was in his
office.
It had been a long and expensive lesson, but he'd finally accepted the fact.
From his desk he could do the one job that nobody else could do and which
could only be done from there-he could manage! If he went out to perform deeds
of derring-do, the men might love him for it, but they would also suffer,
because who would get the work done?
It was one of the secrets that had carried him up the ladder from construction
engineer working under a seventh sub-assistant to head of his own atomic-pile
construction company-and then to taking over when bad management had almost
wrecked National. It was from his desk that he'd persuaded Link and Hokusai to
try their new ideas on superheavy isotopes in full scale, and swung the
incredible sums needed to build them the first converter. It was from here
that he hoped some day to see Hokusai create the fuel that would take men to
the moon and back.
Now he listened to Ferrel's account silently, fighting back the old desire to
go charging out in a last-ditch effort to prove somehow the safety of the
plant before the committee could leave. He saw the strain on Doc's face, and
long experience with the man had taught him enough to guess most of the
reason-Ferrel's concern for him-Doc hadn't yet realized what personal stakes
were involved for himself and all the rest.
Palmer leaned back, looking out of the window toward Kimberly. If the
crackpots won, it would be a ghost town in five years; there was no reason for
a town there, without cheap power and without the atomic plant upon which
local industry depended. What would Doc get for his house then? How could he
send his boy on through college on what a general practitioner could earn in a
dying city. And what would happen to Doc's partially crippled wife in whatever
wild location would be left within the restrictions of the law they proposed
for the plants?
Even Doc wouldn't escape the tar-brush. Let the crackpots win, and every man
who was associated with atomics would be a pariah. Doc wasn't too old yet to
go back to hospital work, but he couldn't carry the stigma with him. And there
were a thousand men or more like Doc out there. They called it his problem,
but he was the only one among them who was safe, if he chose to give up and
sell out for whatever pittance the equipment here might bring. His own private
money was safe. He could go to Europe, retire. . . .
And let the damned fools who talked about moving atomic plants try to move a
pile that had been running for twenty-five years, building up radioactivity
within it every second of that time! Let the untended pile erode until the
hell inside it broke out, and the people really had contamination on their
hands!
"Doc," he said at last, "you've been with me at least twenty years. During
that time have I ever lied to you?"
He didn't need the touch of a smile to know the answer to that. The need for
absolute truth, no matter how much it hurt, was another of the lessons Palmer
had learned long ago. Now he leaned back, forcing his face to a relaxation he
couldn't feel. "Okay, then. For God's sake stop deciding I'm all washed up.
When I'm licked I'll tell you so! Maybe I'm in a corner now because of the
accident, and maybe I couldn't afford it. But I knew it was coming-in these
conditions, it had to come; all we could hope was that nobody got hurt, or at
least not too many. Maybe it's going to cost more than we can afford, but not
more than I'll find a way to pay. They haven't moved us yet, and while I'm
alive they won't! That's a promise. Now go home and get some rest, or at least
get some rest here and stop thinking about my troubles."
He watched Doc go down the walk toward the Infirmary and nodded slowly to
himself, if he'd told the first lie in more than twenty years, he'd done it in
a good cause. Doc seemed a dozen years younger than the tired, beaten man
who'd come up that walk. And maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe he could still
scrape by, somehow. If not. . . .
He stood up and went over to the wall, studying the chart that listed the
customers of National together with quantities.
At the top of the list were the hospitals, not because they bought in quantity
but because their needs would always have priority. Below that came the
military branches, the utilities, the rocket experimenters who needed
superheavy isotopes to line their jets, because nothing else could stand the
temperatures-and below them every major endeavor of the world. In twenty-five
years, superheavy isotopes had become an integral part of the whole fabric of
civilization. And now they wanted to rip it out-as if any major industry could
move away from all cities of more than ten thousand population. Within six
months after the relocation there'd be a city three times that size nearby;
there had to be, to hold the workers and the butchers and bakers and
shoemakers the workers had to have! And that didn't count the other industries
needed to keep National itself running!
His secretary's soft voice spoke from the intercom. "Representative Morgan is
here to see you, Mr. Palmer."
"Send him in, Thelma," he told her. Morgan was the best man on the committee,
the only one who could see the facts. Idly, though, Palmer was thinking only
of the man's white hair again, wondering whether he bleached it to get such a
startling effect.
But the rest of the man was almost as impressive. Buried in the files, Palmer
had the almost forgotten fact that Morgan had spent several years on the stage
under another name as a leading man before turning to law and politics. He was
still a consummate actor when he chose, and his speeches were always an event.
Now, though, he was acting as little as he could. He looked tired. And the
hand he held out lacked some of its usual heartiness.
"I suppose the others have all gone?" Palmer asked.
Morgan nodded. "They pulled out fifteen minutes ago. They got what they came
for. Oh, most of them are honest, Allan. Even Shenkler believes the rot he
keeps ranting. But that accident's going to make it a lot easier for them to
go along with all the voters in their states who are agitating for the bill.
It was a tough break."
"Maybe. At least the Guilden papers won't have pictures of the accident. I'm
that much ahead," Palmer told him. "Call it a calculated risk. When you told
me last night they were planning this inspection I couldn't guess whether it
was better now or later. I still don't know, and it's a little late to change
our minds. Bourbon?"
At Morgan's nod, he poured the drinks, mixing his own with a touch of color to
make it stronger in appearance than fact.
"What's on your mind, Phil?" he asked.
Morgan laughed. It was a rich, warm laugh that he was accused of having spent
years perfecting, but too easy to be anything but his own. It fitted the soft
voice and the Southern drawl that could take on a heavy accent when he
campaigned in the back counties. "Getting elected again," he admitted easily.
"And at the same time keeping a bunch of fools from wrecking us because
they're whipped up right now. What happens if the bill doesn't get passed out
of committee, Allan? Say for a couple of years?"
It would kill it, Palmer knew. The Croton accident and the discoveries of
other contamination had played into the hands of the relatively few real
bigots. With two years more to go, the plants would be policed, the people
would begin to feel safe again, and the whole movement would die away like
most crazes. It was the answer, of course-the quiet, indirect answer that had
saved the country repeatedly from some folly, while the papers screamed at the
faults of the system that made it possible. And Morgan was head of the
committee that would have to submit the bill with recommendations to Congress.
"I'm listening," Palmer said. "But can you get away with it?"
Morgan studied the glass, running the whiskey around in a little swirl that
made its beads dance in the sunlight. He shook his head slowly. "Phil, you may
not believe it, but I happen to believe the country's welfare is more
important than I am. If my bottling it up would kill the bill, I'd do it. But
to keep it bottled, I have to get re-elected four months from now. That would
give us the two years. I'm lucky, in a way. Mississippi's still pretty much an
agricultural state, and we don't have much atomic stuff there. So maybe the
voters would go along with me if I forgot to report the bill out."
He took another swallow and sighed, either from pleasure or from his own
thoughts. "Maybe! But I don't know. Unless I can go back to them and show them
I'm doing something for them that means more than any old bill like this.
That's where you come in."
"How?"
"Mind you, I'm not guaranteeing I can swing it. If things really get hot
enough, they can force the bill onto the floor, no matter what I try! All I
can promise is to try to keep it from a vote."
"I know all that," Palmer agreed. He'd been making the reservations as a
matter of course.
"Got a copy of that little old house organ of yours?"
Palmer found one on his desk and handed it across, wondering if Morgan
realized the little old house organ was the leading scientific paper in the
field. Then he blinked as he saw the article the politician was pointing to.
Either Morgan knew a lot more about mathematics and engineering than he'd
suspected or the man had someone on his side who did.
"Takes a long time to clear the land of the weevil down home," Morgan said.
"This claims a way to do it in four months. And in four months, if I show the
farmers the land free and ready to use again, they'll vote me in even if they
see me spit on Lee's picture or find out I've turned atheist. I can get the
money for it-don't worry about that. And I can get 'em to give me 100,000
acres for the experiment. All I need is enough of this to treat that much
territory and I'll kill the bill."
The manager studied the map Morgan gave him, estimating the amount. Enough to
make a full converter load-two converters to be sure. "But it isn't in
production yet," he protested. "Jorgenson ran a test, and he's worked out the
engineering techniques for the converters. We can't guarantee conversion
efficiency, or-"
"Get me even a quarter of it to start, with the rest coming, and I'll still
make out."
Palmer studied it again. He'd wanted to talk about it to Hokusai and consult
with some of the other men. But there'd be no time. If it was to do any good
in Morgan's election it would have to start feeding into supply dumps almost
at once. "Let me call in Jorgenson and talk it over," he suggested. "If we can
do it at all, I'll start changing the converters at once and we'll run an
extra shift tonight. Okay?"
"Your word's all I want." Morgan stood up, finished the last of the whiskey
and held out his hand. "And now I'd better get back to my colleagues before
they smell something."
Palmer watched him go and stood staring at the paper. He shrugged finally and
ordered Thelma to locate Jorgenson for him. The mathematics here was beyond
his knowledge of modern converter technology; he would have to depend on his
production engineer. There was no time for the study others would need in
order to form an opinion.
For the hundredth time he cursed the fact that Kellar was dead. The man had
been his chief competitor, and had threatened to become more than that. But
he'd been a genius, the only man who ever combined engineering talent with the
ability to think in the pure mathematics of the abstract scientist and do both
by an almost instinctive reaction. He'd have given a lot to be able to call
Kellar up and get a snap judgment. But Kellar was dead and the only man who'd
ever worked under him was Jorgenson.
Jorgenson was there almost at once, seeming to fill the room. He listened as
Palmer outlined the situation. "It'll be a tough job," he said in his slow
voice. "This requires a pretty radical change in the converter set-ups, and
I'd have to spend a couple of hours briefing my foremen. What converters?"
"You pick them. They're all clean except Number One and Number Six."
"Three and Four, then. It'll be tough enough running two at once on a new
project, but I guess I can do it. It's going to cost for some of the materials
I'll need, though."
Palmer grinned wryly. It always cost, and if the engineers had a free hand the
costs would make profit impossible for the next ten years on any process. But
for once the price didn't matter. Jorgenson couldn't spend even a fraction of
what success in this would be worth. "Forget the cost, Jorgenson. Do whatever
you have to and we'll flange up some kind of accounting later." Then he
paused. "If you want to run it."
The huge engineer scowled at him. "Of course I want to run it. Why not?"
"Because you'll be working with a bunch of men who've just seen one accident
already today. They'll be tired from that, from the shift they've already put
in and from wondering what will happen to them when the committee report goes
in. Those men aren't normal workers now, and don't forget it. I can give you
twice the number you'll need, to ease the work, but I can't give you fresh,
unworried men. Do you still want it?"
"I'll run it."
Then Jorgenson paused, hesitating over a decision. Finally his enormous
shoulders hunched. "Look, Palmer, I've been over that math a hundred times and
I've run six trial lots in the tank. There isn't a thing I can find wrong
anywhere. But since this came out, I'd better mention that there's one vote
against the process. Only one-nobody else has been worried. But I figure you
should know."
"I should," Palmer agreed. "Who was it?"
"Just an amateur-makes a hobby of atomics, I guess. But he claimed we might
get Isotope R."
Palmer felt the skin along his back quiver. The possible existence of Isotope
R was enough to make every man in the country get behind the bill, perhaps
including Morgan. Sometimes he'd had nightmares of word of it reaching the
Guilden press, but so far those who knew about it were the last ones who would
leak it to such a place.
"An amateur, and he knows about that?" he asked sharply.
"His old man was in the business," Jorgenson answered. He scowled again, then
shrugged once more. "Look, I've been over these figures again since he brought
it up. If I thought there was a chance in a billion of R getting mixed up in
it you couldn't hire me to touch it. It's not the first time that has come
up."
In that the man was right. Palmer had missed his chance at a highly desirable
process once simply because a professor had written in suggesting a possible
chain that might lead to the dreaded isotope. The small plants that competed
weakly with him had run it off with no difficulty and now used it as the
backbone of their businesses.
He stared at the chart that showed his outlets again, and then out at the
plant. If it meant only the loss of revenue he'd still call a halt until he
could have every figure rechecked fifty times more! But this time he was
gambling a vague, probably ridiculous fear on the part of someone who was an
amateur against the fate of all the plants, and perhaps of any orderly
civilization for the next decade.
"All right," he said at last. "Run it."
But he was reaching for the phone before Jorgenson was through the door. "Give
me Ferrel," he told the operator.
He had no business asking the man to stay on for the late shift, of course.
But he made no move to cancel the call. There was no logic in his decision but
he'd learned to follow his hunches when they were this strong.
At least the men would feel better, knowing that Doc was there. They had
learned to trust themselves to him. And right now they needed all the comfort
they could get.


CHAPTER 4


The whistle indicating the end of a shift had sounded as Ferrel finished his
hasty supper and headed back toward his office. The cafeteria was filling with
the usual five-o'clock rush, but now there was a further bustle as those who
would be on the graveyard shift headed for it. It wasn't hard now to spot the
family men; they were busy with discussions of the amount of overtime they'd
draw, while the bachelors were the ones grumbling and swearing at broken dates
and ruined plans. If there was any tension left from the day it didn't show,
but that was no proof it wasn't there.
He let himself in through the side door. Blake was sitting on a corner of his
desk checking through the few memos of the day.
Blake shook his head solemnly, making clucking noises with his tongue. "You're
getting old, Doc. Taking a coffee break at this time. And you've forgotten
that memo for disinfection of the showers. They're going to need new blood at
the top here if this keeps up." Then he stood up, grinning. "Come on, we've
still got that celebration to take care of."
"I'm sorry, Blake. Not a chance now." He'd forgotten their tenth anniversary
completely, but it was too late to back out on his agreement with Palmer now.
"The plant's on overtime, and I've been elected to the graveyard shift. Some
rush order for Three and Four."
Blake frowned. "Why can't Jenkins swing it alone? Anne's been counting on you
and Emma."
"This happens to be my job. As a matter of fact, though, Jenkins will be
staying on with me."
Blake sighed and gave up. "Anne's gonna be disappointed, but she ought to know
how it goes. If you get off early, you and Emma drop out and say hello, even
if it's after midnight. Well, take it easy."
"'Night." Ferrel watched him leave and smiled affectionately. Some day Dick
would be out of medical school, and Blake would make a good man for him to
start under and begin the same old grind upward. First, like young Jenkins,
Dick would be filled with his mission to humanity, tense and uncertain, but
somehow things would roll along through Blake's stage and up, probably to
Doc's own level where the same old problems were solved in the same old way,
and life settled down into a comfortable routine with only an occasional bad
day, like this one.
There were worse lives, certainly, even though it wasn't like the mass of
murders, kidnapings and applied miracles in the movie he'd seen recently on
television, where chrome-plated converters covered with pretty neon tubes were
mysteriously blowing up every second day and men were brought in with blue
flames all over them, cured instantly-to dash out and quench the flame
barehanded.
For a moment he wondered whether such films helped create the average man's
fear of atomics or simply mirrored it. Probably a little of both he decided as
he dropped into his chair.
Then he heard Jenkins out in the surgery, puttering around with quick, nervous
little sounds. Never do to let the boy find him loafing back here when the
possible fate of the world so obviously hung on his alertness. Young doctors
had to be disillusioned slowly or they became bitter and their work suffered.
Yet in spite of his amusement at Jenkins' nervousness, he couldn't help
envying the thin-faced young man's erect shoulders and flat stomach. Blake
might be right; maybe he was growing old.
Jenkins straightened a wrinkle on his white jacket fussily and looked up.
"I've been getting the surgery ready for instant use, Dr. Ferrel. Do you think
it's safe to keep only Miss Dodd and one male attendant here? Shouldn't we
have more than the legally required minimum staff?"
"Dodd's a one-woman staff," Ferrel said. "Expecting more accidents tonight?"
"No, sir, not exactly. But do you know what they're running off?"
"No." Ferrel hadn't asked Palmer; he'd learned long ago that he couldn't keep
up with the atomic engineering developments, and had stopped trying.
"Something new for the army?"
"Worse than that, sir. They're making their first commercial run of Natomic
Isotope 713 in both Number Three and Four converters at once."
"So? Seems to me I did hear something about that. Had to do with killing off
the boll weevils, didn't it?" Ferrel was vaguely familiar with the process of
sowing radioactive dust in a circle outside the weevil area to isolate the
pest, then gradually moving inward from the border. Used with proper
precautions it had slowly killed off the weevil and driven it back into half
the territory once occupied.
Jenkins managed to look disappointed, surprised and slightly superior. "There
was an article on it in the Natomic Weekly Ray of last issue, Dr. Ferrel. You
probably know that the trouble with Natomic Isotope 544, which they've been
using, was its half-life of over four months. It made the land sowed useless
for planting the next year, so they had to move slowly. Isotope-713 has a
half-life of less than a week and reaches safe limits in about four months, so
they'll be able to isolate whole strips of hundreds of miles during the winter
and still have the land usable by spring. Field tests with pilot runs have
been highly successful and we've just got a huge order from a state that wants
immediate delivery."
"After the legislature waited six months debating whether to use it or not,"
Ferrel hazarded out of long experience. "Ummm, sounds good if they can sow
enough earthworms after them to keep the ground in good condition. But what's
the worry?"
Jenkins shook his head indignantly. "I'm not worried. I simply think we should
take every possible precaution and be ready for any accident; after all,
they're working on something new, and a half-life of a week is rather strong,
don't you think? Besides, I looked over some of the reaction charts in the
article and- What was that?"
From somewhere to the left of the Infirmary, a muffled growl was being
accompanied by ground tremors; then it gave way to a steady hissing, barely
audible through the insulated walls of the building. Ferrel listened a moment
and shrugged.
"Nothing to worry about, Jenkins; you'll hear it a dozen times a year. Ever
since I joined the staff here, Hokusai's been bugs about getting an atomic
fuel that can be used in rockets. He isn't satisfied with the progress they've
made on the space station-wants to see real payloads carried up. Some day
you'll probably see the little guy brought in here minus his head but so far
he hasn't found anything with the right kick that he can control. What about
the reaction charts on I-713?"
"Nothing definite, I guess." Jenkins turned reluctantly away from the sound,
still frowning. "I know it worked in small lots but there's something about
one of the intermediate steps I distrust, sir. I thought I recognized . . . I
tried to speak to Jorgenson and you can guess what happened. He wouldn't
discuss it."
Seeing the boy's face whiten over tensed jaw muscles, Ferrel held back his
smile and nodded slowly. If that was what had led to Jorgenson's outburst it
was understandable enough. But the whole picture didn't make sense. Jenkins'
pride would have been wounded, but hardly as much as seemed to be the case.
There was something funny behind it and some day Ferrel would have to find
what it was; little things like that could ruin a man's steadiness with the
instruments if he kept them to himself. Meantime the subject was best dropped.
The telephone girl's heavily syllabalized voice cut into his thoughts from the
paging speaker. "Dr. Ferrel! Dr. Ferrel wanted on the telephone. Dr. Ferrel,
please!"
Jenkins' face went completely white. His eyes darted to his superior. Doc
grunted. "Probably Palmer's bored and wants to tell me how he made out with
the union. Or about his grandson. He thinks the child's a genius because he
knows a couple of words now."
But inside the office he stopped to wipe his hands free of perspiration before
answering. There was something contagious about Jenkins' suppressed fears. And
Palmer's face on the phone's little viewer was all wrong. He was wearing a set
smile like a mask. Ferrel suspected that there was someone else in the office
out of sight of the pickup.
"Hi, Ferrel." Palmer's voice also had a false heartiness to it, and the use of
the last name was a clear sign of some trouble. "There has been a little
accident on one converter, they tell me. They're bringing a few men over to
the Infirmary for treatment-probably not right away, though. Has Blake gone
yet?"
"He's been gone half an hour or more. Think it's serious enough to call him
back, or are Jenkins and myself enough?"
"Jenkins? Oh, the new doctor." Palmer hesitated, and his arms showed quite
clearly the doodling operations of his hands, out of sight of the pickup. "No,
of course there's no need to call Blake back, I suppose-not yet, anyway. It
would only worry anyone who saw him returning. You can probably handle
everything."
"What is it-radiation burns or straight accident?"
"Mostly radiation, I think-maybe some accident stuff, too. Someone got
careless again. You know what that means; you've seen what happens when one of
the high-pressure lines breaks."
Doc had been through that, if that was what it was. "Sure, we can handle that,
Palmer. But I thought you weren't going to use Number One until it had been
overhauled completely. And how come they haven't installed the pressure
reliefs? I thought all that was done six months ago."
"I didn't say it was Number One or that a line broke. I was just comparing it
to something familiar. We have to use new equipment for the new products."
Palmer looked up at someone else, confirming Doc's idea, and his upper arms
made a slight movement before he looked down at the pickup again. "I can't go
into it now, Doc; the accident's throwing us off schedule already-details
piling up on me. We can talk it over later, and you probably have to make
arrangements now. Call me if you want anything."
The screen darkened and the phone clicked off abruptly, just as a muffled word
started. The voice hadn't been Palmer's. Ferrel pulled his stomach in, wiped
the sweat off his hands again and went out into the surgery with careful
casualness. Damn Palmer, why couldn't the fool give enough information to make
decent preparations possible? He was sure Three and Four alone were operating,
and they were supposed to be fool-proof. Just what had happened?
As he came out Jenkins jerked up from a bench, face muscles tense and eyes
filled with a sure fear. Where he had been sitting a copy of the Weekly Ray
was lying open at a chart of symbols which meant nothing to Ferrel, except for
the penciled line under one of the reactions. The boy picked it up and stuck
it back on a table.
"Routine accident," Ferrel reported as naturally as he could, cursing himself
for having to force his voice. Thank the Lord, the boy's hands hadn't trembled
visibly when he was moving the paper; he'd still be useful if surgery was
necessary. Palmer had said nothing about that, of course; he'd said nothing
about entirely too much. "They're bringing a few men over for radiation burns,
according to Palmer. Everything ready?"
Jenkins nodded tightly. "Quite ready, sir-as much as we can be for routine
accidents at Three and Four! Isotope R. . . Sorry, Dr. Ferrel, I didn't mean
that. Should we call in Dr. Blake and the other nurses and attendants?"
"Eh? Oh, probably we can't reach Blake, and Palmer doesn't think we need him.
You might have Nurse Dodd locate Meyers-the others are out on dates by now, if
I know them, and those two should be enough with Jones, they're better than a
flock of the other nurses, anyway." Isotope R? Ferrel remembered the name, but
nothing else. Something an engineer had said once-but he couldn't recall in
what connection-or had Hokusai mentioned it? He watched Jenkins leave, and
turned back on an impulse to his office, where he could phone in reasonable
privacy.
"Get me Matsuura Hokusai." He stood drumming on the table impatiently until
the screen finally lighted and the little Japanese looked out of it. "Hoke, do
you know what they were turning out over at Three and Four?"
The scientist nodded slowly, his wrinkled face as expressionless as his high-
pitched English. "Yess, they are make I-713 for the weevil. Why you ask?"
"Nothing; just curious. I heard rumors about an Isotope R and wondered if
there was any connection. Seems they had a little accident over there, and I
want to be ready for whatever comes of it."
For a fraction of a second the heavy lids on Hokusai's eyes seemed to lift,
but his voice remained neutral, only slightly faster. "No connection Dr.
Ferrel; they are not make Issotope R, very much assure you. Best you forget
Issotope R. Very sorry, Dr. Ferrel, I must now see accident. Thank you for
call. Good-by." The screen was blank again, along with Ferrel's mind.
Jenkins was standing at the door, but had either heard nothing or seemed not
to know about it. "Nurse Meyers is coming back," he said. "Shall I get ready
for curare injections?"
"Uh-might be a good idea." Ferrel had no intention of being surprised again,
no matter what the implication of the words. Curare, one of the great poisons,
known to South American primitives for centuries and only recently synthesized
by modern chemistry, was the final resort for use in cases of radiation injury
that were utterly beyond control. While the Infirmary stocked it for such
emergencies, in the long years of Doc's practice it had been used only twice;
neither experience had been pleasant. Jenkins was either thoroughly frightened
or overly zealous-unless he knew something he had no business knowing.
"Seems to take them long enough to get the men here; can't be too serious,
Jenkins, or they'd move faster."
"Maybe." Jenkins went on with his preparations dissolving dried plasma in
distilled, de-aërated water. He added the ingredients for checking plutonic
anemia and liver degeneration without looking up. "There's the litter siren
now. You'd better get washed up while I take care of the patients."
Doc listened to the sound that came in as a faint drone from outside, and
grinned slightly. "Must be Beel driving; he's the only man fool enough to run
the siren when the runways are empty. Anyhow, if you'll listen, it's the out
trip he's making. Be at least five minutes before he gets back." But he turned
into the washroom, kicked on the hot water and began scrubbing vigorously with
the strong soap.
Damn Jenkins! Here he was preparing for surgery before he had any reason to
suspect the need, and the boy was running things to suit himself, pretty much
as if armed with superior knowledge. Well maybe he was. Either that or he was
simply half-crazy with old wives' fears of anything relating to atomic
reactions, and that didn't seem to fit the case. As Jenkins came in, Doc
rinsed off, kicked on the hot-air blast, and let his arms dry, then bumped
against a rod that brought out rubber gloves on little holders. "Jenkins,
what's all this Isotope R business, anyway? I've heard about it somewhere,
probably from Hokusai. But I can't remember anything definite."
"Naturally-there isn't anything definite. That's the trouble." The young
doctor tackled the area under his fingernails before looking up; then he saw
that Ferrel was slipping into his surgeon's whites, which had come out on a
hanger, and waited until the other was finished. "R's one of the big 'maybe'
problems of atomics. Purely theoretical, and none's been made yet-it's either
impossible or can't be done in small control batches safe for testing. That's
the trouble, as I said; nobody knows anything about it, except that-if it can
exist-it'll break down in a fairly short time into Mahler's Isotope. You've
heard of that?"
Doc had-twice. The first had been when Mahler and half his laboratory had
disappeared with accompanying noise; he'd been making a comparatively small
amount of the new product designed to act as a starter for other reactions.
His helper, Maicewicz, had tackled it on a smaller scale and that time only
two rooms and three men had gone up in dust particles. Five or six years
later, atomic theory had been extended to the point where any student could
find why the apparently safe product decided to become pure helium and energy
in approximately one-billionth of a second.
"How long a time?"
"Half a dozen theories, and no real idea." They'd come out of the washrooms,
finished except for their masks. Jenkins ran his elbow into a switch that
turned on the ultraviolets that were supposed to sterilize the surgery, then
looked around questioningly. "What about the supersonics?"
Ferrel kicked them on, shuddering as a bone-shaking subharmonic hum indicated
their activity. Technicians had supposedly debugged the supersonics twice, but
the hum was still there. He couldn't complain about the amount of equipment,
though. Ever since the last major accident, when the state congress developed
ideas, there'd been enough gadgets around to stock up several small hospitals.
The supersonics were intended to penetrate through all solids in the room,
sterilizing where the UV light couldn't reach. A whistling note from their
generator reminded him of something that had been tickling around in the back
of his mind for some minutes.
"There was no emergency whistle, Jenkins. Hardly seems to me they'd neglect
that if it was so important."
Jenkins grunted skeptically and eloquently. "With everyone trying to get
Congress to chase all the atom plants out into the middle of the Mojave
desert, Palmer would be a fool to advertise the fact that there was another
accident."
"There's the siren again."
Jones, the male attendant, had heard it, and was already running out the fresh
stretcher for the litter into the back receiving room. Half a minute later,
Beel came trundling in the detachable part of the litter. "Two," he announced.
"More coming up as soon as they can get to 'em, Doc."
There was blood spilled over the canvas, and a closer inspection indicated its
source in a severed vein, now held in place by a small safety pin that had
fastened the two sides of the cut with a series of little pricks around which
the blood had clotted enough to stop further loss.
Doc kicked off the supersonics with relief and indicated the man's throat.
"Why wasn't I called out instead of having him brought here?"
"Hell, Doc, Palmer said bring 'em in, and I brought 'em-I dunno. Guess some
guy pinned up this fellow, so they figured he could, wait. Anything wrong?"
Ferret grimaced. "With a torn jugular, nothing that stops the bleeding's
wrong, orthodox or not. How many more, and what's wrong out there?"
"Lord knows, Doc. I only drive 'em. I don't ask questions. So long!" He pushed
the new stretcher up on the carriage and went wheeling it out to the small
two-wheeled tractor that completed the litter. Ferrel dropped his curiosity
back to its proper place and turned to the first case, while Dodd adjusted her
mask. Jones had their clothes off, swabbed them down hastily, and wheeled them
out on operating tables into the center of the surgery.
"Plasma!" A quick examination had shown Doc nothing else wrong with the man on
the table, and he made the injection quickly. Apparently the man was only
unconscious from shock induced by loss of blood, and the breathing and heart
action resumed a more normal course as the liquid filled out the depleted
blood vessels. He treated the wound with an antibiotic in routine procedure,
cleaned and sterilized the edges gently, applied clamps carefully, removed the
pin, and began stitching with the complicated little motor needle-one of the
few gadgets for which he had any real appreciation. A few more drops of blood
had spilled, but not seriously, and the wound was now permanently sealed.
"Save the pin, Dodd. Goes in the collection. That's all for this. How's the
other, Jenkins?"
Jenkins pointed to the back of the man's neck, indicating a tiny bluish object
sticking out. "Fragment of steel, clear into the medulla oblongata. No blood
loss, but he's been dead since it touched him. Want me to remove it?"
"No need-mortician can do it if they want. . . If these are samples, I'd guess
it as a plain industrial accident, instead of anything connected with
radiation."
"You'll get that, too, Doc." It was the first man, apparently conscious and
normal except for pallor. "We weren't in the converter house. Hey, I'm all
right! I'll be . . ."
Ferrel smiled at the surprise on the fellow's face. "Thought you were dead,
eh? Sure, you're all right, if you'll take it easy. Just pipe down and let the
nurse put you to sleep, and you'll never know you got it."
"Lord! Stuff came flying out of the air-intake like bullets out of a machine
gun. Just a scratch, I thought; then Jake was bawling like a baby and yelling
for a pin. Blood all over the place-then here I am, good as new."
"Uh-huh." Dodd was already wheeling him off toward a ward room, her grim face
wrinkled into a half-quizzical expression over the mask. "Doctor said to pipe
down, didn't he? Well!"
As soon as Dodd vanished Jenkins sat down, running his hand over his cap;
there were little beads of sweat showing where the goggles and mask didn't
entirely cover his face. " 'Stuff came flying out of the air-intake like
bullets out of a machine gun,' " he repeated softly. "Dr. Ferrel, those two
cases were outside the converter-just by-product accidents. Inside . . ."
"Yeah." Ferrel was picturing things himself, and it wasn't pleasant. Outside,
matter tossed through the air ducts; inside. . . He left it hanging. "I'm
going to call Blake. We'll probably need him."
CHAPTER 5


Mal Jorgenson cursed as he moved about in the crushing weight of the big
Tomlin suit. The bulk of its multitude of shields and the complicated nonsense
of its built-in air system would have killed a lesser man in minutes, so they
had to make him the guinea pig to test it. To make matters worse, it added to
his stature, until even the ratholes he'd learned to navigate were too small
for him. He cursed again, and swore at the pigmy race that had spawned him,
with their puny minds even smaller than the silly things they called bodies.
He wedged himself into the upper test pit of Number Three, trying to get his
shoulders in far enough to hook on his gauge. There'd been no time to install
a proper bank of test instruments; they could wait weeks to try his process-
and then they expected him to do it all overnight!
Finally, by resorting to pure mathematics, he found a location, and ran off a
test. The results agreed with what he'd expected, of course. There might be
some satisfaction in all this yet-if Palmer stuck around long enough to eat
crow for the doubts that had been on his face. There were a few things
Jorgenson had been saving to tell him!
He caught his shoulder edging out, and swore hotly, not bothering to turn down
the radio on his suit. Damn it, Palmer had no business insisting that everyone
wear suits on this job. They only made the work more complicated, and showed
the men that the manager didn't trust him. It was standard operating procedure
on an initial run, as the manager had said. But this was a special job, done
on the worst possible short notice. Some concessions might have been made!
He climbed down, his anger bearing him up. He had reason to be angry in a
world where nothing fitted, where travel was an ordeal, and where even the
clothes he wore had to be built to order at a price that sapped his income and
left him with no hope for his future. And the women. . . .
He almost spat, before he remembered the visor in front of his face.
Briggs was standing with a bunch of the men by the south converter safety
chamber. The big hulk of the converter was built inside an even bigger
housing, made of thick concrete, and the chambers had been designed along the
outer housing wall for use in accidents. They were never meant as meeting
halls, yet the fools were all huddled about the chambers, as if they had no
faith in him.
"Get those runts of yours out on the job, Briggs," he ordered. "I don't want
to see them clumped up here again. Damn it, we're running a new job. If I have
to change the setting, or if those gauges start to go up, I want to see men
where they can move. You've worked with me before. You know what I want."
"You want a knife in the guts some dark night," Briggs said, his voice quiet
and cold. "You run your blasted conversion and I'll run the men. Palmer told
me to keep them back when I could."
There was nothing Jorgenson could do about it. If he knocked the fool cold for
his insolence, the whole pigmy group would be down on him for picking on a
smaller man. He'd had trouble enough before-though never this much. If Palmer
would back him up . . . But the manager wouldn't. Even Kellar had been hell to
work with and soft-headed about the men.
He clumped away, heading through the slow-moving, massive door through the
housing wall and toward Number Four. It was overdue for a check, as a result
of the delay in handling the instruments where there was no room to turn. A
good reader might have helped, but he'd never found one he could trust. He
stood fuming while the motors in the second converter slowly pushed the
entrance wide enough for him to pass through.
Inside Number Four, Grissom was at least some improvement over Briggs. The
foreman had kicked, but now he had his men spaced out where they belonged.
They looked scared, but it was good for them. A little adrenalin in their
blood streams might put some life into them.
"Get that feeder dressed down," he told Grissom. It had been badly hooked up,
in spite of the bonus he'd offered that afternoon and had come partly loose so
that it thumped with the changes in pressure going on inside the converter.
But as long as the designers insisted on putting housings around the
converters-to hold in the effects of accidents, they claimed-instead of
leaving the machinery outside where it could be reached, sloppy work was to be
expected.
He climbed laboriously up to the testing pit and went through the whole
operation again, figuring out a way to get his arms far enough in to read his
gauge. He stared at it automatically and then his eyes focused on it sharply.
The needle wasn't steady.
It was wobbling from side to side, dancing erratically. Its periodic dip and
rise reminded him of something else. With a snap, his mind dug out the memory
and examined it.
The time was the same as that of the feeder that was loose.
The pressures inside were varying, but he'd expected that. It still should
have no effect on the other readings. And yet the fluctuation was obvious.
He flipped the pages of his notes in his head, running over them as quickly as
if they had been on printed sheets. There was nothing there to predict such
behavior. It would apply only to an entirely different reaction.
He balanced the new equations that would fit, adjusting them to the facts. It
was pressure work-something that would leave his head splitting for hours. He
hated it, and he had never quite learned to make it completely trustworthy.
But this time something in the back of his mind was shrieking the truth of the
new equations.
Jenkins! The damned impertinent kid had pointed to just such an equation! He'd
had the nerve to suggest that there was a second possibility Jorgenson had
overlooked. And now even the fates were conspiring with the pigmies to prove
that he was right and the man who had invented the whole process was wrong!
He screamed through his helmet, calling the attention of the men below him.
There was still time, if they worked it right. It was close, but they could
make it.
Grissom stood staring up, like a cowed rabbit. The men watched his gestures
with no sign of understanding.
"Get moving!" Jorgenson yelled at them, forcing his helmet amplifier to the
limit, draining the batteries savagely. "Pull the main ballast magnets back-
all the way back. And give me more current through the primary inductances!
Damn you, move! Do you want this whole thing to blow up in your faces? You're
going to be dealing with Isotope R in thirty seconds!"
Grissom moved then-the wrong way.
With a furious shout from his helmet diaphragm, he dived for the north
converter chamber. For a split second, the others hesitated. Then they dropped
what they were doing and joined him in the mad race. It was too late to save
anything after that.
Jorgenson saw the door of the safety chamber swinging shut. He estimated it,
and knew that they'd have it closed in plenty of time for safety. He also knew
he could make it himself before it closed, even in the pressing weight of the
heavy suit. He told his legs to jump for it.
And they responded, but not as he had intended! They carried him away from the
inner wall, to land at a sickening, jarring run, heading around the converter
toward the other men. He saw some of them staring, probably unable to make out
his words before, but scared because they had seen others in motion.
"Get into the chamber!" he yelled. Under maximum drain, the amplifier was
already failing as the batteries went dead. "Into the chamber!"
They were like helpless sheep as they realized what he was saying. The
spineless fools couldn't even save themselves. They had to wait for a better
man to sacrifice himself.
He saw them heading for the chamber, and he knew it was almost too late. The
anger in him was boiling now, surging through his veins, sending out adrenalin
until he no longer felt the weight of the suit. He caught one of the laggards
and literally tossed him the ten feet into the safety chamber. But there was
no time to save all of them. They were in the way of his own progress.
And if one of them got part way through the door as it was closing, nobody
would have a chance; the door had to seal tightly, and it couldn't do that
with a body stuck in it. There was barely enough space now for him to make it.
If he jumped, kicking back at the two who were threatening to jam the door, he
might be able to get in.
But he didn't jump. He swung his big arms down, scooping one of the wretches
into the chamber. There was no chance for the other. And there was no hope for
life out here in any ordinary suit, even for minutes. The man was clawing at
the big door, now too far shut for anyone to enter, trying to slip his arm
inside.
All the hate that had filled him for years coursed through Jorgenson. He
brought his fist down, twisting the helmet of the man into a pulped ribbon of
metal. The arm continued the motion, and the man's body skidded out of the
path of the slow-closing door, leaving it free.
The fools inside were screaming and pointing, but he paid no heed to them. He
knew the exact second now, as he had known it nearly all his life-the exact
fraction of time that had elapsed. It was all that was left of his rational
thought.
Right on schedule, he heard the first crack above him like a blow that seemed
to torture his eardrums, even through the heavy armor. But he didn't stop to
look. The door was finally closing. He put his shoulder to it, bracing his
feet and lunged. It gave a trifle more, speeding up under the combined force
of the motor and his muscles. And at last some of the men had seen a trace of
reason and were pulling on it, adding their puny strength to his.
The converter broke apart, spilling its contents outward! He saw it flying by
him, spitting through the crack in the door. The impact forced him from his
position, knocking him sideways. The glare of it made the ending of the lights
unimportant, and then the magma was covering his face plate until he couldn't
see. He groped his way along the floor, fighting the pressure, until he could
feel the door. He found another purchase and began shoving again, trying to
will the thing closed. And finally, the crack vanished. He could do no more.
Either the idiots inside would live or they'd die, but it was none of his
responsibility now.
He relaxed then, surprised by the roaring and hissing going on. He felt
something sting near one of the joints of his armor. The stuff was giving off
tiny explosions, apparently with enough force to drive through all his armor!
He fought to his feet, ignoring the agony signals from his nerves. and
refusing to heed the twitching of his muscles. There was only the rage in him
now, driving him on. He knew he was going to die, and no longer cared. But
this was his process, and he was its master. It would have no victory over
him!
Buffeted and beaten, with hell raging all around him and sometimes almost over
him, he fought his way ahead, building a complete picture of the converter
chamber and everything in it in his mind. There were the tools that had been
dropped and photographed by his eyes. There was the corpse of the man he had
killed for no better reason than to save others who didn't deserve to live.
And then he had it. There was the big lead box that had been brought in to
hold the first testing of the results, until it could be certified.
His head ached savagely as he strained his mind to its utmost limit, driving
it to handle more factors at once and build a more completely four-dimensional
picture of the surroundings than he had ever tried before. He had to picture
every movement of his own body, then extend that to the currents and pulses
swirling around him, and retranslate that into the motion of the box. It
couldn't have moved far, but in the few seconds of time his personal energy
would last, he couldn't go hunting for it.
Then the picture solidified. He could see himself and the box in his mind, and
even see the side on which the cover was. He moved toward it, and his fingers
groped out and located it.
But at that moment, as during his whole life, the fates tricked him. He had
located the box, but the lid was at an angle different from his picture. He
cursed and screamed to himself in helpless frustration as he realized that the
maximum power of his mind had built an imperfect image.
His fingers were moving along the box like little animals with minds of their
own, testing it with thumps that carried back messages to his brain. Now he
pulled the lid up, grateful that it was on top and the box would need no
turning. With the last bit of energy, he let himself inside, solving the
problem of the best position to take automatically as he did so. Then he
dropped the lid back, trying to force it to a snug fit. He felt the box move
under the still active forces of the new matter outside, but he could no
longer care.
His mind blanked out.
He came to in hell, with the air hot and thick in his suit, and the sweat
trickling out of him, though his body felt dried to the bones. There was a
faint surge to the box in which he lay, as if one end were propped up and the
other rocking on something.
But the shock that washed through him didn't come from the realization of
where he was or what must happen to him. The twitching of his muscles and the
certain death that must face him meant very little.
The overwhelming fact was that he'd been insane for years! He turned that over
in his thoughts, grappling with it-and accepting it. He'd been going insane by
the time he reached adolescence. He had been wholly so before he graduated
from college. He had lived in an impossible world where only absolute
perfection counted, and where he refused to accept perfection as possible,
even to himself! He had built his hate against the impossible into a constant
churning force that whipped every tissue of him during all his life.
He'd been berserk! And yet, somehow it had been a cold, hard fury, capable of
dissimilating when necessary. He'd kept the fury inside, away from the men
over him, and usually within limits that men below him could at least
tolerate. There had never been equals. He had reserved the real savagery of
his berserk mind for himself.
And now his fury was burned out, unable to stand the gross overload of the
last few seconds out there and the fact of the death he had to face. His mind
felt empty, yet clearer than it had ever been. The trick of complete visual
recall was still there. He could see every page he had ever read. And the
ability to construct a full new picture mentally was sharper than before. He
had built his life on those tricks-and they had driven him mad when he had
learned that their discovery could only result in rejection or petty schemes
for exploitation. Now they were only means to an end-not an end in themselves.
They were talents that could help him think, not thoughts themselves.
It hurt to be only a man, rather than an angry, crippled god in chains. But he
accepted it.
He turned his thoughts to his own situation again, and a faint feeling of fear
touched him. He forced it away, as he was forcing away all the pain and
anguish that tried to drum into his head. He was in the box, still above the
stuff that must be bubbling out there, protected by the strong walls that were
layered with lead. So long as he remained above the stuff, where it could not
get into the box, he was somewhat safe. He could live until his air ran out,
or the sweat drained his body too dry, or the heat finally overcame him. It
wouldn't be long.
He wondered about the men. He hadn't known them and could feel no sympathy for
them. But he was curious to know whether his work during the last few
impossible seconds had done what he must have been trying. Mad or not, he had
attempted to save them. In doing that, he had destroyed the madness in himself
but left himself no chance to test his sanity.
He felt the box slipping and held his breath. But there was no use in that.
With its mass, the faint difference any movement of his would make couldn't
count.
Isotope R, he thought. It was the answer-that or a mixture containing a high
percentage of it. He could have forced his mind through the torturous process
of determining the formula exactly, but he didn't care that much. He wondered
what would happen if it was Isotope R-and the answer that came to him sent him
screaming through his mind for denial, and finding none.
It had to be Isotope R out there. And if it was, it wouldn't matter whether he
died now, was rescued by a miracle, or lived until the inevitable moment when
the substance went through its chain of breakdown and came to its end.
Then he revised that. It would matter if a miracle could save him in time.
Given time, given consciousness his mind could complete its search and find
the answer-the answer that would end the menace of Isotope R.
But no man out there would find that answer in time. It would have to come
from his brain-and his brain would never stand the forces outside that would
come rushing in when the box sank.
Already, the box was tipping. It seemed to slip, and to turn. Something gave
under it, held, and then gave again. He waited in curiosity, trying to
estimate how long it would take. In a few more seconds, he had the pattern
worked out. He was almost happy when the box finally slipped exactly as he had
expected. It sank, and he was dimly aware that magma was oozing in through the
cracks around the lid, but too uninterested to open his eyes on the chance
that it would be bright enough to see.
He blackened one corner of his mind, then another. Finally, there was only a
tiny spark left, and then he won completely as it flickered out, leaving him
unconscious.


CHAPTER 6


Give me Dr. Blake's residence-Maple 2337," Ferrel said quickly into the phone.
The operator looked blank for a second, starting and then checking a purely
automatic gesture toward the plugs. "Maple 2337, I said."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Ferrel, I can't give you an outside line. All trunk lines are
out of order." There was a constant buzz from the board, but nothing showed in
the panel to indicate whether from white inside lights or the red trunk
indicators.
"But this is an emergency, operator. I've got to get in touch with Dr. Blake!"
"Sorry, Dr. Ferrel. All trunk lines are out of order." She started to reach
for the plug, but Ferrel stopped her.
"Give me Palmer, then-if his line's busy, cut in and I'll take the
responsibility."
"All right." She snapped at her switches. "I'm sorry, emergency call from Dr.
Ferrel. Hold the line and I'll reconnect you." Then Palmer's face was on the
panel, and this time the man was making no attempt to conceal the expression
of worry.
"What is it, Ferrel?"
"I want Blake here-I'm going to need him. The operator says-"
"Yeah." Palmer nodded tightly, cutting in. "I've been trying to get him
myself, but his house doesn't answer. Any ideas of where to reach him?"
"You might try the Bluebird or any of the other night clubs around there."
Damn, why did this have to be Blake's celebration night? No telling where he
could be found by this time.
Palmer was speaking again. "I've already called all the night clubs and
restaurants, and he doesn't answer. We're paging the movie houses and theaters
now; just a second . . . Nope, he isn't there, Ferrel. Last reports, no
response."
"How about sending out a general call over the radio?"
"I'd-I'd like to, Ferrel, but it can't be done." The manager had hesitated for
a fraction of a second, but his reply was positive. "Oh, by the way, we'll
notify your wife you won't be home. Operator! You there? Good, reconnect the
Governor!"
There was no sense in arguing into a blank screen, Doc realized. If Palmer
wouldn't put through a radio call, he wouldn't, though it had been done once
before. "All trunk lines are out of order. . . . We'll notify your wife. . . .
Reconnect the Governor!" They weren't even being careful to cover up! Jenkins'
face twitched into a grin.
"So we're cut off. I knew it already; Meyers just got in with more details."
He nodded toward the nurse, just coming out of the dressing room and trying to
smooth out her uniform. Her almost pretty face was more confused than worried.
"I was just leaving the plant, Dr. Ferrel, when I heard my name on the outside
speaker. But I had to wait and wait before they'd let me back in. We're
actually locked in here! I saw men at all the gates guarding them with
revolvers! They were turning back everyone who tried to leave, and wouldn't
tell why, even. Just orders that no one was to leave or enter until Mr. Palmer
gave his permission. It's like a prison now. Do you suppose . . . Do you know
what it's all about?"
"I know just about as much as you do, Meyers, though Palmer said something
about carelessness with one of the ports on Three or Four," Ferrel answered
her. "Probably just precautionary measures. Anyway, you'll be on double pay. I
wouldn't worry too much about it yet."
"Yes, Dr. Ferrel." She nodded and turned back to the front office, but there
was no assurance in her look. Doc realized that neither Jenkins nor himself
was a picture of confidence at the moment.
"Jenkins," he said when she was gone, "if you know anything I don't, for the
love of Mike, out with it! I've never seen anything like this around here."
Jenkins seemed to hesitate. Then he shook himself, and for the first time
since he'd been there, used Ferrel's nickname. "Doc, I don't-I know just
enough to be less sure than you can be, and I'm scared as hell!"
"Let's see your hands." The subject was almost a monomania with Ferrel, and he
knew it, but he also knew it wasn't unjustified. Jenkins' hands came out
promptly, and there was no tremble to them. The boy threw up his arm so the
loose sleeve slid beyond the elbow, and Ferrel nodded; there was no sweat
trickling down from the armpits to reveal a worse case of nerves than showed
on the surface. "Good enough, son; I don't care how scared you are-I'm getting
that way myself-but with Blake out of reach and the other nurses and
attendants gone, I'll need everything you've got."
"Doc?"
"Well?"
"If you'll take my word for it, I can get another nurse here-and a good one,
too. They don't come any steadier or any better, and she's not working now. I
didn't expect her to-well, anyhow, she'd skin me if I didn't call when we need
her. Want her?"
"No trunk lines for outside calls," Doc reminded him. It was the first time
he'd seen any real enthusiasm on the boy's face, and however good or bad the
nurse was, she'd obviously be of value in bucking up Jenkins' spirits. "Go to
it, though, if you can reach her; right now we can probably use any nurse.
Sweetheart?"
"Wife." Jenkins started toward the office. "And I don't need an outside line.
When I called her to let her know we'd be on the graveyard shift, she said
she'd be waiting. So she's sitting in the outside parking lot right now."
"She'd have had a long wait," Doc observed drily.
Jenkins grinned briefly, and for a second his face was almost boyish. "She
expected to. And if you're worried about her ability, she was operating nurse
under Bayard at Mayo's; that's what paid my way through medical school!"
The siren was approaching again when Jenkins came back, the little tense lines
about his lips still there, but his whole bearing was steadier. He nodded. "I
got Palmer, all right, and he okayed having her paged and passing her inside
without asking any questions. The switchboard girl has standing orders to
route all calls from us through to Palmer before anything else, it seems."
Doc nodded, his ear cocked toward the drone of the siren that drew up and
finally ended on a sour wheeze. He felt a sudden relief from tension as he saw
Jones hurrying toward the rear entrance; work, even under the pressure of an
emergency, was always easier than sitting around waiting for trouble. He saw
the two stretchers come in, both bearing double loads, and noted that Beel was
babbling at the attendant, the driver's usually phlegmatic manner completely
gone.
"I'm quitting; I'm through tomorrow! No more watching 'em drag out stiffs for
me-not that way. Dunno why I gotta go back, anyhow; it won't do 'em any good
to get in further, even if they can. From now on, I'm driving a truck, so help
me I am."
Ferrel let him rave on, aware that the man was close to hysteria. He had no
time to give Beel now as he saw the red flesh through the visor of one of the
armor suits. "Cut off what clothes you can, Jones," he directed. "At least get
the shield suits off them. Tannic acid ready, nurse?"
"Ready," Meyers answered. Jenkins was busily helping Jones strip off the
heavily armored suits and helmets.
Ferrel kicked on the supersonics again, letting them sterilize the metal
suits-there was no time to be finicky about asepsis; the supersonics and
ultra-violet tubes were supposed to take care of that, and Ferrel would have
to trust them, little as he liked it. Jenkins finished his work, dived back
for fresh gloves, with a mere cursory dipping of his hands into antiseptic and
rinse. Dodd followed him, while Jones wheeled three of the cases into the
middle of the surgery, ready for work; the other had died on the way in.
It was going to be a messy job, obviously. Where metal from the suits had
touched, or come near touching, the flesh was burned-crisped, rather. But that
was merely a minor part of it; there was more than ample evidence of major
radiation burns, which had probably not stopped at the surface but penetrated
through the flesh and bones into the vital interior organs. Doc glanced at
Jones questioningly, and the man held up one of the little self-developing
strips from an employee badge, it was completely black, showing that the
margin of safety had been grossly exceeded.
Much worse, the writhing and spasmodic muscular contractions indicated that
radioactive matter had been forced into the flesh and was acting directly on
the nerves controlling the motor impulses. Jenkins looked hastily at the
twisting body of his case, and his face blanched to a yellowish-white; either
it was the first real example of the full possibilities of an atomic accident
he'd seen, or he was reading something extra into it. His sick voice seemed
unsurprised. "A blast of gamma radiation first. Now it's a beta emitter. It
figures!"
His hands clenched, and he threw an involuntary glance in the direction of the
converters. Then he seemed to catch himself.
"Curare," he said finally, the word forced out, but level. Meyers handed him
the hypodermic and he inserted it, his fingers still steady-more than normally
steady, in fact, with that absolute lack of tremor that can come to a living
organism only under the stress of emergency. Ferrel dropped his eyes back to
his own case, both relieved and worried. It was too much of a coincidence that
Jenkins had guessed the need for curare so accurately.
From the spread of the muscular convulsions, there could be only one
explanation: somehow radioactives had not only worked their way through the
air grills but had been forced through the almost air-tight joints and
sputtered directly into the flesh of the men.
A few of the superheavy isotopes were capable of sending out beta emissions-
high-energy electrons-in massive quantities, and this was obviously such a
substance. Now the little deposits were driving out such radiation into the
nerves, blocking the normal impulses from the brain and spinal column, setting
up anarchic orders of their own that made the muscles writhe and jerk, one
against the other, without pattern or reason, or any of the normal restraints
of the body. It was as if the usual negative feedback controls on the nerves
had all gone positive. The closest parallel was that of a man undergoing
metrozol shock for schizophrenia, or a severe case of strychnine poisoning.
Doc injected curare carefully, meting out the dosage according to the best
estimate he could make, but Jenkins had been acting under pressure and had
finished the second injection as Doc looked up from his first. Still, in spite
of the rapid spread of the drug, some of the twitching went on.
"Curare," Jenkins repeated, and Doc tensed mentally; he'd still been debating
whether to risk the extra dosage. But he made no counter-order, feeling
relieved at having the matter taken out of his hands. Jenkins went back to
work, pushing up the injections to the absolute limit of safety, and slightly
beyond. One of the cases had started a weird hacking moan as his lungs and
vocal cords went in and out of synchronization, but it stilled under the drug
and in a matter of minutes he lay quiet, breathing with the shallow flaccidity
common to curare treatment. The others were still moving slightly, but the
violent bone-breaking convulsions had diminished to a spasmodic shudder,
similar to a man with a chill.
"God bless the man who synthesized curare," Jenkins muttered as he began
cleaning away damaged flesh.
Doc could repeat that; with the older, natural product, true standardization
and exact dosage had been next to impossible. Too much, and its action on the
body was fatal; the patient died from "exhaustion" of his chest muscles in a
matter of minutes. Too little was practically useless. Now that the danger of
self-injury and fatal exhaustion from wild exertion was over, he could attend
to such relatively unimportant things as the agony still going on-curare had
no particular effect on the sensory nerves. He injected neo-heroin and began
cleaning the burned areas and treating them with the standard tannic-acid
solution, as well as with antibiotics to eliminate possible infection. Now and
then he glanced up at Jenkins.
He had no need to worry, though; the boy's nerves were frozen into an
unnatural calm and he worked with a speed Ferrel made no attempt to equal.
Doc gestured, and Dodd handed him the little radiation indicator, and he began
hunting over the skin, inch by inch, for the almost microscopic bits of
matter; there was no hope of finding all now, but the worst deposits could be
found and removed.
Later, the nurses could handle the slower process of washing out what was left
with versenes and other chemicals, as well as replacing the blood whose cells
would be damaged. Fortunately, treatment for even heavy doses of radiation had
been well developed for years. They were fortunate also that most of the
radiation from the particles here came as beta rays, rather than the more
insidious neutrons.
"Jenkins," he asked, "how about I-713's chemical action? Is it basically
poisonous to the system?"
"No. Perfectly safe except for radiation. Full quota in the outer electron
shell, chemically inert."
That, at least, was a relief. Radiations were bad enough, but when coupled
with metallic poisoning, like the old radium or mercury cases, it was even
worse. An inert element would also be less likely to have an affinity for any
of the tissues, or to settle in the calcium of the bones. Probably the
versenes would flush most of it from the body, and its short half-life would
decrease the long hospitalization and suffering of the men.
Jenkins joined him on the last patient, replacing Dodd at handing instruments.
Doc would have preferred the nurse, who was used to his little signals, but he
said nothing, and was surprised to note the efficiency of the boy's
cooperation. "How about the breakdown products?" he asked.
 "Isotope-713? Harmless enough, mostly, and what isn't harmless isn't
concentrated enough to worry about. That is, if it's still I-713. Otherwise-"
Otherwise, Doc finished mentally, the boy meant there'd be no danger from
poisoning, at least. Isotope R, with an uncertain degeneration period, turned
into Mahler's Isotope, with a complete breakdown in a billionth of a second.
He had a fleeting vision of men, filled with a fine dispersion of that,
suddenly erupting over their body with a violence that could never be
described; Jenkins must have been thinking the same thing. For a second, they
stood there, looking at each other silently, but neither chose to speak of it.
Ferrel reached for the probe, Jenkins shrugged, and they went on with their
work and their thoughts.
It was a picture impossible to imagine, which they might or might not see; if
such an atomic blow-up occurred, what would happen to the Infirmary was
problematical. No one knew the exact amount Maicewicz had worked on, except
that it was the smallest amount he could make, so there could be no good
estimate of the damage. The bodies on the operating tables, the little scraps
of removed flesh containing the minute globules of radioactive substance, even
the instruments that had come in contact with them, were bombs waiting to
explode. Ferrel's own fingers took on some of the steadiness that was frozen
in Jenkins, as he went about his work, forcing his mind onto the difficulties
at hand.
It might have been minutes or hours later when the last dressing was in place
and the three broken bones of the worst case were set. Meyers and Dodd, along
with Jones, were taking care of the men, putting them into the little wards,
and the two physicians were alone, carefully avoiding each other's eyes,
waiting without knowing exactly what they expected.
Outside, a droning chug came to their ears and the thump of something heavy
moving over the runways. By common impulse they slipped to the side door and
looked out, to see the rear end of one of the electric tanks moving away from
them. Night had fallen, but the gleaming lights from the big towers around the
fence made the plant stand out in glaring detail. They watched the tank moving
away, then other buildings cut off their view.
From the direction of the main gate a shrill whistle cut the air and there was
a sound of men's voices, though the words were indistinguishable. Sharp, crisp
syllables followed, and Jenkins nodded slowly to himself. "Ten'll get you a
hundred," he began, "that- Uh, no use betting. It is."
Around the corner a squad of men in state militia uniforms marched briskly,
bayoneted rifles on their arms. With the efficient precision, they spread out
under a sergeant's direction, each taking a post before the door of one of the
buildings, one approaching the place where Ferrel and Jenkins stood.
"So that's what Palmer was talking to the Governor about," Ferrel muttered.
"No use asking them questions, I suppose; they know less than we do. Come on
inside where we can sit down and rest. Wonder what good the militia can do
here-unless Palmer's afraid someone inside's going to crack and cause
trouble."
Jenkins followed him back to the office and accepted a cigarette automatically
as he flopped back into a chair. Doc was discovering just how good it felt to
give his muscles and nerves a chance to relax, and realizing that they must
have been far longer in the surgery than he had thought. "Care for a drink?"
"Uh-is it safe, Doc? We're apt to be back in there any minute."
Ferrel grinned and nodded. "It won't hurt you-we're just enough on edge and
tired for it to be burned up inside for fuel instead of reaching our nerves.
Here." It was a generous slug of bourbon he poured for each, enough to send an
immediate warmth through them, and to relax their over-strained nerves.
"Wonder why Beel hasn't been back long ago?"
"That tank we saw probably explains it; it got too tough for the men to work
in just their suits, and they've had to start excavating through the
converters with the tanks. Electric, wasn't it, battery-powered? . . . So
there's enough radiation loose out there to interfere with atomic-powered
machines, then. That means whatever they're doing is tough and slow work.
Anyhow, it's more important that they damp the action than get the men out, if
they only realize it-Sue!"
Ferrel looked up to see a girl standing there, already dressed for surgery,
and he was not too old for a little glow of appreciation to creep over him. No
wonder Jenkins' face lighted up. She was small, but her figure was shaped like
that of a taller girl, not in the cute or pert lines usually associated with
shorter women, and the serious competence of her expression hid none of the
loveliness of her face. Obviously she was several years older than Jenkins,
but as he stood up to greet her, her face softened and seemed somehow youthful
beside the boy's as she looked up.
"You're Dr. Ferrel?" she asked, turning to the older man. "I'm afraid I'm
late. There was some trouble about letting me in at first. So I went directly
to prepare before bothering you. And just so you won't be afraid to use me, my
credentials are here."
She pulled them from a simple saddle-leather handbag and put them on the
table. Ferrel ran through them briefly; she was better than he'd expected.
Technically she wasn't a nurse at all, but a doctor of medicine-a so-called
nursing doctor. There had been the need for assistants midway between doctor
and nurse for years, having the general training and abilities of both, but
only in the last decade had the actual course been created and the graduates
were still limited in number. He nodded and handed the papers back.
"We can use you, Dr.-"
"Brown-professional name, Dr. Ferrel. And I'm used to being called just Nurse
Brown."
Jenkins cut in on the formalities. "Sue, did you hear anything outside about
what's going on here?"
"Rumors, but they were wild, and I didn't have a chance to hear many. Mostly
from some of the guards who were beginning to clear out the parking lot. All I
know is that they're talking of evacuating the city and everything within
fifty miles of here, but it isn't official. One of the guards said they were
going to send in Federal troops to declare martial law over the whole section,
but there was nothing on the radio."
Jenkins took her off, then, to show her the Infirmary and introduce her to
Jones and the two other nurses. Ferrel sat down to wait for the sound of the
siren again and tried to imagine what was happening outside in the plant. He
attempted to make sense out of the article in the Weekly Ray, but finally gave
it up; atomic theory had advanced too far since the sketchy studies he'd made,
and the symbols were largely without meaning to him. He could work his way
through the behavior of the normal elements and the fission of uranium, but
the whole process of packing atoms together to form the complicated new
isotopes was good only for headaches. He'd have to rely on Jenkins, it seemed.
In the meantime, what was holding up the litter? He should have heard the
warning siren long before.
It wasn't the litter that came in next, however, but a group of five men, two
carrying a third, and a fourth supporting the fifth. Jenkins took charge of
the carried man, Brown helping him; it was similar to the earlier cases, but
without the actual burns from contact with hot metal. Ferrel turned to the
men.
"Where's Beel and the litter?" He was inspecting the supported man's leg as he
asked, and began work on it without moving the fellow to a table. Apparently a
lump of radioactive matter the size of a small pea had been driven half an
inch into the flesh below the thigh, and the broken bone was the result of the
violent contractions of the man's own muscles under the stimulus of the
radiations. It wasn't pretty. Now, however, the strength of the action had
apparently burned out the nerves around, and the leg was limp and without
feeling; the man lay watching, relaxed on the bench in a half-comatose
condition, his lips twisting into a sick grimace, but he did not flinch as the
wound was scraped out. Ferrel was working around a small lead shield, his arms
covered with heavily leaded gloves, and he dropped the scraps of flesh and
isotope into a box of the same metal.
"Beel's out of this world, Doc," one of the others answered when he could tear
his eyes off the probing. "He got himself blotto, somehow, and wrecked the
litter before he got back. He couldn't take it, watching us grapple them out-
and we hadda go in after 'em without a drop to drink!"
Ferrel glanced at him quickly, noticing Jenkins' head jerk around as he did
so. "You were getting them out? You mean you didn't come from in there?"
"Hell, no, Doc. Do we look that bad? Them two got it when the stuff decided to
spit on 'em. Went clean through their armor. Me, I got me some nice burns, but
I ain't complaining. I got a look at a couple of stiffs, so I'm kicking about
nothing!"
Ferrel hadn't noticed the three who had traveled under their own power, but he
looked now, carefully. They were burned, and badly, by radiations and heat,
but the burns were still new enough to give them only a little trouble and
probably what they'd just been through had temporarily deadened their
awareness of pain, just as a soldier on the battlefield may be wounded and not
realize it until the action stops. Anyhow, atomjacks were never noted for
being sissies.
"There's almost a quart in the office there on the table," he told them. "One
good drink apiece-no more. Then go up front and I'll send Nurse Brown in to
fix your burns as well as can be for now." Brown could apply the unguents and
administer the serums to counteract normal radiation burns as well as he
could, and some division of work seemed necessary. "Any chance of finding any
more living men in the converter housing?"
"Maybe. Somebody said the thing let out a groan half a minute before it
popped, so most of 'em had a chance to duck into the two safety chambers.
Figure on going back there and pushing tanks ourselves unless you say no;
about half an hour's work left before we can crack the chambers, I guess, then
we'll know."
"Good. And there's no sense sending in every man with a burn, or we'll be
flooded here; they can wait, and it looks as if we'll have plenty of serious
stuff to care for. Dr. Brown, I guess you're elected to go out with the men;
have one of them drive the spare litter Jones will show you. Salve down and
inject the burn cases, put the worst ones off duty, and just send in the ones
with the jerks. You'll find my emergency kit in the office there. Someone has
to be out there to give first aid and sort them out; we haven't room for the
whole plant in here."
"Right, Dr. Ferrel." She let Meyers replace her in assisting Jenkins and was
gone briefly to come out with his bag. "Come on, you men. I'll hop the litter
and dress down your burns on the way. You're appointed driver, mister.
Somebody should have reported that Beel person before so the litter would be
out there now."
The spokesman for the others upended the glass he'd filled, swallowed, gulped
and grinned down at her. "O.K., Doctor, only out there you ain't got time to
think-you gotta do. Thanks for the shot, Doc, and I'll tell Hoke you're
appointing her out there."
They filed out behind Brown as Jones went out to get the second litter and Doc
went ahead with the quick-setting plastic cast for the broken leg. Too bad
there weren't more of those nursing doctors; he'd have to see Palmer about it
after this was over-if Palmer and he were still around. Wonder how the men in
the safety chambers, about which he'd completely forgotten, would make out?
There were two in each converter housing, designed as an escape for the men in
case of accident and supposed to be proof against almost anything. If the men
had reached them maybe they were all right; he wouldn't have taken a bet on
it, though. With a slight shrug he finished his work and went over to help
Jenkins.
The boy nodded down at the still form on the table, already showing signs of
extensive scraping and probing. "Quite a lot of spitting clean through the
armor," he commented. "Those words gave me a picture of hell boiling out
there. Isotope-713 couldn't do that!"
"Umm." Doc was in no mood to quibble on the subject. He caught himself looking
at the little box in which the stuff was put after they worked what they could
out of the flesh, and jerked his eyes away quickly. Whenever the lid was being
dropped a glow could be seen inside. Jenkins always managed to keep his eyes
on something else.
If it was Mahler's Isotope, the amount there was large enough already to blow
up the whole Infirmary, at least.


CHAPTER 7


Palmer's intercom clicked softly. "Mayor Walker's on the phone again,"
Thelma's tired voice announced.
Palmer cursed and swallowed the last of his tasteless sandwich in an unchewed
lump. This was the third call from the Mayor since he'd gone back to Kimberly,
and he was fed up with the troubles of the town. "Tell him to call back in ten
minutes," he answered. "Tell him anything you like. I won't talk to him now."
He should never have agreed to see Walker in the first place. The petition to
abolish the bus service out here wasn't that important. If the man hadn't been
in his office when the accident first happened a lot of things could have been
handled differently. But the Mayor had got to one of the phones while Palmer
had still been trying to find out what had happened, and the Governor had been
on the wire before it could be stopped. Now, instead of his own troubles he
had the worries of the town and state demanding his time.
He stared down at the tangle of walks below his window. There was nothing to
see, since the converters lay on the other side of the building. There was
only the sight of a figure in the militia uniform, pacing about under the raw
lights clutching awkwardly at his rifle. Palmer knew there were others all
over the place and still more outside the gates. There they might be of some
use if the rabble element of the anti-atom crowd proved as edgy as Walker
seemed to think, but in here they were only a nuisance.
He glanced at his watch, surprised to see the time. Peters should have
reported the latest on the emergency work long before this. He reached for the
intercom switch. "Thelma, call out there and find out what's going on!"
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded worried, and he knew she'd been noticing the
time too. "Briggs is on the line."
He picked up the receiver, to see Briggs's tired, ugly face filling the
screen. The man nodded. "We've shut down, boss. All we have to do is dump her
and test it."
There had been no trouble with the batch at Number Three. It had proceeded
exactly as Jorgenson's schedule predicted and Palmer had decided to let it
run, since there was no way of knowing what would happen if conversion stopped
before completion.
"Good work, Briggs," Palmer told him. "Think you can handle the rest of it?"
Briggs nodded and hung up. His test would be useless for the records, if
anyone ever questioned it, since he wasn't able to put a degree after his
name. But it would have to do. He knew enough to be trusted. He'd come to
National as a working student when the atomic plants were first permitted to
give field degrees, but he'd apparently liked being a foreman well enough to
stick to it, refusing to go on.
Palmer went out to the outer office, tired of the impersonal speaker. "What
about that call?" he asked the girl.
"They don't even answer!"
He almost welcomed the news. He was tired of marking time here, waiting for
God knew what word, trying to piece things together from clumsy accounts. But
there'd better be a good reason for the lack of reports or answer.
"All right," he decided. "I'm going out. If anyone calls, handle it if you
can; if not, send out a runner."
He took the stairs, not waiting for the elevator. Outside, the guard stared at
him suspiciously and started forward, then apparently recognized him and went
on pacing uselessly. Palmer headed for the converters, listening to the
confusion of human and mechanical sounds and trying to make sense of them.
Then he was where he could see for himself.
The magma inside the converter had cracked through the small door to the
power-control wing, and it was from there that the injured men had been
dragged. Now the wing was a crumpled wreck of broken walls where the machines
had battered their way in, and work there had stopped. Now they were attacking
the main entrance, where the great slab of a door had been hall-fused shut,
while other men worked on the outside walls that separated them from the
safety chambers.
But it was a sickening chaos that met his eyes instead of the orderly work
he'd expected. Every available light glared down on a tangle of men and
machines getting in each other's way, moving about helplessly and generally
only making things steadily worse. The main entrance should have been cracked
fifteen minutes ago to let in whatever equipment they could improvise to
handle the stuff. But the two bulldozers working on it seemed to be making no
progress at all.
He spotted a man he knew helping a red-haired woman he'd never seen, but who
seemed to be running some kind of a crude field hospital. He shoved his way
through until he could grab the man's arm and pull him around. "Where's
Peters? Who's running things here? And why in hell wasn't I notified?"
"Stuff got Peters twenty minutes ago." The man pointed to a figure being
lifted on a stretcher onto the litter, the head swathed in bandages. "Hoke's
been taking over."
Palmer groaned, though the mess fitted that explanation. Hokusai was one of
the best theoretical physicists in the field, but he was a hopeless idiot as a
director of others and he made things worse by considering himself almost the
exact opposite.
The manager started off at a run, heading for Number Three. He saw that the
red working lights were off, indicating that the dumping must be finished, and
hit the entrance release, waiting for the thick portal to lift enough for him
to slide under. Inside, Briggs and the men were grouped around the heavy box
beside the test bench.
"I-713," the foreman reported. "Checks out, and pretty pure, too."
That, at least, was a relief. If they ever got out of this mess, National
would need all the pull Morgan could swing, and maybe more. The committee of
congressmen had announced hours ago that they were canceling their junket to
return to Washington. Undoubtedly, the double accident had made atomic plants
unpopular with them, but he suspected that telegrams demanding action had more
to do with the change of plans.
There'd be enough I-713 to start Morgan's vote-getting test going, as soon as
any way could be found to ship it out, and that should strengthen the
congressman's convictions.
But he simply nodded acknowledgment, without stopping to comment. "Peters is
out, Hoke's running the rescue," he told Briggs. "Drop the rest of this and
get out there!"
"My God!" Briggs's face showed that he was guessing the mess. He tossed orders
over his shoulder to a few of the men, collected the others and went out of
the converter on the double. As a foreman, he could displace Hoke with no hard
feeling, since he was only doing his job. Palmer would have had to argue
longer than it took to get the other man.
By the time the manager was out, Briggs was on top of the improvised stand
yelling into the P.A. outfit. Lanes began to be cleared and the bulldozers
were coming out, while other men began chasing those too near away. A truck
took off as if eternal perdition were hanging on its rear bumper and headed
for the supply buildings.
"Get back!" Briggs was shouting. "We'll be burning that door off in three
minutes. You guys with the hammers! Spread out, make room for welding cutters.
And get the lead out. There are men inside those chambers maybe dying!"
There were other orders, but Palmer relaxed as much as he could, watching the
attempt to rescue the men. Now that the crews were organized, they began
making progress through the thick concrete-and-steel walls. Even if the main
entrance was forced first, it might be impossible to bring the men from the
converter chambers through the inside, and the only hope was to breach the
walls.
He swore at himself for that. The chambers had been meant to protect men as
much from fumes and leaks as anything else, with the idea that they could be
removed by the same crew that handled the damage. The problem of making them
with an entrance to the inside and an exit outside had seemed too difficult,
without seriously weakening the restraining strength of the housing. In the
future there would have to be a solution!
The pneumatic hammers and electric cutters bit in slowly but steadily, while
Briggs called for replacements at regular intervals. Then a shout went up,
warning everyone to turn his back. The crew near the main entrance had been
attaching a bunch of small cylindrical cans to the door, as fast as they could
be moved from the truck. Now they were running back. One of them yanked on a
cord.
Palmer turned at the last minute, knowing he was far enough away to run little
risk from the glaring heat of the superthermite, but taking no chances. That
stuff should have been used as soon as it was plain that the door was fused,
rather than merely stuck. There was a sudden thump and the ground shook a
little. He swung back to see the white-hot material of the door dripping and
running in puddles. The whole thing had fallen backward, and now machines were
moving up, while men battled to get close enough to hook on and snake it away.
One glance inside was enough to tell that there was no chance of removing the
men from the chambers through that. The converter was gone; there were only
lumps and heaps of slag to show where it had been. Magma was churning about,
beginning to flow out viscously as the door was moved. At Briggs's orders, the
remainder of the door was snaked around to form a barrier to cut it off, while
others went for block to build a roadway for the tanks over it.
Palmer stared at the stuff, watching it churn and spit like nothing he had
seen before. This was no normal product of a reaction that had got out of
control. It had to be Isotope R, the forerunner of Mahler's Isotope, the most
deadly substance that could be created!
Hoke had come up beside him and was staring into the mess, his wrinkled face
frozen in an unbelieving stare. "Bad," he said slowly. "Very bad. We musst
try, but I think we are have trouble."
He turned away gasping and holding his hand over his stomach. Palmer started
after him, but the little man straightened and smiled sickly. "It iss nothing.
Gass, I think. My stomach is sick, no more."
Palmer's own didn't feel too good. Damn Jorgenson! The man was one of the best
engineers in the industry, responsible for more patents than any other, and
yet his ego had always made the manager mistrust him. He must have gone over
his equations with the intention of proving them right, rather than
questioning them.
Then the unfairness of this struck Palmer, and he grimaced at himself.
Jorgenson wasn't well liked, but that didn't make him less honest. He'd warned
Palmer, and the manager had taken it on his own shoulders, forcing the
engineer to rush through an untried process. Now Jorgenson was in one of the
chambers, or . . .
He dropped that. The man had to be in a chamber. And they'd better get to him
soon. The stuff in there was going to need every bit of skill and knowledge
that could be mustered, and it was closer to Jorgenson's field than to Hoke's.
Tanks were beginning to edge into the magma, and he saw that Hoke was putting
on armor. But his main concern now was with the men working on the safety
chambers. They were beginning to reach the inner section of the north chamber,
and he moved to where he could get a better view. He had no business there
now-he belonged back in the office-but he couldn't leave until he knew the
results.
Then suddenly the workers were drawing back and a power grapple moved up to
begin ripping out the sections left of the wall. Armored men were waiting to
go in but they weren't needed. As the grapple drew back, a score of men began
staggering out of the chamber, some supporting others, but moving on their own
feet.
None of them was Jorgenson. The man would have towered over them, and his
trick suit should have left him in condition to move by himself if any of them
could. Palmer started to head toward the improvised first-aid section, before
realizing that the woman there would have her hands full enough without
questions.
Briggs solved it for him. A runner came from the medical group toward the
platform where the foreman was directing things and shouted up to him. Briggs
nodded and reached for the P.A. microphone. "Dr. Brown says they're suffering
from some burns and a lot of heat and shock, but they'll be all right!"
It brought a yell from the men, but the cries choked off quickly as they
turned back to look at the other chamber. Palmer moved around with them. It
had taken longer there for some reason, but they were almost through. Grapples
were standing by, waiting for the signal. Palmer edged up until he had a good
view of the broken section.
A moment later, the grapples were digging out what was left. But this time
there were no men following it out. A trickle of magma oozed out behind it.
The light that shot into the chamber showed the door locked firmly, but every
figure there was out cold, sprawled on whatever could be found to hold them
off the stuff on the floor. Some had used the bodies of others.
Armored men began going in cautiously, trying to clear a path for others to
follow with stretchers. Some began working on the wall again, trying to
enlarge the opening enough for one of the small tanks. But Palmer didn't wait
to see what they would bring out. Even if some of the men were still alive it
would be no help to him now. No human being from that chamber would be able to
work on the impossible job of checking the wild action going on until long
after the action was over. He crossed Jorgenson off his list.
Then as he stared at the stuff in the main converter chamber, he tore up his
list, leaving only a question mark and a prayer.


CHAPTER 8


Ferrel and Jenkins were almost finished with the final dressings on the last
case when the switchboard girl announced a call. They waited to make the last
few touches before answering, then filed into the office together. Brown's
face was on the screen, smudged and with a spot of rouge standing out on each
cheek. Another smudge appeared as she brushed the auburn hair out of her eyes
with the back of her wrist.
"They've cracked the converter safety chambers, Dr. Ferrel. The north one held
up perfectly, except for the heat and a little burn, but something happened in
the other. Oxygen valve stuck, I guess. Most of the men are unconscious but
alive. Magma must have sprayed through the door, because sixteen or seventeen
have the jerks, and about a dozen are dead. Some others need more care than I
can give; I'm having Hokusai delegate men to carry those the stretchers won't
hold, and they're all piling up on you in a bunch right now!"
Ferrel grunted and nodded. "Could have been worse, I guess. Don't kill
yourself out there, Brown."
"Same to you." She blew Jenkins a kiss and snapped off, just as the whine of
the litter siren reached their ears.
"Get their armor off, somehow, Jones. Grab anyone else to help you that you
can. Curare, Dodd, and keep handing it to me. We'll worry about everything
else after Jenkins and I quiet them." This was obviously going to be a mass-
production sort of business, not for efficiency, but through sheer necessity.
And again, Jenkins with his queer taut steadiness was doing two for the one
that Doc could do, his face pale and his eyes almost glazed, but his hands
moving endlessly and nervelessly on with his work.
Sometime during the night Jenkins looked up at Meyers and motioned her back.
"Go get some sleep, nurse; Miss Dodd can take care of both Dr. Ferrel and
myself when we work close together. Your nerves are shot and you need the
rest. Dodd, you can call her back in two hours and rest yourself."
"What about you, Doctor?"
"Me . . ." He grinned out of the corner of his mouth, crookedly. "I've got an
imagination that won't sleep, and I'm needed here." The sentence ended on a
rising inflection that was false to Ferrel's ear, and the older doctor looked
at the boy thoughtfully.
Jenkins caught his look. "It's okay, Doc. I'll let you know when I'm going to
crack. It was okay to send Meyers back, wasn't it?"
"You were closer to her than I was, so you should know better than I."
Technically, the nurses were all directly under his control, but they'd
dropped such technicalities long before. Ferrel rubbed the small of his back
briefly, then picked up his scalpel again.
A faint gray light was showing in the east, and the wards had overflowed into
the waiting room when the last case from the chambers was finished as best he
could be. During the night the converter had continued to spit occasionally,
even through the tank armor twice, but now there was a temporary lull in the
arrival of workers for treatment. Doc sent Jones to fetch breakfast from the
cafeteria, then headed into the office, where Jenkins was already slumped down
in the old leather chair.
The boy was exhausted almost to the limit from the combined strain of the work
and his own suppressed jitters, but he looked up in mild surprise as he felt
the prick of the needle. Ferrel finished it, and used it on himself before
explaining. "Morphine, of course. What else can we do? Just enough to keep us
going, but without it we'll both be useless out there in a few more hours.
Anyhow, there isn't as much reason not to use it as there was when I was
younger, before the counter-agent was discovered to kill most of its habit-
forming tendency. Even five years ago, before they had that, there were times
when morphine was useful, Lord knows, though anyone who used it except as a
last resort deserved all the hell he got. A real substitute for sleep would be
better, of course. Wish they'd finish up the work they're doing on that
fatigue eliminator at Harvard. Benzedrine's too limited. Here, eat that!"
Jenkins grimaced at the breakfast Jones laid out in front of him, but he knew
as well as Doc that the food was necessary, and he pulled the plate to him.
"What I'd give an eye tooth for, Doc, wouldn't be a substitute-just half an
hour of good old-fashioned sleep. Only, damn it, even if I knew I had time, I
couldn't do it-not with R out there bubbling away."
The telephone annunciator clipped in before Doc could answer. "Telephone for
Dr. Ferrel; emergency! Dr. Brown calling Dr. Ferrel!"
"Ferrel answering!" The phone girl's face popped off the screen and a tired-
faced Sue Brown looked out at them. "What is it?"
"It's that little Japanese fellow, Hokusai, who's been running things out
here, Dr. Ferrel. I'm bringing him in with an acute case of appendicitis.
Prepare surgery!"
Jenkins gagged over the coffee he was trying to swallow, and his choking voice
was halfway between disgust and hysterical laughter. "Appendicitis, Doc! My
God, what comes next?"
It might have been worse. Brown had coupled in the little freezing unit on the
litter and lowered the temperature around the abdomen, both preparing Hokusai
for surgery and slowing down the progress of the infection so that the
appendix was still unbroken when he was wheeled into the surgery. His seamed
Oriental face had a grayish cast under the olive, but he managed a faint grin.
"Very sorry, Dr. Ferrel, to bother you. Very sorry. No ether, pleasse!"
Ferrel grunted. "No need of it, Hoke; we'll use hypothermy, since it's already
begun. Over here, Jones. . . . And you might as well go back and sit down,
Jenkins."
Brown was washing, and popped out again, ready to assist with the operation.
"He had to be tied down, practically, Dr. Ferrel. Insisted that he only needed
a little mineral oil and some peppermint for his stomach-ache! Why are
intelligent people always the most stupid about these things?"
It was a mystery to Ferrel, too, but seemingly the case. He tested the
temperature quickly while the surgery cryotherapy equipment began functioning,
found it low enough, and began. Hoke flinched with his eyes as the scalpel
touched him, then opened them in mild surprise at feeling no appreciable pain.
The complete absence of nerve response with its accompanying freedom from
post-operative shock was one of the great advantages of low-temperature work
in surgery. Ferrel laid back the flesh, severed the appendix quickly and
removed it through the tiny incision. Then, with one of the numerous
attachments, he made use of the ingenious mechanical stitcher and stepped
back.
"All finished, Hoke, and you're lucky you didn't rupture. Peritonitis isn't
funny, even though we can cut down on it with the antibiotics. The ward's
full, so's the waiting room, so you'll have to stay on the table for a few
hours until we can find a place for you; no pretty nurse, either-until the two
other girls get here some time this morning. I dunno what we'll do about the
patients."
"But, Dr. Ferrel, I am hear that now surgery-I should be up already. There iss
work I am do."
"You've been hearing that appendectomy patients aren't confined now, eh? Well,
that's partly true. Johns-Hopkins began it a long time ago. But for the next
hour, while the temperature comes back to normal, you stay put. After that, if
you want to move around a little, you can; but no going out to the converter.
A little exercise probably helps more than it harms, but any strain wouldn't
be good."
"But, the danger-"
"Be hanged, Hoke. You couldn't help now, long enough to do any good. Until the
stuff in those stitches dissolves away completely in the body fluids, you're
to take it easy-and that's two weeks, about."
The little man gave in reluctantly. "Then I think I sleep now. But besst you
should call Mr. Palmer at once, pleasse! He musst know I am not there!"
Palmer took the news the hard way, with an unfair but natural tendency to
blame Hokusai and Ferrel. "Damn it, Doc, I was hoping he'd get things
straightened out somehow. I practically promised the Governor that Hoke could
take care of it; he's got one of the best brains in the business. Now this!
Well, no help, I guess. He certainly can't do it unless he's in condition to
get right into things. Maybe Jorgenson, though, knows enough about it to
handle it from a wheel chair, or something. How's he coming along-in shape to
be taken out where he can give directions to the foremen?"
"Wait a minute." Ferrel stopped him as quickly as he could. "Jorgenson isn't
here. We've got thirty-one men lying around, and he isn't one of them; and if
he'd been one of the seventeen dead, you'd know it. I didn't know Jorgenson
was working, even."
"He had to be; it was his process! Look, Ferrel, I was distinctly told that he
was taken to you-foreman dumped him on the litter himself and reported at
once! Better check up, and quick. With Hoke only half-able, I've got to have
Jorgenson!"
"He isn't here-I know Jorgenson. The foreman must have mistaken the big fellow
from the south safety for him, but that man had black hair inside his helmet.
What about the group of men who were only unconscious, or the fifteen-sixteen
hundred men outside the converter when it happened?"
Palmer wiggled his jaw muscles tensely. "Jorgenson would have reported or been
reported fifty times. Every man out there knows I'm looking for him. He's
gotta be in your ward."
"He isn't, I tell you! And how about moving some of the fellows here into the
city hospital?"
"Tried-hospital must have been tipped off somehow about the radioactives in
the flesh, and they refuse to let a man from here be brought in." Palmer was
talking with only the surface of his mind, his cheek muscles bobbing as if he
were chewing his thoughts and finding them tough. "Jorgenson-now Hoke-and
Kellar's been dead for years. Not another man in the whole country that
understands this field enough to make a decent guess, even; I get lost on page
six myself. Ferrel, could a man in a Tomlin five-shield armor suit make the
safety in twenty seconds, do you think, from-say, beside the converter?"
Ferrel considered it rapidly. A Tomlin weighed about four hundred pounds, and
Jorgenson was an ox of a man, but only human. "Under the stress of an
emergency, it's impossible to guess what a man can do, Palmer, but I don't see
how he could work his way half that distance."
"Mmmm, I figured. Could he live, then, supposing he wasn't squashed? Those
suits are almost radiation-perfect, carry their own air for twenty-four hours,
you know, to avoid any air cracks, pumping the carbon-dioxide back under
pressure and condensing the moisture out-no openings of any kind. They're used
inside the converters sometimes on tests, for that matter."
"One chance in a billion, I'd guess; but again, it's darned hard to put any
exact limit on what can be done; miracles keep happening every day. Going to
try it?"
"What else can I do? There's no alternative. I'll meet you outside Number Four
just as soon as you can make it, and bring everything you need to start
working at once. Seconds may count!" Palmer's face slid sideways and up as he
was reaching for the button, and Ferrel wasted no time in imitating the
motion.
By all logic there wasn't a chance, even in a Tomlin. But until they knew, the
effort would have to be made; chances couldn't be taken when a complicated
process had gone out of control, with now almost certainty that Isotope R was
the result-Palmer was concealing nothing, though he had stated nothing
specifically. And obviously if Hoke couldn't handle it none of the men at
other branches of National Atomic or at the smaller, partially independent
plants could make even a half-hearted stab at the job.
It all rested on Jorgenson, then. And Jorgenson must be somewhere under that
semi-molten hell that could drive through the tank armor and send men into the
Infirmary with bones broken from their own muscular anarchy!
Ferrel's face must have shown his thoughts, judging by Jenkins' startled
expression. "Jorgenson's still in there somewhere," he said quickly.
"Jorgenson! But he's the man who-Good Lord!"
"Exactly. You'll stay here and take care of the jerk cases that may come in;
Brown, I'll want you out there again. Bring everything portable we have in
case we can't move him in fast enough; get one of the trucks and fit it out
and be out with it about twice as fast as you can! I'm grabbing the litter
now." He accepted the emergency kit Brown thrust into his hands, dumped a
caffeine tablet into his mouth without bothering to wash it down, then was out
toward the litter. "Number Four, and hurry!"


Palmer was just jumping off a scooter as they cut around Number Three and in
front of the rough fence of rope strung out quite a distance beyond Four. He
glanced at Doc, nodded, and dived in through the men grouped around, yelling
orders to right and left as he went, and was back at Ferrel's side by the time
the litter had stopped.
"Okay, Ferrel, go over there and get into armor as quickly as possible! We're
going in there with the tanks, whether we can or not, and be damned to the
quenching for the moment. Briggs, get those things out of there, clean out a
roadway as best you can, throw in the big crane again, and we'll need all the
men in armor we can get-give them steel rods and get them to probing in there
for anything solid and big enough-or small enough to be a man-five minutes at
a stretch; they should be able to stand that. I'll be back pronto!"
Doc noted the confused mixture of tanks and machines of all descriptions
clustered around the walls-or what was left of them-of the converter housing,
and saw them yanking out everything along one side, leaving an opening where
the main housing gate had stood, now ripped out to expose a crane boom rooting
out the worst obstructions. Obviously they'd been busy at some kind of attempt
at quenching the action, but his knowledge of atomics was too little even to
guess at what it was. The equipment set up was being pushed aside by tanks
without dismantling, and men were running up into the roped-in section, some
already armored, others dragging on part of their armor as they went. With the
help of one of the atomjacks, he climbed into a suit himself, wondering what
he could do in such a casing if anything needed doing.
Palmer had a suit on before him, though, and was waiting beside one of the
tanks. It was squat and heavily armored, its front equipped with both a shovel
and a grapple swinging from movable beams. "In here, Doc." Ferrel followed him
into the housing of the machine and Palmer grabbed the controls as he pulled
on a short-wave headset and began shouting orders through it toward the other
tanks that were moving in on their heavy treads. The dull drone of the motor
picked up, and the tank began lumbering forward under the manager's direction.
"Haven't run one of these since that show-off at a picnic seven years ago," he
complained, as he kicked at the controls and straightened out a developing
list to left. "Though I used to be pretty handy when I was plain engineer.
Damned static around here almost chokes off the radio, but I guess enough gets
through. By the best guess I can make, Jorgenson should have been near the
main control panel when it started, and have headed for the south chamber.
Half the distance, you figure?"
"Possibly, probably slightly less."
"Yeah! And then the stuff may have tossed him around. But we'll have to try to
get there." He barked into the radio again. "Briggs, get those men in suits as
close as you can and have them fish with their rods about thirty feet to the
left of the pillar that's still up-can they get closer?"
The answer was blurred and pieces missing, but the general idea came across.
Palmer frowned. "Okay, if they can't make it, they can't; draw them back out
of the reach of the stuff and hold them ready to go in. . . . No, safety be
damned. Give me a hookup to the public-address system." He waited until Briggs
acknowledged, then leaned forward as if driving himself into his microphone.
"I need volunteers! Jorgenson's somewhere in this mess, and the only hope
we've got is to locate him. I need damned fools who are crazy enough to risk
themselves five minutes apiece in here. Family men or single, I don't care!
Any of you idiotic- Look out, you blamed fool!"
The last was to one of the score or more of men who'd started forward. The
lead atomjack was scrambling toward something that looked like a standing
position; it toppled, but he managed a leap that carried him to another lump,
steadied himself, and began probing through the mess. "Oof! You with the
crane-stick it in where you can grab any of the men that pass you, if it'll
reach. . . . Good! Doc, I know as well as you that the men have no business in
there, even five minutes; but I'll send in a hundred more if it'll find
Jorgenson!"
Doc said nothing; he knew there'd probably be a hundred or more fools willing
to try and he knew the need of them. The tanks couldn't work their way close
enough for any careful investigation of the mixed mass of radioactives,
machinery, building, debris and destruction, aside from which they were much
too slow in such delicate probing; only men equipped with the long steel poles
could do that. As he watched, some of the activity of the magma suddenly
caused an eruption, and one of the men tossed up his pole and doubled over
before falling. The crane operator shoved the big boom over and made a grab,
missed, brought it down again, and came out with the heaving body held by one
arm, to run it back along its track and twist it outward beyond Doc's vision.
Even through the tank and the suit heat was pouring in. And there was a faint
itching in those parts where the armor was thinnest that indicated the start
of a burn, though not as yet a dangerous one. He had no desire to think what
was happening to the men who were trying to worm into the heart of it in
nothing but armor; nor did he care to watch what was happening to them. Palmer
was trying to inch the machine ahead, but the stuff underneath made any
progress difficult. Twice something spat against the tank but did not
penetrate.
"Five minutes are up," he told Palmer. "They'd all better go directly to Dr.
Brown, who should be out with the truck now, for immediate treatment."
Palmer nodded and relayed the instructions. "Pick up all you can with the
crane and carry them back! Send in a new bunch, Briggs. Damn it, Doc, this can
go on all day; it'll take an hour to pry around through this mess right here,
and then he's probably somewhere else. The stuff seems to be getting worse in
this neighborhood, too, from what accounts I've had before. Wonder if that
steel plate could be pushed down?"
He threw in the clutch engaging the motor to the treads and managed to twist
through toward the plate. There was a slight slipping of the lugs, then the
tractors caught and the nose of the tank thrust forward; almost without
effort, the fragment of housing toppled from its leaning position and slid
forward. The tank growled, fumbled, and slowly climbed onto it and ran forward
another twenty feet to its end; the support settled slowly, but something
underneath checked it and they were still again. Palmer worked the grapple
forward, nosing a big piece of masonry out of the way, and two men reached out
with the ends of their poles to begin probing, futilely. Another change of men
came out, then another.
Briggs's voice crackled erratically through the phones again. "Palmer, I got a
fool here who wants to go out on the end of your beam, if you can swing around
so the crane can lift him out to it."
"Start him coming!" Again he began jerking the levers, and the tank buckled
and heaved, backed and turned, ran forward, and repeated it all, while the
plate that was holding them flopped up and down on its precarious balance.
Doc held his breath and began praying to himself! His admiration for the men
who'd go out in that stuff was increasing by leaps and bounds, along with his
respect for Palmer's ability.
The crane boom bobbed toward them, and the scoop came running out, but
wouldn't quite reach; their own tank was relatively light and mobile compared
to the bigger machine, but Palmer already had that pushed to the limit and
hanging over the edge of the plate. It still lacked three feet of reaching.
"Damn!" Palmer slapped open the door of the tank, jumped forward on the tread
and looked down briefly before coming back inside. "No chance to get closer!
Whew! Those men earn their money!"
But the crane operator had his own tricks and was bobbing the boom of his big
machine up and down slowly with a motion that set the scoop swinging like a
huge pendulum, bringing it gradually closer to the grapple beam. The man had
an arm out, and finally caught the beam, swinging out instantly from the scoop
that drew backward behind him. He hung suspended for a second, pitching his
body around to a better position, then somehow wriggled up onto the end and
braced himself with his legs. Doc let his breath out and Palmer inched the
tank around to a forward position again. Now the pole of the atomjack could
cover the wide territory before them, and he began using it rapidly.
"Win or lose, that man gets anything he wants as a bonus," Palmer muttered.
"Uh!"
The pole had located something, and was feeling around to determine size; the
man glanced at them and pointed frantically. Doc jumped forward to the windows
as Palmer ran out the grapple and began pushing it down into the semi-molten
stuff under the pole; there was resistance there but finally the prong of the
grapple broke under and struck on something that refused to come up. The
manager's hands moved the controls gently, making it tug from side to side;
reluctantly, it gave and moved forward toward them, coming upward until they
could make out the general shape. It was definitely no Tomlin suit!
"Lead hopper box! Damn- Wait. Jorgenson wasn't anybody's fool; when he saw he
couldn't make the safety, he might . . . Maybe . . ." Palmer slapped the
grapple down again, against the closed lid of the chest, but the hook was too
large. Then the man clinging there caught the idea and slid down to the hopper
chest, his armored hands grabbing at the lid. He managed to lift a corner of
it until the grapple could catch and lift it the rest of the way, and his
hands started down, to jerk upward again.
The manager watched his motions, then flipped the box over with the grapple,
and pulled it closer to the tank body; magma was running out, but there was a
gleam of something else inside.
"Start praying, Doc!" Palmer worked it to the side of the tank and was out
through the door again, letting the merciless heat and radiation stream in.
But Ferrel wasn't bothering with that now; he followed, reaching down into the
chest to help the other two lift out the body of a huge man in a five-shield
Tomlin! Somehow, they wangled the six-hundred-odd pounds out and up on the
treads, then into the housing, barely big enough for all of them. The atomjack
pulled himself inside, shut the door, and flopped forward on his face, out
cold.
"Never mind him-check Jorgenson!" Palmer's voice was heavy with the reaction
from the hunt, but he turned the tank and sent it outward at top speed,
regardless of risk. Contrarily, it bucked through the mass more readily than
it had crawled in through the cleared section.
Ferrel unscrewed the front plate of the armor on Jorgenson as rapidly as he
could, though he knew already that the man was still miraculously alive;
corpses don't jerk with force enough to move a four-hundred-pound suit
appreciably. A side glance, as they drew beyond the wreck of the converter
housing, showed the men already beginning to set up equipment to quell the
atomic reaction again, but the armor front plate came loose at last, and he
dropped his eyes back without noticing details, to cut out a section of
clothing and make the needed injections; curare first, then plasma, aminos,
neo-heroin, and curare again, though he did not dare inject the quantity that
seemed necessary. There was nothing more he could do until they could get the
man out of his armor. He turned to the atomjack, who was already sitting up,
propped against the driving seat's back.
"'Snothing much, Doc," the fellow managed. "No jerks, just burn and that
damned heat! Jorgenson?"
"Alive, at least," Palmer answered, with some relief. The tank stopped, and
Ferrel could see Brown running forward from beside a truck. "Get that suit off
you, get yourself treated for the burn, and then go up to the office. Maybe we
can fix you up with a month's paid vacation in Hawaii or something."
Surprise and doubt registered on the man's face. Then he grinned and shook his
head. "If you feel like that, boss I'd a helluva lot rather have a down-
payment on a house big enough for all my kids."
"Then pick yourself a house, and it's yours free and clear. You earned it.
Maybe we'll toss in a medal or a bottle of Scotch, too. Here, you fellows give
a hand."
Ferrel had the suit ripped off with Brown's assistance, and paused only long
enough for one grateful breath of clean, cool air before leading the way
toward the truck. As he neared it, Jenkins popped out, directing a group of
men to move two loaded stretchers onto the litter, and nodding jerkily at
Ferrel. "With the truck all equipped we decided to move out here and take care
of the damage as it came up. Sue and I rushed them through enough to take care
of them until we can find more time, so we could give full attention to
Jorgenson. He's still living!"
"By a miracle. Stay out here, Brown, until you've finished with the men from
inside, then we'll try to find some rest for you."
The three huskies carrying Jorgenson placed him on the table set up, and began
hosing off the bulky armor with versene solution, before ripping it off. They
finished, and the truck got under way. Fresh gloves came out of a small
sterilizer, and the two doctors fell to work at once, treating the badly
burned flesh and trying to locate and remove the worst of the radioactive
matter.
"No use," Doc stepped back and shook his head. "It's all over him, probably
clear into his bones in places. We'd have to put him through a filter to get
it all out!"
Palmer was looking down at the raw mass of flesh with all the layman's
sickness at such a sight. "Can you fix him up, Ferrel?"
"We can try, that's all. Only explanation I can give for his being alive at
all is that the hopper box must have been pretty well above the stuff until a
short time ago-very short-and this stuff didn't work in until it sank. He's
practically dehydrated now, apparently, but he couldn't have perspired enough
to keep from dying of heat if he'd been under all that for even an hour-
insulation or no insulation." There was admiration in Doc's eyes as he looked
down at the immense figure of the man. "And he's tough; if he weren't, he'd
have killed himself by exhaustion, even confined inside that suit and box,
after the jerks set in. He's close to having done so anyway. Until we can find
some way of getting that stuff out of him we don't dare risk getting rid of
the curare's effect; that's a time-consuming job, in itself. Better give him
another water-and-sugar intravenous, Jenkins. Then, if we do fix him up,
Palmer, I'd say it's a fifty-fifty chance whether or not all this hasn't
driven him stark-crazy."
The truck had stopped, and the men lifted the stretcher off and carried it
inside as Jenkins finished the injection. He went ahead of them, but Doc
stopped outside to take Palmer's cigarette for a long drag, and let them go
ahead.
"Cheerful!" The manager lighted another from the butt, his shoulders sagging.
"I've been trying to think of one man who might possibly be of some help to
us, Doc, and there isn't such a person anywhere. I'm sure now, after being in
there, that Hoke couldn't do it. Kellar, if he were still alive, could
probably pull the answer out of a hat after three looks; he had an instinct
and genius for it, the best man the business ever had, even if his tricks did
threaten to steal our work from under us and give us the lead. But-well, now
there's Jorgenson-either he gets in shape, or else!"
Doc nodded, only half-listening. The cigarette helped but he'd have given a
lot at the moment for a cup of good coffee or some of Emma's strong tea. Emma
...
Jenkins' frantic yell reached them suddenly. "Doc! Jorgenson's dead! He's
stopped breathing entirely!"


CHAPTER 9


Through the night Emma Ferrel had sat before the radio and the television set,
alternating between them, hugging her dressing gown about her. She had got up
only once, and that was to brew herself a pot of strong tea after she caught
herself dozing.
But there was no news on the air. Earlier there had been wild rumors and even
an account of a riot at the plant that had forced the Governor to call out the
militia. Now there was only the hourly showing of the film in which Mayor
Walker assured everyone he'd been out to the plant and that there was nothing
to fear. There were appeals for calm and for workers to report as usual. All
she had learned since dawn was that the turnpike past the plant was closed
"for construction," and that blood was badly needed at the hospital. Blood,
she knew, was something they'd need for bad cases of radiation poisoning.
She frowned, trying to remember something that had partly wakened her during
the brief time she'd been asleep. It was something about Blake, but she
couldn't remember the words, though they were on the edge of her mind.
All she knew for sure was that Roger had called to say he'd be on the night
shift; then later someone else had phoned to say he'd be late because of an
emergency operation. They were covering something up and she didn't like it.
She had listened to too much talk about the mysterious broken bits of atoms
that could come flying out, invisible but deadly as they ripped and mangled
the helpless tissues. Sometimes she pictured them as little X-ray "worms" with
savage biting teeth, though she knew better.
They had taken her second child before it was born, whatever Roger said. And
now they were trying to take her husband.
She tried calling the plant again. There was a long delay, and then the
operator told her curtly the line was out of order.
Out of pure habit, she began boiling water for another pot of tea. It was her
only source of strength now, somehow. She made it and sat sipping it, unaware
until it was finished that she'd forgotten to put milk in it. . . . Why hadn't
the paper come? It was long overdue.
She turned the sound up on the television set as one of her favorite local
reporters came on. But this morning he wasn't any different from the others.
He read his news off from a script, telling everyone that there was nothing to
worry about, and giving nothing new.
She could remember hearing almost the same words in the same tone of voice
when she was a little girl and her family had a farm on the bank of the
Missouri. She had sat on the roof of their house, staring at the water and mud
that was ruining all they owned, while a battery radio told them everything
was under control, that the river had been stopped, and that boats were
picking up all stranded people almost immediately.
Her mother had died of pneumonia and exposure after everything was "under
control."
She cut off the radio, vaguely troubled by the sounds from the street. The
traffic seemed too thin, and even the cars that did pass sounded wrong. She
went to the door, looking for the paper again. It wasn't there, but she saw
why the street sounded so quiet; there were no children playing in the yards
or on the sidewalks. The street was practically deserted, except for two women
who were hurrying along together carrying food packages, with a heavily built
man swaggering behind them frequently looking back over his shoulder. Their
voices reached her and she stopped in the door listening.
". . . her husband couldn't even get near the place. They had these guards,
see, with machine guns, chasing everybody back. Wouldn't even listen when he
told 'em he had a son inside. Course, like Paul says, it served him right for
letting the boy go there in the first place," the older woman was saying.
The second woman started to say something, but the man cut in. "A little more
of this and I'm gonna start agreeing with them that says we gotta go up there
and close that place down before we all wake up dying of something. God knows
what they're doing. Like that guy at the meeting says-"
"Ignorant Hoosiers!" the younger woman broke in. "If them atomjerks had obeyed
the law and got out when they was supposed to-"
Emma shut the door, disregarding the hatred and trying to make sense of the
words. She'd learned more than she had from the radio, at that. The plant was
cut off by guards of some kind and nobody could get in. Either it was
dangerous to go near it or the men inside were being protected from people
like the woman's husband, or whoever the man was. And it meant that some kind
of life and work must still be going on there.
Abruptly, she remembered the half-heard phrase on the radio: "Dr. Blake is
wanted at work at once." Nothing more than that. But there couldn't be too
many doctors here named Blake; and how many would be wanted "at work?" They
had practices or went to hospitals and appointments, not to work. It must mean
that Blake was missing!
She reached for the telephone again. There was another long delay before the
dial tone went on. The phone rang for minutes but there was no answer. That
meant either that Blake had already left or that Roger would still be alone
there at the plant! Then she remembered the anniversary. The Blakes didn't
always celebrate in the best-behaved way. Something might have happened to
them or they might just be refusing to answer their phone. They were capable
of anything at times like that.
She limped across the floor, staring from the kitchen into the garage. She'd
driven at one time, before they operated on her hip. Maybe not too well, but
she'd never had an accident, and several times Roger had ridden with her
without saying anything. She even had her driver's license, renewed regularly
as proof of her ability. And it wasn't as if Roger had got one of those
turbine things. She might be rusty, but with the light traffic. . .
She turned toward the stairs, her mind made up, starting the light under the
coffee on her way. She didn't want it, but she'd heard that coffee was a good
thing before driving, maybe tea would do as well, but she didn't know. She
hurried up the stairs as best she could, grabbing the first skirt and blouse
she saw, and pulling out heavy sandals. She skipped stockings and make-up. She
almost gave up on the underwear, but the idea left her feeling slimy and she
compromised by leaving off the slip. Then she ran a comb through her hair,
twisting it into a crude bun, and fastened it hastily with pins.
The coffee was boiling when she came down, but she cooled it off and swallowed
it somehow.
She spent several wasted minutes looking for the extra keys before she
discovered that Roger had left his keys in the lock, as he did too frequently.
She tested things, finding the car started easily and that the shift buttons
were in the same place. But the gas gauge registered nearly empty. She backed
out gingerly, worrying about the fenders. She'd never be able to handle the
brake well with her leg, but she could always use the hand brake for any
sudden stop. Slowly she moved out onto the street and around the corner. It
came as a shock to see that the delicatessen was crowded, but a quick glance
showed that canned food seemed to be what people were buying. Beside it, the
beauty salon was closed, as was the barbershop further on. The hardware store
was open, however and there was a big, fresh sign in the window announcing
that guns were on sale.
She found the filling station doing business, but only the owner was there. He
filled the tank, but shook his head at the charge plate she found in the glove
compartment. "Strictly cash today. Too many people packing up and leaving.
Couple dozen like that by here already." Then, as she was counting out the
money, he leaned closer. "Want a paper-today's paper?"
He pulled one out from under his coat, showing the date. "Only a buck. Cheap,
too. Those soldiers or whatever they were picked up darned near every one that
was delivered."
"Mine wasn't, this morning." She considered it, catching a glimpse of the
headline, but unable to read it. A dollar seemed like a lot, but . . .
"Maybe yours was delivered. They even picked 'em off the porches some places,
I hear. Friend at the Republican got me a few, though. Want it?"
She nodded, and spread it out on the seat, wondering why the paper had been
sent out at all if it was only to be pulled back. The headline drove all other
thoughts from her mind:

ATOM PLANT EXPLODES!
Building Demolished, Workers
Held by Force, Hint Mayor Involved.

There was a picture of the plant from the air, looking like a very bad shot
made in the early morning, and an arrow that pointed to what was supposed to
be the exploded building. She read the story quickly, sick fear inside her.
Then anger replaced it. It was all a big guess! They didn't know any more than
she did. No wonder the men had picked up the papers. From now on she'd never
read it again! She'd got it only for the columns, and they'd been getting
worse ever since it joined that chain Roger was always cursing against.
She started the car and headed down the street, throwing the paper out at the
first corner. Then she wished she'd burned it or something; a boy dived out to
rescue it and a crowd was collecting around him as she drove on.
There was very little traffic. The bars were all doing a good business, but a
lot of the other stores were closed or deserted. There were still only a few
children, always of the rougher sort, and even the adults seemed fewer than
usual, with those who were out huddled into groups. Main Street seemed ghostly
and there wasn't even a traffic cop on the busy corner.
She passed one street that had been crudely blocked oil, with a packed crowd
and a loudspeaker shouting something in anger. The sign indicated it was a
Citizens' Protest Rally.
Then she was out of the business section. Now things were quieter again. Few
cars passed her, and two of those were loaded with all sorts of equipment and
carrying whole families. The big X marks were less frequent, too; she'd been
seeing them soaped on some windows, with crude lettering warning all atomjerks
to go home-as if they weren't home, right here in Kimberly!
She drew abreast of a girl who was running along dragging two young children
with her, screaming loudly. The girl's face was red with tears. Emma braked
down carefully and leaned out. "Want a lift?"
The girl got in with her children and mumbled an address. She stared morosely
out of the window. "I'm an atomjack's wife!" she announced finally, defiantly.
"That's all right. I'm Doc's wife," Emma told her. The answer seemed to
satisfy the girl; she began trying to quiet the children. She even managed a
touch of a smile as she got out and went into an apartment building, first
looking up and down to make sure there was no one near. There wasn't a person
in sight.
Emma sighed, but it had ceased to bother her. There had been something like it
once when she was eight; something she couldn't remember had happened, and men
had started riding around in white sheets and pillow cases, while the colored
people had stood back staring whenever you met them. Something bad had
happened, and kept happening for a while until it all died away. She couldn't
recall any details, but she still could feel a touch of the fear-not fear you
could fight, but fear of something you didn't know. This was somehow like
that. Fear of something unknown was like a fog over everything.
Then she saw the Blake residence and breathed easier. Their car was parked in
front and she managed to work in behind it, hoping she wouldn't get a ticket
for being so far out. Then she was ringing the bell-or trying to, since it
wouldn't ring. She knocked on the door, getting no answer. There was no better
result at the kitchen door, though here the curtain wasn't drawn and she could
look inside. There was a mess of bottles and broken glass over everything and
a fire was burning under a charred, ruined pot.
She went back to the front, taking off her sandal and banging it against the
panel of the door. It made a horrible amount of sound, but nobody answered.
Abruptly, a window went up in a house across the street and a man's voice
yelled at her. "You, there! Get away from here! We don't want no trouble
around here! You get, you hear. I got a gun and I'll use it."
Other windows were opening. Emma felt her face turning scarlet as she hobbled
down the steps and back to her car. The idea of them thinking she wanted
trouble! For two cents . . .
Then she sobered enough to know that what they were doing might be a good
thing, if there were trouble makers. She got into the car and started it under
the suspicious eyes of the neighborhood, moving away faster than she liked.
There was still no sign from the Blake house.
Almost without thinking, she headed for the turnpike, turning on the radio and
then snapping it off in disgust. Now there were only a few cars and a number
of trucks on the road; the trucks all seemed to be filled with men in uniform
carrying guns. The road had a closed sign further on, but she went around it,
behind one of the trucks, and nobody tried to stop her. She'd learned long
before that driving a car with M.D. license plates saved a lot of bother, if
you just acted natural about what you were doing.
Then far ahead she saw the top of the plant's big flagpole, with the flag
whipping about. At least something was still there.
Now her picture of the little X-ray worms with snapping teeth began to creep
into her mind. She tried to pretend that they had all grown toothless, unable
to bite and tear at her tissues, but she couldn't convince herself. She felt
her hands growing sweaty as they always did near the place. But she drove on,
nearing the cut-off to the private road. She'd just have to go in and let them
bite. Maybe after a while they wouldn't bother her. They didn't seem to bother
Roger.
She'd partly expected the guards who were posted at the cut-off and she had
decided on the only way she might get through. If they stopped her she could
never make it work. But maybe . . .
She hugged as close as she could to the truck of uniformed men, cranking down
a window and pointing to the caduceus on the side of the car. "Ferrel.
Emergency!" she shouted. They weren't plant men, but more of the uniformed
ones, and they might not know whether Ferrel was a man or a woman doctor.
She was past them before they could make up their minds to stop her. She
watched in the rear-view mirror, but they weren't following her, at least.
The truck ahead swung off to the side, bumping over the grass-grown land
toward the top of a hill, and she saw that the road ended with another
blockade at the main gate ahead. The trick would never work here where someone
from the plant would be posted. There was no use trying anything. She'd just
have to see what happened.
The guard who came out wore the uniform of National, she saw. She tore her
eyes off the plant, where all the buildings seemed to stand as usual, except
for one ugly structure that she'd never liked anyhow. She could feel the
little sharp-toothed radiation things waiting for her just inside the gate,
but she fought against them, trying to look natural as the guard approached.
"Mrs. Ferrel! You can't go in. Absolute orders. I don't know how you got this
far."
"How's my husband?" she asked. She stared at the man, trying to remember the
name Roger had called him. Then she had it. "Is he all right, Murphy?"
The man ran a nervous hand around the inside of his cap and shook his head,
staring toward the militia work on top of the little hill. "Mrs. Ferrel, are
any of us? I dunno. He's in there somewhere, God have mercy on him. You can't
go in."
"All right," she agreed. "But I won't go back. I'll drive the car into a tree
or something if you send me back. How are your daughter's children, Murphy?"
She'd finally sorted him out from the men who got free medical help from Roger
outside the plant.
He stared at her, struggling with himself. Finally he nodded. "If you weren't
Doc's wife, I'd kick you all the way back to Kimberly," he said darkly. "But I
suppose now I gotta say you've seen too much, so you stay. And don't blame me
when it gets rough here. With those militia boys more scared to be standing
where they are than of getting the jug for desertion . . . Well, you asked for
it. Only don't get out of the car or I'll not be responsible for you."
He swung to one of the other guards. "Bill, park her in the lot back there, if
you can squeeze another in."
"Toward the front," she said quietly. "I've got to be where I can get in as
soon as the gates are open again."
He threw up his hands and nodded.
She settled back in the car after the guard had parked it with an amazing
amount of swearing and settled down to watching the corner of the Infirmary
she could just see. It hadn't been so hard to get here after all. All it took
was a little firmness and some reasoning with Murphy.


CHAPTER 10
Dodd was working artificial respiration and Jenkins had the oxygen mask in his
hands, adjusting it over Jorgenson's face, before Ferrel reached the table. He
made a grab for the pulse that had been fluttering weakly enough before, felt
it flicker feebly once, pause for about three times normal period, lift feebly
again, and then stop completely. "Adrenalin!"
"Already shot it into his heart, Doc! Cardiacine, too!" The boy's voice was
bordering on hysteria, but Palmer was obviously closer to it than Jenkins.
"Doc, you gotta-"
"Get the hell out of here!" Ferrel's hands suddenly had a life of their own as
he grabbed frantically for instruments, ripped bandages off the man's chest,
and began working against time, when time had all the advantages. It wasn't
surgery-hardly good butchery; the bones that he cut through so ruthlessly with
savage strokes of an instrument could never heal smoothly after being so
mangled. But he couldn't worry about minor details now.
He tossed back the flap of flesh and ribs that he'd hacked out. "Stop the
bleeding, Jenkins!" Then his hands plunged into the chest cavity, somehow
finding room around Dodd's and Jenkins', and were suddenly incredibly gentle
as they located the heart itself and began working on it, the skilled, exact
massage of a man who knew every function of the vital organ. Pressure here,
there, relax; pressure again-take it easy, don't rush things! It would do no
good to try to set it going as feverishly as his emotions demanded. Pure
oxygen was feeding into the lungs and the heart could safely do less work.
Hold it steady, one beat a second, sixty a minute.
It had been perhaps half a minute from the time the heart stopped before his
massage was circulating blood again; too little time to worry about damage to
the brain, the first part to be permanently affected by stoppage of the
circulation. Now if the heart could start again by itself within any
reasonable time death would be cheated again. How long? He had no idea. They'd
taught him ten minutes when he was studying medicine, then there'd been a case
of twenty minutes once, and while he was interning it had been pushed up to a
record of slightly over an hour, which still stood; but that was an
exceptional case. Jorgenson, praise be, was a normally healthy and vigorous
specimen, and he had been in first-class condition, but with the torture of
those long hours, the radioactive, narcotic and curare all fighting against
him, still one more miracle was needed to keep his life going.
Press, massage, relax; don't hurry it too much. There! For a second, his
fingers felt a faint flutter, then again; but it stopped. Still, as long as
the organ could show such signs there was hope, unless his fingers grew too
tired and he muffed the job before the moment when the heart could be safely
trusted by itself.
"Jenkins!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Ever do any heart massage?"
"Practiced it in school, on a model, but never actually. Oh, a dog in
dissection class, for five minutes. I-I don't think you'd better trust me,
Doc."
"I may have to. If you did it on a dog for five minutes, you can do it on a
man. Probably. You know what hangs on it."
Jenkins nodded, the tense nod he'd used earlier. "I know-that's why you can't
trust me. I told you I'd let you know when I was going to crack; well, it's
damned near here!"
Could a man tell his weakness, if he was about finished? Doc didn't know; he
suspected that the boy's own awareness of his nerves would speed up such a
break, if anything, but Jenkins was a queer case, taut nerves sticking out all
over him, yet a steadiness under fire that few older men could have equaled.
If he had to use him, he would. There was no other answer.
Doc's fingers were already feeling stiff-not yet tired, but showing signs of
becoming so. Another few minutes, and he'd have to stop. There was the flutter
again, one-two-three! Then it stopped. There had to be some other solution to
this; it was impossible to keep it up for the length of time probably needed,
even if he and Jenkins spelled each other. Only Michel at Mayo's could-
Mayo's! If they could get it here in time, that device he'd seen demonstrated
at their last medical convention was the answer.
"Jenkins, call Mayo's-you'll have to get Palmer's okay, I guess-ask for
Kubelik, and bring the extension where I can talk to him!"
He could hear Jenkins' voice, level enough at first, then with a depth of
feeling he'd have thought impossible in the boy. Dodd looked at him quickly
and managed a grim smile, even as she continued with the respiration; nothing
could make her blush, though it should have done so.
The boy jumped back. "No soap, Doc! Palmer can't be located, and that post-
mortem misconception at the board won't listen!"
Doc studied his hands in silence, wondering, then gave it up; there'd be no
hope of his lasting while he sent out the boy. "Okay, Jenkins, you'll have to
take over here, then. Steady does it, come on in slowly, get your fingers over
mine. Now, catch the motion? Easy, don't rush things. You'll hold out; you'll
have to! You've done better than I had any right to ask for so far, and you
don't need to mistrust yourself. There, got it?"
"Got it, Doc. I'll try, but for Pete's sake whatever you're planning get back
here quick! I'm not lying about cracking! You'd better let Meyers replace Dodd
and have Sue called back in here; she's the best nerve tonic I know."
"Call her in then, Dodd." Doc picked up a hypodermic syringe, filled it
quickly with water to which a drop of iodine added a brownish-yellow color,
and forced his tired old legs into a reasonably rapid trot out of the side
door and toward Communications. Maybe the switchboard operator was stubborn
but there were ways of handling people.
He hadn't counted on the guard outside the communications building, though.
"Halt!"
"Life or death; I'm a physician."
"Not in here-I got orders." The bayonet's menace apparently wasn't enough; the
rifle went up to the man's shoulder, and his chin jutted out with the
stubbornness of petty authority and reliance on orders. "Nobody sick here.
There's plenty of phones elsewhere. You get back, and fast!"
Doc started forward and there was a faint click from the rifle as the safety
went off; the darned fool meant what he said. Shrugging, Ferrel stepped back-
and brought the hypodermic needle up inconspicuously in line with the guard's
face. "Ever see one of these squirt curare? It can reach before your bullet
hits!"
"Curare?" The guard's eyes flicked to the needle and doubt came into them. The
man frowned. "That's the stuff that kills people on arrows, ain't it?"
"It is-cobra venom, you know. One drop on the outside of your skin and you're
dead in ten seconds." Both statements were out-and-out lies, but Doc was
counting on the superstitious ignorance of the average man about poisons.
"This little needle can spray you with it very nicely, and it may be a fast
death, but not a pleasant one. Want to put down the rifle?"
A regular might have shot; but the militiaman was taking no chances. He
lowered the rifle gingerly, his eyes on the needle, then kicked the weapon
aside at Doc's motion. Ferrel approached, holding the needle out, and the man
shrank backward and away, letting him pick up the rifle as he went past to
avoid being shot in the back. Lost time! But he knew his way around this
little building, at least, and went straight toward the girl at the board.
"Get up!" His voice came from behind her shoulder and she turned to see the
rifle in one of his hands, the needle in the other, almost touching her
throat. "This is loaded with curare, deadly poison, and too much hangs on
getting a call through to bother with physician's oaths right now, young lady.
Up! No plugs! That's right; now get over there, out of the cell-there, on your
face, cross your hands behind your back, and grab your ankles-right! Now if
you move, you won't move long!"
Those gangster pictures he'd seen were handy at that. She was thoroughly
frightened and docile. But perhaps not so much so she might not have bungled
his call deliberately. He had to put it through himself. Darn it, the red
lights were trunk lines, but which plug-? Try the inside one, it looked more
logical; he'd seen it done, but couldn't remember. Now you flip back one of
these switches-uh-uh, the other way. The tone came in assuring him he had it
right, and he dialed the operator rapidly, his eyes flickering toward the girl
lying on the floor, his thoughts on Jenkins and the wasted time running on.
"Operator, this is an emergency. I'm Walnut 7654; I want to put in a long-
distance call to Dr. Kubelik, Mayo's Hospital, Rochester, Minnesota. If
Kubelik isn't there I'll take anyone else who answers from his department.
Speed is essential."
"Very good, sir." Long-distance operators, mercifully, were usually efficient.
There were the repeated signals and clicks of relays as she put the call
through, the answer from the hospital board, more wasted time, and then a face
appeared on the screen; but not that of Kubelik. It was a much younger man.
Ferrel wasted no time in introduction. "I've got an emergency case here where
all Hades depends on saving a man, and it can't be done without that machine
of Dr. Kubelik's; he knows me, if he's there-I'm Ferrel, met him at the
convention, got him to show me how the thing worked."
"Kubelik hasn't come in yet, Dr. Ferrel; I'm his assistant. But if you mean
the heart-and-lung exciter, it's already boxed and supposed to leave for
Harvard this morning. They've got a rush case out there, and may need it-"
"Not as much as I do."
"I'll have to call- Wait a minute, Dr. Ferrel, seems I remember your name now.
Aren't you the chap with National Atomic?"
Doc nodded. "The same. Now about that machine, if you'll stop the formalities-
"
The face on the screen nodded, instant determination showing, with an
underlying expression of something else. "We'll ship it down to you instantly,
Ferrel. Got a field for a plane?"
"Not within three miles, but I'll have a truck sent out for it. How long?"
"Take too long by truck, if you need it down there, Ferrel; I'll arrange to
trans-ship in air from our special speedster to a helicopter, have it
delivered wherever you want. About- Let's see, loading plane, flying a couple
hundred miles, trans-shipping-- About half an hour's the best we can do."
"Make it the square of land south of the Infirmary, which is crossed visibly
from the air. Thanks!"
"Wait, Dr. Ferrel!" The younger man checked Doc's cutoff. "Can you use it when
you get it? It's tricky work."
"Kubelik gave quite a demonstration and I'm used to tricky work. I'll chance
it-have to. Too long to rouse Kubelik himself, isn't it?"
"Probably. Okay, I've got the telescript already from the shipping office;
it's starting for the plane. I wish you luck!"
Ferrel nodded his thanks, wondering. Service like that was welcome, but it
wasn't the most comforting thing, mentally, to know that the mere mention of
National Atomic could cause such an about-face. Rumors, it seemed, were
spreading, and in a hurry, in spite of Palmer's best attempts. Good Lord, what
was going on here? He'd been too busy for any serious worrying or to realize .
. . Well, it had got him the exciter, and for that he should be thankful.
He put through a call to Palmer, hoping the man was in his office. Luck was
with him, for once, and Palmer agreed to okay the arrival of the helicopter
without argument.
The guard was starting uncertainly off for reinforcements when Doc came out,
and he realized that the seemingly endless calls must have been over in short
order. He tossed the rifle well out of the man's reach and headed back toward
the Infirmary at a run, wondering how Jenkins had made out. It had to be all
right!
Jenkins wasn't standing over the body of Jorgenson; Brown was there instead,
her eyes moist and her face pinched in and white around the nostrils, which
stood out at full width. She looked up, shook her head at him as he started
forward, and went on working at Jorgenson's heart.
"Jenkins cracked?"
"Nonsense! This is woman's work, Dr. Ferrel, and I took over for him, that's
all. You men try to use brute force all your lives and then wonder why a woman
can do twice as much delicate work where strong muscles are a nuisance. I
chased him out and took over, that's all." But there was a catch in her voice
as she said it, and Meyers was looking down entirely too intently at the work
of artificial respiration.
"Hi, Doc!" It was Blake's voice that broke in. "Get away from there; when this
Dr. Brown needs help, I'll be right in there. I've been sleeping like a darned
fool all night, from four this morning on. I guess we were really tanked up.
We decided to cut the bell and put the phone under a pillow, for some reason.
So I didn't hear a darned thing until some idiot came around trying to break
in and the neighbors chased her. You go rest."
Ferrel grunted in relief; Blake might have been dead-drunk when he finally
reached home, which would explain his actions with the phone, but his animal
virility had soaked it out with no visible sign. The only change was the
absence of the usual cocky grin on his face as he moved over beside Brown to
test Jorgenson. "Thank the Lord you're here, Blake. How's Jorgenson doing?"
Brown's voice answered in a monotone, words coming in time to the motions of
her fingers. "His heart shows signs of coming around once in a while, but it
doesn't last. He isn't getting worse, from what I can tell, though."
"Good. If we can keep him going half an hour more, we can turn all this over
to a machine. Where's Jenkins?"
"A machine? Oh, the Kubelik exciter, of course. He was working on it when I
was there. We'll keep Jorgenson alive until then anyway, Dr. Ferrel."
"Where's Jenkins?" he repeated sharply, when she stopped with no intention of
answering the former question.
Blake pointed toward Ferrel's office, the door of which was now closed. "In
there. But lay off him, Doc. I saw the whole thing, and he feels like the
deuce about it. He's a good kid, but only a kid, and this kind of hell could
get any of us."
"I know all that." Doc headed toward the office, as much for a smoke as
anything else. The sight of Blake's rested face was somehow an island of
reassurance in this sea of fatigue and nerves. "Don't worry, Brown, I'm not
planning on dressing him down, so you needn't defend your man so carefully. If
was my fault for not listening to him."
Brown's eyes were pathetically grateful in the brief flash she threw him and
he felt like a heel for the gruffness that had been his first reaction to
Jenkins' absence. If this kept on much longer, though, they'd all be in worse
shape than the boy, whose back was toward him as he opened the door. The
still, huddled shape did not raise its head from its arm as Ferrel put his
hand onto one shoulder, and the voice was muted and distant.
"I cracked, Doc-high, wide and handsome, all over the place. I couldn't take
it! Standing there, Jorgenson maybe dying because I couldn't control myself,
the whole plant blowing up, all my fault. I kept telling myself I was okay,
I'd go on, then I cracked. Screamed like a baby! Dr. Jenkins-nerve
specialist!"
"Yeah. . . . Here, are you going to drink this, or do I have to hold your
blasted nose and pour it down your throat?" It was crude psychology but it
worked. Doc handed over the drink, waited for the other to down it and passed
a cigarette across before sinking into his own chair. "You warned me, Jenkins,
and I risked it on my own responsibility, so nobody's kicking. But I'd like to
ask a couple of questions."
"Go ahead-what's the difference?" Jenkins had obviously recovered a little,
judging from the note of defiance that managed to creep into his voice.
"Did you know Brown could handle that kind of work? And did you pull your
hands out before she could get hers in to replace them?"
"She told me she could. I didn't know before. I dunno about the other; I think
. . . Yeah, Doc, she had her hands over mine. But-"
Ferrel nodded, satisfied with his own guess. "I thought so. You didn't crack,
as you put it, until your mind knew it was safe to do so, and then you simply
passed the work on. By that definition, I'm cracking, too. I'm sitting in
here, smoking, talking to you, when out there a man needs attention. The fact
that he's getting it from two others, one practically fresh, the other at
least a lot better off than we are, doesn't have a thing to do with it, does
it?"
"But it wasn't that way, Doc. I'm not asking for grandstand stuff from
anybody."
"Nobody's giving it to you, son. All right, you screamed-why not? It didn't
hurt anything. I growled at Brown when I came in for the same reason:
exhausted over-strained nerves. If I went out there and had to take over from
them, I'd probably scream myself, or start biting my tongue. Nerves have to
have an outlet; physically it does them no good but there's a psychological
need for it." The boy wasn't convinced and Doc sat back in the chair, staring
at him thoughtfully. "Ever wonder why I'm here?"
"No, sir."
"Well, you might. Twenty-seven years ago, when I was about your age, there
wasn't a surgeon in this country-or the world, for that matter-who had the
reputation I had: any kind of surgery, brain, what have you. They're still
using some of my techniques . . . Yes, I thought you'd remember when the
association of names hit you . . . I had a different wife then, Jenkins, and
there was a baby coming. Brain tumor-I had to do it, no one else could. I did
it, somehow, but I went out of that operating room in a haze, and it was three
days later before they'd tell me she'd died: not my fault-I know that now-but
I couldn't realize it then.
"So I tried setting up as a general practitioner. No more surgery for me! And
because I was a fair diagnostician, which most surgeons aren't, I made a
living, at least. Then when this company was set up I applied for the job and
got it; I still had a reputation of sorts. It was a new field, something
requiring study and research and damned near every ability of most specialists
plus a general practitioner's, so it kept me busy enough to get over my phobia
about surgery. Compared to me, you don't know what nerves or cracking means.
That little scream was a minor incident."
Jenkins made no comment, but lighted the cigarette he'd been holding. Ferrel
relaxed farther back into the chair, knowing that he'd be called if there was
any need for his work, and glad to get his mind at least partially off
Jorgenson. "It's hard to find a man for this work, Jenkins. It takes too much
ability at too many fields, even though it pays well enough. We went through
plenty of applicants before we decided on you and I'm not regretting our
choice. As a matter of fact, you're better equipped for the job than Blake
was. Your record looked as if you'd deliberately tried for this kind of work."
"I did."
"Mmm." That was the one answer Doc had least expected; so far as he knew, no
one deliberately tried for a job at Atomics; they usually wound up trying for
it after comparing their receipts for a year or so with the salary paid by
National. "Then you knew what was needed and picked it up in toto. Mind if I
ask why?"
Jenkins shrugged. "Why not? Turnabout's fair play. It's kind of complicated,
but the gist of it doesn't take much telling. Dad-my stepfather, that is-had
an atomic plant of his own, and a darned good one too, Doc, even if it wasn't
as big as National. I was working in it as an engineer when I was fifteen. But
we were a little weak on medical radioactive development, so Dad insisted I
take up medicine at the university. That's where I met Sue, in her last year.
I had money enough to give her a rush then, even though she wasn't around
after the one year. She was already holding down a job at Mayo's while I was
boning up on medicine. Anyway . . .
"Dad got a big contract on a new process we'd worked out. It took some
swinging, but he financed the equipment and started it. . . . My guess is that
one of the controls broke through faulty construction; the process itself was
right! We'd been over it too often not to know what it would do. But when the
estate was cleaned up, I had to go back to medicine full time. Sue supported
us, and she had enough pull to swing me an internship at Mayo's. It wasn't
atomics, but I figured I'd still use what I learned on that if I could get on
here. Then you hired me."
"National can give a degree in atomics," Doc reminded the boy. The field was
still too new to be a standing university course, and there were no better
teachers in the business than such men as Palmer, Hokusai and Jorgenson. "They
pay a salary while you're learning, too."
"Umm. Takes ten years that way, and the salary's just enough for a single man.
No, I'd married Sue with the intention she wouldn't have to work again; well,
she did until I finished the internship, but I knew if I get the job here I
could support her. As an atomjack, working up to an engineer, the prospects
weren't so good. We're saving a little money now and some day maybe I'll get a
crack at it. . . . Doc, what's all this about? You babying me out of my fit?"
Ferrel grinned at the boy. "Nothing else, son, though I was curious. And it
worked. Feel all right now, don't you?"
"Mostly, except for what's going on out there-I got too much of a look at it
from the truck. Oh, I could use some sleep, I guess, but I'm okay again.
"Good." Doc had profited almost as much as Jenkins from the rambling off trail
talk, and had managed more rest from it than from nursing his own thoughts.
"Suppose we go out and see how they're making out with Jorgenson? What
happened to Hoke, come to think of it?"
"Hoke? Oh, he's in my office now, figuring out things with a pencil and paper
since we wouldn't let him go back out there. I was wondering-"
"Atomics? Then suppose you go in and talk to him; he's a good guy and he won't
give you the brush-off. Nobody else around here apparently suspected this
Isotope R business, and you might offer a fresh lead for him. With Blake and
the nurses here and the men out of the mess except for the tanks, there's not
much you can do to help on my end."
Ferrel felt more at peace with the world than he had since the call from
Palmer as he watched Jenkins head off across the surgery toward his office;
and the glance that Brown threw, first toward the boy, then back at Doc,
didn't make him feel worse. That girl could say more with her eyes than most
women could with their mouths! He went over toward the operating table, where
Blake was now working the heart massage with one of the fresh nurses attending
to respiration and casting longing glances toward the mechanical-lung
apparatus; it couldn't be used in this case, since Jorgenson's chest had to be
free for heart attention.
Blake looked up, his expression worried. "This isn't so good, Doc. He's been
sinking in the last few minutes. I was just going to call you. I-"
The last words were drowned out by the bull-throated drone that came dropping
down from above them, a sound peculiarly characteristic of the heavy Sikorsky
freighters with the modified blades they used to gain lift. Ferrel nodded at
Brown's questioning glance, but he didn't choose to shout as his hands went
around those of Blake and took over the delicate work of stimulating the
natural heart action. As Blake withdrew the sound stopped and Doc motioned him
out with his head.
"You'd better go to them and oversee bringing in the apparatus-and grab up any
of the men you see to act as porters-or send Jones for them. The machine is an
experimental model and pretty cumbersome; must weigh three-four-hundred
pounds."
"I'll get them myself; Jones is sleeping."
There was no flutter to Jorgenson's heart under Doc's deft manipulations,
though he was exerting every bit of skill he possessed. "How long since there
was a sign?"
"About four minutes now. Doc, is there still a chance?"
"Hard to say. Get the machine, though, and we'll hope." But still the heart
refused to respond, though the pressure and manipulation kept the blood
circulating and would at least prevent any starving or asphyxiation of the
body cells. Carefully, delicately, he brought his mind into his fingers,
trying to woo a faint quiver. Perhaps he did, once, but he couldn't be sure.
It all depended on how quickly they could get the machine working now and how
long a man could live by manipulation alone. That point was still unsettled.
But there was no question about the fact that the spark of life burned faintly
and steadily lower in Jorgenson, while outside the man-made hell went on
ticking off the minutes that separated it from becoming Mahler's Isotope.
Normally Doc was an agnostic, but now unconsciously his mind slipped back into
the simple faith of his childhood, and he heard Brown echoing the prayer that
was on his lips. The second hand of the watch before him swung around and
around and around again before he heard the sound of men's feet at the back
entrance, and still there was no definite quiver from the heart under his
fingers. How much time did he have left, if any, for the difficult and
unfamiliar operation required?
His side glance showed the seemingly innumerable filaments of platinum that
had to be connected into the nerves governing Jorgenson's heart and lungs, all
carefully coded, yet almost terrifying in their complexity. If he made a
mistake anywhere it was at least certain there would be no time for a second
trial; if his fingers shook or his tired eyes clouded at the wrong instant
there would be no help from Jorgenson. Jorgenson would be dead!


CHAPTER 11


"Take over massage, Brown," he ordered, "and keep it up no matter what
happens. Good. Dodd, assist me, and hang onto my signals. If it works we can
all rest afterward."
He turned toward the machine, his hasty glance showing that the technicians
had already plugged it into the electrical outlets. He waved them aside
brusquely and kicked on the supersonics and ultra-violet tubes. Keeping the
operating theater properly aseptic had become impossible.
"Dr. Ferrel! Wait-"
It was one of the men who'd delivered the machine, but Doc had no time to
waste on routine instructions. He swung back to Jorgenson, motioning irritably
toward Jones. "Get those men out of the way. And prepare blood to replace
Jorgenson's once this is finished!"
Ferrel wondered grimly with that part of his mind that was off by itself
whether he could justify his boast to Jenkins of having been the world's
greatest surgeon; it had been true once, he knew with no need for false
modesty, but that was long ago and this was at best a devilish job. He'd hung
on with a surge of the old fascination as Kubelik had performed it on a dog at
the convention, and his memory for such details was still good, as were his
hands. But something else goes into the making of a great surgeon and he
wondered if that was still with him.
Then as his fingers made the microscopic little motions needed and Dodd became
another pair of hands, he ceased wondering. Whatever it was, he could feel it
surging through him and there was a pure joy to it somewhere, over and above
the urgency of the work. This was probably the last time he'd ever feel it,
and if the operation succeeded, probably it was a thing he could put with the
few mental treasures that were still left from his former success. The man on
the table ceased to be Jorgenson, the excessively gadgety Infirmary became
again the main operating theater of that same Mayo's which had produced Brown
and this strange new machine, and his fingers were again those of the Great
Ferrel, the miracle boy from Mayo's, who could do the impossible twice before
breakfast without turning a hair.
Some of his feeling was devoted to the machine itself. Massive, ugly, with
parts sticking out in haphazard order, it was more like something from an
inquisition chamber than a scientist's achievement, but it worked; he'd seen
it functioning. in that ugly mass of assorted pieces little currents were
generated and modulated to feed out to the heart and lungs and replace the
orders given by a brain that no longer worked or could not get through, to
coordinate breathing and beating according to the need. It was a product of
the combined genius of surgery and electronics, but wonderful as the exciter
was, it was distinctly secondary to the technique Kubelik had evolved for
selecting and connecting only those nerves and nerve bundles necessary and
bringing the almost impossible into the limits of surgical possibility.
Brown interrupted, and that interruption in the midst of such an operation
indicated clearly the strain she was under. "The heart fluttered a little
then, Dr. Ferrel."
Ferrel nodded, untroubled by the interruption. Talk, which bothered most
surgeons, was habitual in his own little staff and he always managed to have
one part of his mind reserved for that while the rest went on without
noticing. "Good. That gives us at least double the leeway I expected."
His hands went on, first with the heart, which was the more pressing danger.
Would the machine work, he wondered, in this case? Curare and radioactives,
fighting each other, were an odd combination. Yet the machine controlled the
nerves close to the vital organ, pounding its message through into the
muscles, where the curare had a complicated action that paralyzed the whole
nerve, establishing a long block to the control impulses from the brain. Could
the nerve impulses from the machine be forced through the short paralyzed
passages? Probably-the strength of its signals was controllable. The only
proof was in trying.
Brown drew back her hands and stared down uncomprehendingly. "It's beating,
Dr. Ferrel! By itself . . . it's beating!"
He nodded again, though the mask concealed his smile. His technique was still
not faulty and he had performed the operation correctly after seeing it once
on a dog! He was still the Great Ferrel! Then, the ego in him fell back to
normal, though the lift remained, and his exultation centered around the more
important problem of Jorgenson's living. And later when the lungs began moving
of themselves as the nurse stopped working them, he was expecting it. The
detail work remaining was soon over and he stepped back, dropping the mask
from his face and pulling off his gloves.
"Congratulations, Dr. Ferrel!" The voice was guttural, strange. "A truly great
operation-truly great. I almost stopped you but now I am glad I did not; it
was a pleasure to observe you, sir." Ferrel looked up in amazement at the
bearded, smiling face of the man who had interrupted him before the operation,
and abruptly he realized it was the face of Kubelik himself! He started to
mutter words of explanation for not recognizing the surgeon. But Kubelik
apparently expected no apology as his huge hand clasped around Doc's.
"I, Kubelik, came, you see; I could not trust another with the machine, and
fortunately I made the plane. Then when you had me shoved aside before I could
offer my help, I knew there was no time for arguments. And you seemed so sure,
so confident . . . I remained quietly on the sidelines, cursing myself. Now I
shall return-since you have no need of me-the wiser for having watched you. .
. . No, not a word; not a word from you, sir. Don't destroy your miracle with
words. The 'copter awaits me, I go; but my admiration for you remains
forever!"
Ferrel still stood looking down at his hand as the roar of the 'copter cut in,
then at the breathing body with the artery on the neck now pulsing regularly.
That was all that was needed; he had been admired by Kubelik, the man who
thought all other surgeons were fools and nincompoops. For a second or so
longer he treasured it, then shrugged it off.
"Now," he said to the others, as the troubles of the plant fell back on his
shoulders, "all we have to do is hope that Jorgenson's brain wasn't injured by
the session out there, or by this continued artificially maintained life, and
try to get him in condition so he can talk before it's too late. God grant us
time! Blake, you know the detail work as well as I do and we can't both work
on it. You and the fresh nurses take over, doing the bare minimum needed for
the patients scattered around the wards and waiting room. Any new ones?"
"None for some time; I think they've reached a stage where that's over with,"
Brown said.
"I hope so. Then go round up Jenkins and lie down somewhere. That goes for you
and Meyers too, Dodd. Blake, give us three hours if you can, then get us up.
There won't be any new developments before then, and we'll save time in the
long run by resting. Jorgenson's to get first attention!"
The old leather chair made a fair sort of bed, and Ferrel was too exhausted to
benefit as much as he should from sleep of three hours' duration, for that
matter, though it was almost imperative he try. Idly, he wondered what Palmer
would think of all his safeguards had he known that Kubelik had come into the
place so easily and out again. Not that it mattered; it was doubtful whether
anyone else would want to come near, let alone inside the plant.
In that, apparently, he was wrong. It was considerably less than the three
hours when he was awakened to hear the bull-roar of a helicopter outside. But
sleep clouded his mind too much for curiosity and he started to drop back into
his slumber. Then another sound cut in, jerking him out of his drowsiness. It
was the sharp sputter of a machine gun from the direction of the gate, a pause
and another burst; an eddy of sleep-memory indicated that it had begun before
the helicopter's arrival, so it couldn't be that they were shooting at. More
trouble, and though it was none of his business he could not go back to sleep.
He got up and went out into the surgery, just as a gnomish little man hopped
out from the rear entrance.
The fellow scooted toward Ferrel after one birdlike glance at Blake, his words
spilling out with a jerky self-importance that should have been funny, but
missed it by a small margin; under the surface, sincerity still managed to
show. "Dr. Ferrel? Uh-Dr. Kubelik-Mayo's, you know-he reported you were
shorthanded; stacking patients in the other rooms. We volunteered for duty-me,
four other doctors, nine nurses. Probably should have checked with you, but
couldn't get a phone through. Took the liberty of coming through directly,
fast as we could push our 'copters." Ferrel glanced through the back and saw
that there were three of the machines, instead of the one he'd thought, with
men and equipment piling out of them. Mentally he kicked himself for not
asking help when he'd put through the call; but he'd been used to working with
his own little staff for so long that the ready response of his profession to
emergencies had been almost forgotten.
"You know that you're taking chances coming here? Then in that case I'm
grateful to you and Kubelik. We've got about forty patients here, all of whom
should have considerable attention, though I frankly doubt whether there's
room for you to work."
The man hitched his thumb backward jerkily. "Don't worry about that. Kubelik
goes the limit when he arranges things. Everything we need with us,
practically all the hospital's atomic equipment; though maybe you'll have to
piece us out there. Even a field hospital tent, portable wards for every
patient you have. Want relief in here, or would you rather have us simply move
out the patients to the tent, leave this end to you? Oh, Kubelik sent his
regards. Amazing of him!"
Kubelik, it seemed, had a tangible idea of regards, however dramatically he
was inclined to express them; with him directing the volunteer force, the
wonder was that the whole staff and equipment hadn't been moved down. "Better
leave this end," Ferrel decided. "Those in the wards will probably be better
off in your tent as well as the men now in the waiting room; we're equipped
beautifully for all emergency work, but not used to keeping the patients here
any length of time, so our accommodations that way are rough. Dr. Blake will
show you around and help you get organized in the routine we use here. He'll
get help for you in erecting the tent, too. By the way, did you hear the
commotion by the entrance as you were landing?"
"We did, indeed. We saw it, too-bunch of men in some kind of uniform shooting
a machine gun; hitting the ground, though. Bunch of other people running back
away from it, shaking their fists, looked like. We were expecting a dose of
the same, maybe; didn't notice us, though."
Blake snorted in half-amusement. "You probably would have got it if our
manager hadn't forgotten to give orders covering the air approach; they must
figure that's an official route." He beckoned the little doctor after him,
then turned his head to address Brown over his shoulder. "Show Doc the results
while I'm gone, honey."
Ferrel forgot his new recruits and swung back to the girl. "Bad?"
She made no comment, but picked up a lead shield and placed it over
Jorgenson's chest so that it cut off all radiation from the lower part of his
body, then placed the radiation indicator close to the man's throat. Doc
looked once; no more was needed. It was obvious that Blake had already done
his best to remove the radioactive from all parts of the body needed for
speech, in the hope that they might strap down the others and block them off
with local anesthetics; then the curare could have been counteracted long
enough for such information as was needed. Equally obviously, he'd failed.
There was no sense in going through the job of neutralizing the drug's block
only to have him under the control of the radioactive still present. The stuff
was too finely dispersed for surgical removal. Now what? He had no answer.
Jenkins' lean-sinewed hand took the indicator from him for inspection. The boy
was already frowning as Doc looked up in faint surprise, and his face made no
change. He nodded slowly. "Yeah. I figured as much. That was a beautiful piece
of work you did, too. Too bad. I was watching from the door and you almost
convinced me he'd be all right, the way you handled it. But. . . So we have to
make out without him; and Hoke and Palmer haven't even cooked up a lead that's
worth a good test. Want to come into my office, Doc? There's nothing we can do
here."
Ferrel followed Jenkins into the little office off the now-empty waiting room;
the men from the hospital had worked rapidly, it seemed. "So, you haven't been
sleeping, I take it? Where's Hokusai now?"
"Out there with Palmer; he promised to behave, if that'll comfort you. . . .
Nice guy, Hoke; I'd forgotten what it felt like to talk to an atomic engineer
without being laughed at. Palmer, too. I wish. . . " There was a brief light
in the boy's face and the first glow of normal human pride Doc had seen in
him. Then he shrugged, and it vanished back into his taut cheeks and reddened
eyes. "We cooked up the wildest kind of a scheme, but it isn't so hot."
Hoke's voice came out of the doorway, as the little man came in and sat down
carefully in one of the three chairs. "No, not so hot! It iss fail already.
Jorgensson?"
"Out, no hope there! What happened?"
Hoke spread his arms, his eyes almost closing. "Nothing. We knew it could
never work, not so? Misster Palmer, he iss come soon here, then we make planss
again. I am think now besst we should move from here. Palmer, I-mostly, we are
theoreticians; and excuse, you alsso, doctor. Jorgensson wass the production
man. No Jorgensson, no-ah-soap!"
Mentally, Ferrel agreed about the moving and soon! But he could see Palmer's
point of view; to give up the fight was against the grain somehow. And
besides, once the blow-up happened, with the resultant damage to an unknown
area, the pressure groups would have a field day. They might even force the
congressional committee to go further than the current bill to move all atomic
plants out into some barren section where workers couldn't be persuaded to
follow; the crackpot fringe that had been shouting for the end of all
tinkering with atomics might sweep into complete control. If by some streak of
luck Palmer could save the plant with no greater loss of life and property
than already existed, there would be enough proof that atomics could be
handled safely to win over the saner elements, and the benefits from the
products National made would again outweigh all risks. But . . .
"Just what will happen if it all goes off?" he asked.
Jenkins shrugged, biting at his inner lip as he went over a sheaf of papers on
the desk covered with the scrawling symbols of atomics. "Anybody's guess.
Suppose three tons of the army's new explosive were to explode in a billionth
of a second. Normally, you know, compared to atomics, that stuff burns like
any fire, slowly and quietly, giving its gases plenty of time to get out of
the way in an orderly fashion. Figure it one way, with this all going off
together, and the stuff could drill a hole that'd split open the whole
continent from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and leave a lovely sea where
the Middle West is now. Figure it another, and it might only kill off
everything within fifty miles of here. Somewhere in between is the chance we
count on. This isn't a hydrogen bomb, you know."
Doc winced. He'd been picturing the plant going up in the air violently, with
maybe a few buildings somewhere near it, but nothing like this. It had been
purely a local affair in his mind but this didn't sound like one. No wonder
Jenkins was in that state of suppressed jitters; it wasn't too much
imagination but too much cold, hard knowledge that was worrying him. Ferrel
looked at their faces as they bent over the symbols once more, tracing out
point by point their calculations in the hope of finding one overlooked
loophole, then decided to leave them alone.
The whole problem was hopeless without Jorgenson, it seemed, and Jorgenson was
his responsibility; if the plant went, it was squarely on the senior
physician's shoulders. But there was no apparent solution. If it would help,
he could cut it down to a direct path from brain to speaking organs, strap
down the body and block off all nerves below the neck, using an artificial
larynx instead of the normal breathing through vocal cords. But the indicator
showed the futility of it; the orders could never get through from the brain
with the amount of radioactive still present throwing them off track-even
granted that the brain itself was not affected, which was doubtful.
Fortunately for Jorgenson the stuff was all finely dispersed around the head,
with no concentration at any one place that was unquestionably destructive to
his mind; but the good fortune was also the trouble, since it could not be
removed by any means known to medical practice. Even so simple a thing as
letting the man read the questions and spell out the answers by winking an
eyelid as they pointed to the alphabet was hopeless.
Nerves! Jorgenson had his blocked out, but Ferrel wondered if the rest of them
weren't in as bad a state. Probably somewhere well within their grasp there
was a solution that was being held back because the nerves of everyone in the
plant were blocked by fear and pressure that defeated its own purpose.
Jenkins, Palmer, Hokusai-under purely theoretical conditions, any one of them
might spot the answer to the problem, but the sheer necessity of finding it
could be the thing that hid it. The same might be true with the problem of
Jorgenson's treatment. Yet, though he tried to relax and let his mind stray
idly around the loose ends and seemingly disconnected knowledge he had, it
returned incessantly to the need for doing something, and doing it now!
Ferrel heard weary footsteps behind him and turned to see Palmer coming from
the front entrance. The man had no business walking into the surgery, but such
minor rules had gone by the board hours before.
"Jorgenson?" Palmer's conversation began with the same question in the usual
tone, and he read the answer from Doc's face with a look that indicated it was
no news. "Hoke and that Jenkins kid still in there?"
Doc nodded, and plodded behind him toward Jenkins' office; he was useless to
them but there was still the idea that in filling his mind with other things
some little factor he had overlooked might have a chance to come forth. Also,
curiosity still worked on him, demanding to know what was happening. He
flopped into the third chair and Palmer squatted down on the edge of the
table.
"Know a good spiritualist, Jenkins?" the manager asked. "Because if you do,
I'm about ready to try calling back Kellar's ghost. The Steinmetz of atomics-
so he had to die before this Isotope R came up, and leave us without even a
good guess at how long we've got to crack the problem. Hey, what's the
matter?"
Jenkins' face had tensed and his body straightened back tautly in his chair,
but he shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching wryly. "Nothing.
Nerves, I guess. Hoke and I dug out some things that give an indication on how
long this runs, though. We still don't know exactly, but from observations out
there and the general theory before, it looks like something between six and
thirty hours left; probably ten's closer to being correct!"
"Can't be much longer. It's driving the men back right now! Even the tanks
can't get in where they can do the most good, and we're using the shielding
around Number Three as a headquarters for the men; in another half hour, maybe
they won't be able to stay that near the thing. Radiation indicators won't
register any more, and it's spitting all over the place almost constantly.
Heat's terrific; it's gone up to around three hundred centigrade and sticks
right there now, but that's enough to warm up Three, even."
Doc looked up. "Number Three?"
"Yeah. Nothing happened to that batch; it ran through and came out I-713 right
on schedule, hours ago." Palmer reached for a cigarette, realized he had one
in his mouth and slammed the package back on the table. "Significant data,
Doc; if we get out of this, we'll figure out just what caused the change in
Four-if we get out! Any chance of making those variable factors work, Hoke?"
Hokusai shook his head, and again Jenkins answered from the notes. "Not a
chance. Sure, theoretically, at least, R should have a period varying between
twelve and sixty hours before turning into Mahler's Isotope, depending on what
chains or subchains of reactions it goes through; they all look equally good
and probably are all going on in there now, depending on what's around to soak
up neutrons or let them roam, the concentration and amount of R together, and
even high or low temperatures that change their activity somewhat. It's one of
the variables, no question about that."
"The spitting iss prove that," Hoke supplemented.
"Sure. But there's too much of it together and we can't break it down fine
enough to reach any safety point where it won't toss energy around like rain.
The minute one particle manages to make itself into Mahler's, it'll crash
through with energy enough to blast the next over the hump and into the same
thing instantly and that passes it on to the next at about light speed! If we
could get it juggled around so some would go off first, other atoms a little
later and so on, fine. . . . Only we can't do it unless we can be sure of
isolating every blob bigger than a tenth of a gram from every other one! And
if we start breaking it down into reasonably small pieces we're likely to have
one strike on the short transformation subchain and go off at any time; pure
chance gave us a concentration to begin with that eliminated the shorter
chains, but we can't break it down into small lots and those into smaller lots
and so on. Too much risk!"
Ferrel had known vaguely that there were such things as variables but the
theory behind them was too new and too complex for him; he'd learned what
little he knew when the simpler radioactives proceeded normally from radium to
lead, as an example, with a definite, fixed half-life, instead of the
superheavy atoms they now used that could jump through several different
paths, yet end up the same. He'd had it explained to him, but the complexity
of the extra electron shells was made worse by references to packed shells;
the engineers talked about doubled nuclei, meson chains and a host of other
things and then turned around and denied that they really meant any of them!
He'd thought once he was getting somewhere when he heard them discussing
fractionating bonds, only to find that they considered each bond-whatever it
was-in quantum terms, and hence indivisible! Hoke and Jenkins managed to make
all previous discussions he'd heard sound like kindergarten stuff.
It was over his head, and he started to get up and go back to Jorgenson.
Palmer's words stopped him. "I knew it, of course, but I hoped maybe I was
wrong. Then-we evacuate! No use fooling ourselves any longer. I'll call the
Governor and try to get him to clear the country around; Hoke, you can tell
the men to get the hell out of here! All we ever had was the counteracting
isotope to hope on and no chance of getting enough of that. There was no sense
in making I-631 in thousand-pound batches before. Well . . ."
He reached for the phone but Ferrel cut in. "What about the men in the wards?
They're loaded with the stuff, most of them with more than a gram apiece
dispersed through them. They're in the same class with the converter, maybe,
but we can't just pull out and leave them!"
Silence hit them, to be broken by Jenkins' hushed whisper. "My God! What
damned fools we are. I-631 under discussion for hours, and I never thought of
it. Now you two throw the connection in my face and I still almost miss it!"
"I-631? But there iss not enough. Maybe twenty-five pound, maybe less. Three
and a half dayss to make more. The little we have would be no good, Dr.
Jenkinss. We forget that already." Hoke struck a match to a piece of paper,
shook one drop of ink onto it and watched it continue burning for a second
before putting it out. "So. A drop of water for stop a foresst fire. No!"
"Wrong, Hoke. A drop to short a switch that'll turn on the real stream-maybe.
Look, Doc, I-631's an isotope that reacts atomically with R-we've checked on
that already. It simply gets together with the stuff and the two break down
into non-radioactive elements and a little heat. It's like a lot of other such
atomic reactions but it isn't the violent kind. They simply swap parts in a
friendly way and open up to simpler atoms that are stable. We have a few
pounds on hand, can't make enough in time to help with Number Four, but we do
have enough to treat every man in the wards, including Jorgenson!"
"How much heat?" Doc snapped out of his lethargy into the detailed thought of
a good physician. "In atomics you may call it a little; but would it be small
enough in the human body?"
Hokusai and Palmer were practically riding the pencil as Jenkins figured. "Say
five grams of the stuff in Jorgenson, to be on the safe side, less in the
others. Time for reaction . . . Here's the total heat produced and the
probable time taken by the reaction in the body. The stuff's water-soluble in
the chloride we have of it, so there's no trouble dispersing it. What do you
make of it, Doc?"
"Fifteen to eighteen degrees temperature rise at a rough estimate. Uh!"
"Too much! Jorgenson couldn't stand ten degrees right now!" Jenkins frowned
down at his figures, tapping nervously with his hand.
Doc shook his head. "Not too much! We can drop his whole body temperature
first in the hypothermy bath down to eighty degrees, then let it rise to a
hundred, if necessary, and still be safe. Thank the Lord, there's equipment
enough. If they'll rip out the refrigerating units in the cafeteria and
improvise baths the volunteers out in the tent can start on the other men
while we handle Jorgenson. At least that way we can get the men all out even
if we don't save the plant!"
Palmer stared at them in confusion before his face galvanized into resolution.
"Refrigerating units-volunteers-tent? What- Okay, Doc, what do you want?" He
reached for the telephone and began giving orders for the available I-631 to
be sent to the surgery, for men to rip out the cafeteria cooling equipment and
for such other things as Doc requested. Jenkins had already gone to instruct
the medical staff in the field tent, but was back in the surgery before Doc
reached it with Palmer and Hokusai at his heels.
"Blake's taking over out there," Jenkins announced. "Says if you want Dodd,
Meyers, Jones, or Sue, they're sleeping."
"No need. Get over there out of the way, if you must watch," Ferrel instructed
the two engineers as he and Jenkins began attaching the freezing units and
bath to the sling on the exciter. "Prepare his blood for it, Jenkins; we'll
force it down as low as we can to be on the safe side. And we'll have to keep
tabs on the temperature fall and regulate his heart and breathing to what it
would be normally in that condition; they're both out of his normal control
now."
"And pray," Jenkins added. He grabbed the small box out of the messenger's
hand before the man was fully inside the door and began preparing a solution,
weighing out the whitish powder and measuring water carefully, but with the
speed that was automatic to him under tension. "Doc, if this doesn't work-if
Jorgenson's crazy or something-you'll have another case of insanity on your
hands. One more false hope would finish me."
"Not one more case; four! We're all in the same boat. Temperature's falling
nicely; I'm rushing it a little but it's safe enough. Down to ninety-six now."
The thermometer under Jorgenson's tongue was one intended for cryotherapy
work, capable of rapid response, instead of the normal fever thermometer.
Slowly, with agonizing reluctance, the little needle on the dial moved over,
down to ninety, then on. Doc kept his eyes glued to it, slowing the pulse and
breath to the proper speed. He lost track of the number of times he sent
Palmer back out of the way, and finally gave up.
Waiting, he wondered how those outside in the field hospital were doing. Still
they had ample time to arrange their makeshift cooling apparatus and treat the
men in groups-ten hours probably; and hypothermy was a standard thing now.
Jorgenson was the only real rush case. Almost imperceptibly to Doc, but
speedily by normal standards the temperature continued to fall. Finally it
reached seventy-eight.
"Ready, Jenkins, make the injection. That enough?"
"No. I figure it's almost enough but we'll have to go slow to balance out
properly. Too much of this stuff would be almost as bad as the other. Gauge
going up, Doc?"
It was, much more rapidly than Ferrel liked. As the injection coursed through
the blood vessels and dispersed out to the fine deposits of radioactive the
needle began climbing past eighty, to ninety and up. It stopped at ninety-four
and slowly began falling as the cooling bath absorbed heat from the cells of
the body. The radioactivity meter still registered the presence of Isotope R,
though much more faintly.
The next shot was small, and a smaller one followed. "Almost," Ferrel
commented. "Next one should about do the trick."
Using partial injections there had been need for less drop in temperature than
they had given Jorgenson but there was small loss to that. Finally, when the
last minute bit of the I-631 solution had entered the man's veins and done its
work, Doc nodded, "No sign of activity left. He's up to ninety-five, now that
I've cut off the refrigeration, and he'll pick up the little extra temperature
in a hurry. By the time we can counteract the curare, he'll be ready. That'll
take about thirty minutes, Palmer."
The manager nodded, watching them dismantling the hypothermy equipment and
going through the routine of canceling out the curare. It was always a slower
job than treatment with the drug but part of the work had been done already by
the normal body processes and the rest was a simple, standard procedure.
Fortunately the neoheroin would be nearly worn off or that would have been a
longer and much harder problem to eliminate.
"Telephone for Mr. Palmer. Calling Mr. Palmer. Send Mr. Palmer to the
telephone." The operator's words lacked the usual artificial exactness, and
were only a nervous sing-song. It was getting her, and she wasn't bothered by
excess imagination normally. "Mr. Palmer is wanted on the telephone."
"Palmer." The manager picked up an instrument at hand; it was not equipped
with vision and there was no indication of who the caller was. But Ferrel
could see what little hope had appeared at the prospect of Jorgenson's revival
disappearing. "Check! Move out of there and prepare to evacuate but keep quiet
about that until you hear further orders! Tell the men Jorgenson's about out
of it so they won't lack for something to talk about."
He swung back to them. "No use, Doc, I'm afraid. We're already too late. The
stuff's stepped it up again and they're having to move out of Number Three
now. I'll wait on Jorgenson, but even if he's all right and knows the answer
we can't probably get in to use it!"


CHAPTER 12


Palmer was heading past the Administration building toward Briggs and the crew
working on Number Four but he stopped himself abruptly. The sight of him
observing them without any more answer than they had was the last thing that
would help. Briggs was capable of doing everything that they could do now
anyhow. Even from a distance it was easy to see that there wasn't much anyone
could do, but get out of the stuff's way. Men were no longer going anywhere
near it.
Anything they could find as an answer-from Jorgenson or on their own-would be
useless unless it could be done in heavy tanks and at a distance. If there had
been enough I-631, of course, they could spray it over the magma. But there
wasn't.
He turned back reluctantly, passing a group of men lugging up shields to be
added to the light tractors and tanks. It was beginning to get them, finally.
Up to now they'd been willing to accept it as a challenge and to leave the
solution to him. But now they were giving up. He'd already had a report on a
small group who had tried to crash out through the freight loading yard and
another who had apparently been trying to force the main gate. So far the
guards had no serious trouble. But if the men here ever really wanted out, one
of the tanks would clear the way in a hurry. There'd be riots and general hell
in plenty, though, if any stuck with him.
He could feel his own nerves going. The proof of it was that he kept thinking
of more and more fantastic schemes, though the logical part of his mind knew
that nearly any good solution is the simplest way rather than the most
complicated. Transmutation hadn't been solved by magical rigmarole but by
knowledge and the simple accumulation of enough of the right elements in the
right place. The mechanisms of the converter were simpler than those of the
old cyclotron, though they could put out neutrons by the pound and mesons in
almost any concentration.
He headed for his office, half-thinking that he might get a quick shower
there. If he could relax he might do no more but he'd be in a better position
to get work out of others.
He knew his mistake as soon as he stepped inside and saw Thelma's face. All
the calls that had been piling up were still waiting for him, only stalled off
by her tricks.
"What is it?" he asked bitterly.
"Mayor Walker right now," she told him. "He's the worst."
Palmer took the call in his office, reaching for the bottle under his desk as
he did so. It wasn't the equal of a shower but something was needed to keep
him going. "All right, Walker," he said. "You're first in line but there are
plenty more. What gives?"
He was still cursing the luck that had placed Walker in his office at the
moment the mess started. But at least the man was now doing his best to stick
to the point and make it brief as he outlined the situation.
Kimberly had finally started to get out of hand. Palmer felt reasonably sure
that Guilden hadn't been behind the blatantly false headlines or the
bootlegging of copies after the issue was supposedly confiscated under the
Governor's emergency orders; it bore the mark of a real fanatic and Guilden
wasn't that far gone from his publishing standards. But it didn't matter. The
confiscation had convinced the fools that the story was true and the fact that
there were no real details merely encouraged them to read what they liked into
the bootlegged copies. The mob gatherings were doing the rest. So far no real
violence had occurred but the level of fear couldn't be whipped much higher
without exploding in all directions, though aimed at the plant.


Palmer cut Walker short. "There's nothing I can do, Walker. And maybe nothing
any of us will care about tomorrow. We've about given up!"
The man's face whitened, grew sick and then amazingly firmed into itself
again. He took a deep breath, grimaced and nodded. "I suppose we'll get it
when you do, eh? Yeah. Well, will it make any difference what happens here,
Palmer?"
"I don't know. It might help with that slim chance we have."
"All right." Walker was suddenly commander of his forces and himself again.
"If it's that way we'll keep them in line somehow. Let me know if there's
anything at all we can do."
He hung up.
It proved what Palmer had been sure of all along. Given enough truth about his
situation a man could face almost anything. But when the attack came in the
dark and he had no idea what he was fighting he broke and went crazy. The
whole cover-up insisted on by the Governor had been a mistake from the start.
In the minor emergency matters of normal politics it probably made sense, but
not on anything at this level.
But it hadn't been the fault of politicians only. It had started with the
plants themselves. They'd given up on trying to explain the facts to the
people-tough almost indigestible facts couched in abstruse mathematics, of
course; they hadn't faced up to the fact that some way could always be found
to make anything understandable, given time. Instead of hiring the best minds
to find the way they'd made the secrets even more esoteric. And when trouble
came they'd been forced to try to conceal it and depend on trickery. Morgan's
proposal might work, but not forever. In the long run the only way to fight
the bill was to bring everything out in the open.
Then he grinned bitterly at himself. He'd told Walker the facts but he hadn't
admitted them to himself yet. He was still figuring on the miracle that would
save them.
"Congressman Morgan on the phone," Thelma announced.
Palmer started in surprise. Damn it, Morgan had no kicks coming. He'd even
found a way to get the shipment sent out on time-all the stuff from the
successful conversion-using the militia and the minimum of faking the purpose
of the shipment. It should be almost ready for use by now.
But Morgan made no reference to that. "Palmer," he said without preliminaries,
"what would happen if a hydrogen bomb were dropped on the plant right now?"
"You'd have a lot of dead men," Palmer answered. He stared at the face on the
screen, trying to read it and finding it deadly serious.
"I don't mean the personnel-there'd be time to evacuate them," Morgan amended.
Palmer grinned bitterly. "I didn't mean plant personnel, either. I mean
anything up to half of the United States!"
It would mean that, too. Once the energy of the fusioning hydrogen hit near
the mass of Isotope R out there, the energy level would be lifted to a high-
enough point to blast it all straight into Mahler's Isotope. Any energy the
bomb couldn't supply on first contact would be derived from the explosion of
the part that had switched over and the whole mass would be raw energy, along
with assorted atomic fragments, in almost literally no time.
Morgan grunted. "That's what I guessed. I can figure out a little of that-
enough to scare me, at least. But I haven't had time to check up with the
experts here. Are you sure of it?"
"Hoke figured it out a long time ago, he tells me-Matsuura Hokusai, you've
heard of him," Palmer explained. "The stuff we have out there triggers off
with about one-tenth the energy it takes to trigger the hydrogen reaction-and
it yields about six times as much energy for its mass! Though it's the speed
of the stuff that does most of the damage-hydrogen is slow burning, by
comparison. Why?"
Morgan stopped to mop his forehead with a kerchief that was already damp, as
if he'd been running.
"Because that's the bright idea that they've come up with here, just now.
They've about got the President talked into it, too." He paused, as if trying
to believe it himself. "They mean to give you until tomorrow morning to get
your men out of there and then to come in with small fusion bombs and give it
hell. They've figured that they can control it so it won't hit Kimberly too
hard. And I can't convince them of anything. I'm only in on the discussions on
sufferance. I'd be out on my ear if they knew I leaked it to you."
It was the simple brute-force type of solution that would appeal to men who
were used to dealing with normal material problems. Wipe a thing out
completely and you could stop worrying about it. Spray enough DDT into a room
and there would be no bedbugs; then you could worry about getting rid of the
poisonous deposits of DDT later. Only in this case they were dealing with
something that wouldn't accept such solutions. This was dangerously close to
the borderline between matter and energy, as it was, and material solutions
didn't wholly apply. It would solve the problem of R, all right; but there'd
be no human beings around afterward close enough to take care of the after
effects.
"What can I do?" Palmer asked.
"Give me the name of the best man I can get to talk to them in a hurry."
"Morgenstern from M.I.T.," Palmer answered. "Or if you need someone even
faster, grab Hazelton from the AEC. He should be able to convince them."
The Congressman snorted into the phone. "You don't know, Palmer. You think
facts can sell anything but you're wrong. They can't believe that their most
brilliant idea of all is totally useless. And they can't pick up the rudiments
of science in half an hour. They're still thinking in analogies-fight fire
with fire, fight atoms with atoms. Hell, Hazelton has been arguing with them
for years on everything related to atomics and they've never yet believed him.
I'll try him, but don't expect much from it."
Palmer swung to face the windows as he thought it over. Morgan wasn't acting
now, obviously. The man was risking what was worth as much to him as the plant
was to Palmer. And he was as much of an expert on politics as Hokusai was on
theoretical atomics. When he swung back, the manager's decision had been made.
He'd been tearing up all the other rules he'd lived by. He might as well
destroy the last one.
"All right," he said. "Tell them to relax. They won't need their bombs,
because we've found a way to quench it already. Jorgenson, the man who
discovered the process, was in the converter when it all happened. He had
instruments on the converter at the exact second it blew up. And he lived
through it, in a Tomlin suit, until we could get to him. Now he has recovered
enough to outline a way of checking the reaction and my men are putting it
into operation right now. Will that help you?"
Morgan nodded as he considered it. "Maybe it will. Especially that stuff about
his being inside when it blew and living through it. It's a bigger lie than
I'd have thought of but it fits the pattern of stuff they'll swallow. It
should get us an extension of time, at least. But God help us both if they
ever find out."
He hung up, and Palmer headed for the door before the intercom could call him
back. After such conversations he could almost look forward to the news Hoke
would have for him, bad as he knew it must be.


CHAPTER 13


"Healing's going to be a long, slow process, but they should at least grow
back better than silver ribs; never make a pretty X-ray, though." Doc held the
instrument in his hand, staring down at the flap opened in Jorgenson's chest,
and his shoulders came up in a faint shrug. The little platinum filaments had
been removed from around the nerves to heart and lungs and the man's normal
impulses were operating again, less steadily than under the exciter, but with
no danger signals. "Well, it won't much matter if he's still sane."
Jenkins watched him begin stitching the flap back, his eyes centered over the
table out toward the converter. "Doc, he's got to be sane! If Hoke and Palmer
find it's what it sounds like out there we'll have to count on Jorgenson.
There's an answer somewhere; has to be. But we won't find it without him."
"Ummm. Seems to me you've been having ideas yourself, son. You've been right
so far, and if Jorgenson's out. . ." He shut off the stitcher, finished the
dressings and flopped down on a bench, knowing that all they could do was wait
for the drugs to work on Jorgenson and bring him around. Now that he relaxed
the control over himself, exhaustion hit down with full force; his fingers
were uncertain as he pulled off the gloves. "Anyhow, we'll know in another
five minutes or so."
"And Heaven help us, Doc, if it's up to me. I've always had a flair for atomic
theory; I grew up on it. But he's the production man who's been working at it
week in and week out, and it's his process, to boot. . . . There they are now!
All right for them to come back here?"
But Hokusai and Palmer were waiting for no permission. At the moment Jorgenson
was the nerve center of the plant, drawing them back, and they stalked over to
stare down at him, then sat where they could be sure of missing no sign of
returning consciousness. Palmer picked up the conversation where he'd dropped
it, addressing his remarks to both Hokusai and Jenkins.
"Damn that Link-Stevens postulate! Time after time it fails, until you figure
there's nothing to it; then this! It's black magic, not science, and if I get
out I'll find some fool with more courage than sense to discover why. Hoke,
are you positive it's the theta chain? There isn't one chance in ten thousand
of that happening, you know. It's unstable, hard to start, tends to revert to
the simpler ones at the first chance."
Hokusai spread his hands, lifted one heavy eyelid at Jenkins questioningly,
then nodded. The boy's voice was dull, almost uninterested. "That's what I
thought it had to be, Palmer. None of the others throw off that much energy at
this stage, the way you described conditions out there. Probably the last
thing we tried to quench it set it up in that pattern and it's in a
concentration just right to keep it going. We figured ten hours was the best
chance, so it had to pick the six-hour short chain."
"Yeah." Palmer was pacing up and down nervously again, his eyes swinging
toward Jorgenson from whatever direction he moved. "And in six hours maybe all
the population around here can be evacuated, maybe not, but we'll have to try
it. Doc, I can't even wait for Jorgenson now! I've got to get the Governor
started at once!"
"They've been known to practice lynch law, even in recent years," Ferrel
reminded him grimly. He'd seen the result of one such case of mob violence
when he was practicing privately and he knew that people remain pretty much
the same year after year; they'd move, but first they'd demand a sacrifice.
"Better get the men out of here first, Palmer, and my advice is to get
yourself a good long distance off; I heard some of the trouble at the gate,
but that won't be anything compared to what an evacuation order will do."
Palmer grunted. "Doc, you might not believe it, but I don't give a continental
about what happens to me or the plant right now."
"Or to the men? Put a mob in here hunting your blood and the men will be on
your side, because they know it wasn't your fault and they've seen you out
there taking chances yourself. That mob won't be too choosy about its targets,
either, once it gets worked up, and you'll have a nice vicious brawl all over
the place. Besides, Jorgenson's practically ready."
A few more minutes would make no difference in the evacuation, and Doc had no
desire to think of his partially crippled wife going through the hell
evacuation would be; she'd probably refuse to go until he returned. His eyes
fell on the box Jenkins was playing with nervously, and he stalled for time,
"I thought you said it was risky to break the stuff down into small particles,
Jenkins. But that box contains the stuff in various sizes, including one big
piece we scraped out, along with the contaminated instruments. Why hasn't it
exploded?"
Jenkins' hand jerked up from it as if burned and he backed away a step before
checking himself. Then he was across the room toward the I-631 and back,
pouring the white powder over everything in the box in a jerky frenzy.
Hokusai's eyes had snapped fully open and he was slopping water to fill up the
remaining space and keep the I-631 in contact with everything else. Almost at
once, in spite of the low relative energy release, it sent up a white cloud of
steam faster than the air conditioner could clear the room; but that soon
faded down and disappeared.
Hokusai wiped his forehead slowly. "The suits-armor of the men?"
"Sent 'em back to the converter and had them dumped into the stuff to be safe
long ago," Jenkins answered. "But I forgot the box, like a fool. Ugh! Either
blind chance saved us, or else the stuff spit out was all one kind, some
reasonably long chain I don't know nor care right-"
"S'ot! Nnuh . . . Whmah nahh?"
"Jorgenson!" They swung from the end of the room like one man, but Jenkins was
the first to reach the table. Jorgenson's eyes were open and rolling in a
semi-orderly manner, his hands moving sluggishly. The boy hovered over his
face, his own practically glowing with the intensity behind it. "Jorgenson,
can you understand what I'm saying?"
"Uh." The eyes ceased moving and centered on Jenkins. One hand came up to his
throat, clutching it, and he tried unsuccessfully to lift himself with the
other, but the aftereffects of what he'd been through seemed to have left him
in a state of partial paralysis.
Ferrel had hardly dared to hope that the man could be rational, and his relief
was tinged with doubt. He pushed Palmer back and shook his head. "No, stay
back. Let the boy handle it; he knows enough to avoid a shock to the man now,
and you don't. This can't be rushed too much."
"I-uh . . . Young Jenkins? You gotta righ'. Been thinkin'-wrong 'bout
ever'thing!" Somewhere in Jorgenson's huge frame, an untapped reserve of
energy and will sprang up, and he forced himself into a sitting position, his
eyes on Jenkins, his hands still catching at the reluctant throat that refused
to cooperate. His words were blurry and uncertain, but sheer determination
overcame the obstacles and made the words understandable. "Y'r dad tol' me-"
"Dad's dead, Jorgenson. Now-"
"'Sright. 'N I'm grown up. 'Bout twelve years old, y'were . . . The plant-!"
"Easy, Jorgenson." Jenkins' own voice managed to sound casual, though his
hands under the table were white where they clenched together. "Listen, and
don't try to say anything until I finish. The plant's still all right, but
we've got to have your help. Here's what happened."
Ferrel could make little sense of the cryptic sentences that followed, though
he gathered that they were some form of engineering shorthand; apparently,
from Hokusai's approving nod, they summed up the situation briefly but fully,
and Jorgenson sat rigidly still until it was finished, his eyes fastened on
the boy.
"Helluva mess! Gotta think. Yuh tried--" He made an attempt to lower himself
back, and Jenkins assisted him, hanging feverishly on each awkward, uncertain
change of expression on the man's face. "Uh-da' sroat! Yuh-uh-urrgh!"
"Got it?"
"Uh!" The tone was affirmative, unquestionably, but the clutching hands around
his neck told their own story. The temporary burst of energy he'd forced was
exhausted and he couldn't get through with the answer. He lay there breathing
heavily and struggling, then relaxed after a few more half-whispered words,
none intelligently articulated.
Palmer clutched at Ferrel's sleeve. "Doc, isn't there anything you can do?"
"Try." He metered out a minute quantity of drug doubtfully, felt Jorgenson's
pulse, and decided on half that amount. "Not much hope, though; that man's
been through hell and it wasn't good for him to be forced around in the first
place. Carry it too far and he'll be delirious if he does talk. Anyway, I
suspect it's partly his speech centers as well as the throat."
But Jorgenson began a slight rally almost instantly, trying again, then
apparently drawing himself together for a final attempt. When they came, the
words spilled out harshly in forced clearness, but without inflection.
"First. . .variable. . .at. . .twelve. . .water. . .stop." His eyes, centered
on Jenkins, closed, and he relaxed again, this time no longer fighting off the
inevitable unconsciousness.
Hokusai, Palmer and Jenkins were staring back and forth at one another
questioningly. The little Japanese shook his head negatively at first, frowned
and repeated it, to be imitated almost exactly by the manager. "Delirious
ravings!"
"The great white hope, Jorgenson!" Jenkins' shoulders dropped and the blood
drained from his face, leaving it ghastly with fatigue and despair. "Oh, damn
it, Doc, stop staring at me! I can't pull a miracle out of a hat!"
Doc hadn't realized that he was staring but he made no effort to change it.
"Maybe not, but you happen to have the most active imagination here, when you
stop abusing it to scare yourself. Well, you're on the spot now and I'm still
giving odds on you. Want to bet, Hoke?"
It was an utterly stupid thing and Doc knew it; but somewhere during the long
hours together he'd picked up a queer respect for the boy and a dependence on
the nervousness that wasn't fear but closer akin to the reaction of a rear-
running thoroughbred on the home stretch. Hoke was too slow and methodical and
Palmer had been too concerned with outside worries to give anywhere nearly
full attention to the single most urgent phase of the problem; that left only
Jenkins, hampered by his lack of self-confidence.
Hoke gave no sign that he caught the meaning of Doc's heavy wink, but he
lifted his eyebrows faintly. "No, I think I am not bet. Dr. Jenkins, I am to
be command!"
Palmer looked briefly at the boy, whose face mirrored incredulous confusion,
but he had neither Ferrel's ignorance of atomic technique nor Hokusai's
fatalism. With a final glance at the unconscious Jorgenson, he started across
the room toward the phone. "You men play if you like. I'm starting evacuation
immediately!"
"Wait!" Jenkins was shaking himself, physically as well as mentally. "Hold it,
Palmer! Thanks, Doc. You knocked me out of the rut and bounced my memory back
to something I picked up somewhere; I think it's the answer! It has to work-
nothing else can at this stage of the game!"
"Give me the Governor, operator." Palmer had heard but he went on with the
phone call. "This is no time to play crazy hunches, until after we get the
people out, kid. I'll admit you're a darned clever amateur, but you're no
atomicist!"
"And if we get the men out it's too late-there'll be no one left in here to do
the work!" Jenkins' hand snapped out and jerked the receiver of the plug-in
telephone from Palmer's hand. "Cancel the call, operator; it won't be
necessary. Palmer, you've got to listen to me; you can't clear the whole
middle of the continent and you can't depend on the explosion to limit itself
to less ground. It's a gamble, but you're risking fifty million people against
a mere hundred thousand. Give me a chance!"
"I'll give you exactly one minute to convince me, Jenkins, and it had better
be good! Maybe the blow-up won't hit beyond the fifty-mile limit!"
"Maybe. And I can't explain in a minute." The boy scowled tensely. "Okay,
you've been belly-aching about a man named Kellar being dead. If he were here
would you take a chance on him? Or on a man who'd worked under him on
everything he tried?"
"Absolutely, but you're not Kellar. And I happen to know he was a lone wolf;
didn't hire outside engineers after Jorgenson had a squabble with him and came
here." Palmer reached for the phone. "It won't wash, Jenkins."
Jenkins' hand clamped down on the instrument, jerking it out of reach. "I
wasn't outside help, Palmer. When Jorgenson was afraid to run one of the
things off and quit, I was twelve; three years later things got too tight for
Dad to handle alone but he decided he might as well keep it in the family, so
he started me in. I'm Kellar's stepson!"
Pieces clicked together in Doc's head then, and he kicked himself mentally for
not having seen the obvious before. "That why Jorgenson knew you, then? I
thought that was funny. It checks, Palmer."
For a split second the manager hesitated uncertainly. Then he shrugged and
gave in. "Okay. I'm a fool to trust you, Jenkins, but it's too late for
anything else, I guess. I never forgot that I was gambling with the locality
against half the continent. What do you want?"
"Men-construction men, mostly, and a few volunteers for dirty work. I want all
the blowers, exhaust equipment, tubing, booster blowers, and everything ripped
from the other three converters and connected as close to Number Four as you
can get. Put them up some way so they can be shoved in over the stuff by
crane-I don't care how; the shop men will know better than I do. You've got
sort of a river running off behind the plant; get everyone within a few miles
of it out of there and connect the blower outlets down to it. Where does it
end, anyway-some kind of a swamp?"
"About two miles farther down, yes; we didn't bother keeping the drainage
system going since the land meant nothing to us and the swamps made as good a
dumping ground as anything else." When the plant had first used the little
river as an outlet for their waste products, there had been so much trouble
that National had been forced to take over all adjacent land and quiet the
owners' fears of the atomic activity in cold cash. Since then it had gone to
weeds and rabbits, mostly. "Everyone within a few miles is out, anyway, except
a few fishers or tramps who don't know we use it. I'll have the militia sent
in to scare them out."
"Good. Ideal, in fact, since the swamps will hold stuff longer in there where
the current's slow. Now, what about the super-thermite stuff you were
producing last year? Any around?"
"Not in the plant. But we've got tons of it at the warehouse, still waiting
for the army's requisition. That's pretty hot stuff to handle, though. Know
much about it?"
"Enough to know it's what I want." Jenkins indicated the copy of the Weekly
Ray still lying where he'd dropped it, and Doc remembered skimming through the
nontechnical part of the description. The super-thermite was made up of two
superheavy atoms, kept separate. By itself neither was particularly important
or active but together they reacted with each other atomically to release a
tremendous amount of raw heat and comparatively little unwanted radiation.
"Goes up around twenty thousand centigrade, doesn't it? How's it stored?"
"In ten-pound cans that have a fragile partition; it breaks with shock,
starting the action. Hoke can explain it-it's his baby." Palmer reached for
the phone. "Anything else? Then get out and get busy! The men will be ready
for you when you get there! I'll be out myself as soon as I can put through
your orders."
Doc watched them go out, to be followed in short order by the manager, and was
alone in the Infirmary with Jorgenson and his own thoughts. They weren't
pleasant; he was both too far outside the inner circle to know what was going
on and too much mixed up in it not to know the dangers. Now he could have used
some work. . . .
He grunted in disgust at himself and dug out the blood sample of the ringer.
It was no great effort to prepare it and to set up the microscope. Then he was
studying the cells. There wasn't much question. The excess white count and
large number of juvenile cells were typical. Everything indicated chronic
myelogenous leukemia. If the woman didn't receive treatment soon, she'd be
dead in a year.
That meant that Palmer had no worry there-and that Doc again had nothing to
do. He wriggled down in the leather chair, making the mistake of trying to
force sleep, while his mind chased out after every sound that came in from
outside. There were the drones of crane and tank motors coming to life, the
shouts of hurried orders and above all the jarring rhythm of pneumatic hammers
on metal, each sound suggesting some possibility to him without adding to his
knowledge. The Decameron was boring, the whiskey tasted raw and rancid, and
solitaire wasn't worth the trouble of cheating.
Finally he gave up and turned out to the field hospital tent. Jorgenson would
be better off out there under the care of the staff from Mayo's, and perhaps
he could make himself useful. As he passed through the rear entrance he heard
the sound of a number of helicopters coming over with heavy loads and looked
up as they began settling over the edge of the buildings. From somewhere a
group of men came running forward and disappeared in the direction of the
freighters. He wondered whether any of those men would be forced back into the
stuff out there to return filled with radioactive; though it didn't matter so
much now that the isotope could be eliminated without surgery.
Blake met him at the entrance of the field tent, obviously well satisfied with
his duty of bossing and instructing the others. "Scram, Doc. You aren't needed
here, and you have to get some rest. Don't want you added to the casualties.
What's the latest dope from the powwow front?"
"Jorgenson didn't come through, but the kid had an idea and they're out there
working on it." Doc tried to sound more hopeful than he felt. "I was thinking
you might as well bring Jorgenson in here; he's still unconscious, but there
doesn't seem to be anything to worry about. Where's Brown? She'll probably
want to know what's up, if she isn't asleep."
"Asleep when the kid isn't? Uh-unh. Mother complex, has to worry about him."
Blake grinned. "She got a look at him running out with Hoke tagging at his
heels, and hiked out after him, so she probably knows everything now. Wish
Anne'd chase me that way just once-Jenkins, the wonder boy! Well, it's out of
my line; I don't intend to start worrying until they pass out the order. Okay,
Doc, I'll have Jorgenson out here in a couple of minutes, so you grab yourself
a cot and get some shut-eye."
Doc grunted, looking curiously at the refinements and well-equipped interior
of the field tent. "I've already prescribed that, Blake, but the patient can't
seem to take it. I think I'll hunt up Brown, so give me a call over the public
speaker if anything turns up."
He headed toward the center of action, knowing that he'd been wanting to do it
all along but hadn't been sure of not being a nuisance. Well if Brown could
look on there was no reason why he couldn't. He passed the machine shop,
noting the excited flurry of activity going on, and went past Number Two,
where other men were busily ripping out long sections of big piping and
various other devices. There was a rope fence barring his way, well beyond
Number Three, and he followed along the edge, looking for Palmer or Brown.
She saw him first. "Hi, Dr. Ferrel, over here in the truck. I thought you'd be
coming soon. From up here we can get a look over the heads of all these other
people and we won't be trampled on." She stuck down a hand to help him up and
smiled faintly as he disregarded it and mounted more briskly than his muscles
wanted to. He wasn't so old that a girl had to help him yet.
"Know what's going on?" he asked, sinking down onto the plank across the truck
body, facing out across the men below toward the converter. There seemed to be
a dozen different centers of activity, all crossing each other in complete
confusion, and the general pattern was meaningless.
"No more than you do. I haven't seen my husband, though Mr. Palmer took time
enough to chase me here out of the way."
Doc centered his attention on the 'copters, unloading, rising and coming in
with more loads, and he guessed that those boxes must contain the little
thermodyne bombs. It was the one thing he could understand and consequently
the least interesting. Other men were assembling the big sections of piping
he'd seen before, connecting them up in almost endless order, while some of
the tanks hooked on and snaked them off in the direction of the small river
that ran off beyond the plant.
"Those must be the exhaust blowers, I guess," he told Brown, pointing them
out. "Though I don't know what any of the rest of the stuff hooked on is."
"I know-I've been inside the plant Bob's father had." She lifted an inquiring
eyebrow at him and went on as he nodded. "The pipes are for exhaust gases, all
right, and those big square things are the motors and fans-they put in one at
each five hundred feet or less of piping. The things they're wrapping around
the pipe must be the heaters to keep the gases hot. Are they going to try to
suck all that out?"
Doc didn't know, though it was the only thing he could see. But he wondered
how they'd get around the problem of moving in close enough to do any good. "I
heard your husband order some thermodyne bombs, so they'll probably try to
gassify the magma; then they're pumping it down the river."
As he spoke there was a flurry of motion at one side and his eyes swung over
instantly, to see one of the cranes laboring with a long framework stuck from
its front holding up a section of pipe with a nozzle on the end. It tilted
precariously, even though heavy bags were piled everywhere to add weight, but
an inch at a time it lifted its load and began forcing its way forward,
carrying the nozzle out in front and rather high.
Below the main exhaust pipe was another smaller one. As it drew near the
outskirts of the danger zone, a small object ejaculated from the little pipe,
hit the ground, and was a sudden blazing inferno of glaring blue-white light,
far brighter than it seemed, judging by the effect on the eyes. Doc shielded
his, just as someone below put something into his hands.
"Put 'em on. Palmer says the light's actinic."
He heard Brown fussing beside him, then his vision cleared and he looked back
through the goggles to see a glowing cloud spring up from the magma, spread
out near the ground, narrowing down higher up, until it sucked into the nozzle
above and disappeared. Another bomb slid from the tube and erupted with
blazing heat. A sideways glance showed another crane being fitted and a group
of men near it wrapping what might have been oiled rags around the small
bombs; probably no tubing fitted them exactly and they were padding them so
pressure could blow them forward and out. Three more dropped from the tube,
one at a time, and the fans roared and groaned, pulling the cloud that rose
into the pipe and feeding it down toward the river.
Then the crane inched back out carefully as men uncoupled its piping from the
main line, and a second went in to replace it. The heat generated must be too
great for the machine to stand steadily without the pipe fusing, Doc decided;
though they couldn't have kept a man inside the heavily armored cab for any
length of time if the metal had been impervious. Now another crane was ready
and went in from another place; the work settled down to a routine of ingoing
and outcoming cranes, and men feeding materials in, coupling and uncoupling
the pipes and replacing the others who came from the cabs. Doc began to feel
like a man at a tennis match, watching the ball without knowing the rules.
Brown must have had the same idea, for she caught Ferrel's arm and indicated a
little leather case that came from her handbag. "Doc, do you play chess? We
might as well fill our time with that as sitting here on edge just watching.
It's supposed to be good for nerves."
He seized on it gratefully, without explaining that he'd been city champion
three years running; he'd take it easy, watch her game, handicap himself just
enough to make it interesting by the deliberate loss of a rook, bishop, or
knight, as was needed to even the odds. . . . Suppose they got all the magma
out and into the river; how did that solve the problem? It removed it from the
plant, but far less than the fifty-mile minimum danger limit.
"Check," Brown announced. He castled, and looked up at the half-dozen cranes
that were now operating. "Check! Checkmate!"
He looked back again hastily, then, to see her queen guarding all possible
moves, a bishop checking him. Then his eyes followed down toward her end.
"Umm. Did you know you've been in check for the last half-dozen moves? Because
I didn't."
She frowned, shook her head, and began setting the men up again. Doc moved out
the queen's pawn, looked out at the workers, and then brought out the queen's
bishop, to see her take it with her king's pawn. He hadn't watched her move it
out, and had counted on her queen's to block his. Things would require more
careful watching on this little portable set. The men were moving steadily and
there was a growing clear space, but as they went forward the violent action
of the thermodyne had pitted the ground, carefully though it had been used,
and going became more uncertain. Time was slipping by rapidly now.
"Checkmate!" He found himself in a hole, started to nod; but she caught
herself in time. "Sorry, I've been playing my king for a queen. Doctor, let's
see if we can play at least one game right."
Before it was half finished, it became obvious that they couldn't. Neither had
chess very much on the mind, and the pawns and men did fearful and wonderful
things, while the knights were as likely to jump six squares as their normal
L. They gave it up, just as one of the cranes lost its precarious balance and
toppled forward, dropping the long extended pipe into the bubbling mass below.
Tanks were in instantly, hitching on and tugging backward until it came down
with a thump as the pipe fused, releasing the extreme forward load. It backed
out on its own power, while another went in. The driver, by sheer good luck,
hobbled from the cab, waving an armored hand to indicate he was all right.
Things settled back to an excited routine again that seemed to go on
endlessly, though seconds were dropping off too rapidly, turning into minutes
that threatened to be hours far too soon.
"Uh!" Brown had been staring for some time, but her little feet suddenly came
down with a bang and she straightened up, her hand to her mouth. "Doctor, I
just thought; it won't do any good-all this!"
"Why?" She couldn't know anything; but he felt the faint hopes he had go
downward sharply. His nerves were dulled, but still ready to jump at the
slightest warning.
"The stuff they were making was a superheavy-it'll sink as soon as it hits the
water, and all pile up right there! It won't float down river!"
Obvious, Ferrel thought; too obvious. Maybe that was why the engineers hadn't
thought of it. He started from the plank, just as Palmer stepped up, but the
manager's hand on his shoulder forced him back.
"Easy, Doc, it's okay. So they teach women some science nowadays, eh, Mrs.
Jenkins . . . Sue . . . Dr. Brown, whatever your name is? Don't worry about
it, though- the old principle of Brownian movement will keep any colloid
suspended, if it's fine enough to be a real colloid. We're sucking it out and
keeping it pretty hot until it reaches the water, then it cools off so fast it
hasn't time to collect in particles big enough to sink. Some of the dust that
floats around in the air is heavier than water, too. I'm joining the
bystanders, if you don't mind; the men have everything under control and I can
see better here than I could down there, if anything does come up."
Doc's momentary despair reacted to leave him feeling more sure of things than
was justified. He pushed over on the plank, making room for Palmer to drop
down beside him. "What's to keep it from blowing up anyway, Palmer?"
Nothing! Got a match?" He sucked in on the cigarette heavily, relaxing as much
as he could. "No use trying to fool you, Doc, at this stage of the game. We're
gambling and I'd say the odds are even; Jenkins thinks they're ninety to ten
in his favor, but he has to think so. What we're hoping is that by lifting it
out in a gas, thus breaking it down at once from full concentration to the
finest possible form, and letting it settle in the water in colloidal
particles, there won't be a concentration at any one place sufficient to set
it all off at once. The big problem is making sure we get every bit of it
cleaned up here, or there may be enough left to take care of us and the nearby
city! At least, since the last change, it's stopped spitting, so all the men
have to worry about is burn!"
"How much damage, even if it doesn't go off all at once?"
"Possibly none, beyond raising the radioactive count of the air a little. If
you can keep it burning slowly, a million tons of dynamite wouldn't be any
worse than the same amount of wood, but a stick going off at once will kill
you. Of course, even if it doesn't erupt violently, the stuff in the swamp
afterward will be pure death for months, but that won't bother us. Why the
dickens didn't Jenkins tell me he wanted to go into atomics? We could have
fixed all that for anyone who'd been partly trained by Kellar. It's hard
enough to get good men as it is!"
Brown perked up, forgetting the whole trouble beyond them, and went into the
story with enthusiasm, including details on how Jenkins had managed to
continue his study of atomic theory, while Ferrel only partly listened. He
could see the spot of magma growing steadily smaller, but the watch on his
wrist went on ticking off the minutes remorselessly, and the time was growing
limited. He hadn't realized before how long he'd been sitting here. Now three
of the crane nozzles were almost touching, and around them stretched the
burned-out ground, with no sign of converter, masonry, or anything else; the
heat from the thermodyne had gassified everything, indiscriminately.
"Palmer!" The portable ultrawave set around the manager's neck came to life
suddenly. "Hey, Palmer, these blowers are about shot; the pipe's pitting
already. We've been doing everything we can to replace them, but that stuff
eats faster than we can fix. Can't hold up more'n fifteen minutes more."
"Check, Briggs. Keep 'em going the best you can."
Palmer flipped a switch and looked out toward the tank standing by behind the
cranes. "Jenkins, you get that?"
"Yeah. Surprised they held out this long. How much time till deadline?" The
boy's voice was completely toneless, neither hope nor nerves showing up, only
the complete weariness of a man almost at his limit.
Palmer looked and whistled. "Twelve minutes, according to the minimum estimate
Hoke made! How much left?"
"We're just burning around now, trying to make sure there's no pocket left; I
hope we've got the whole works, but I'm not promising. Might as well send out
all the I-613 you have and we'll boil it down the pipes to clear out any
deposits on them. All the old treads and parts that contacted the R gone into
the pile?"
"You melted the last, and your cranes haven't touched the stuff directly. Nice
pile of money's gone down that pipe-converter, machinery, everything!"
Jenkins made a sound that was expressive of his worry about that. "I'm coming
in now and starting the clearing of the pipe. What've you been paying
insurance for?"
"At a huge rate, too! But I didn't expect to get proof that we could prevent
any danger from Mahler's Isotope, so I figure I got a bargain. Okay, come on
in, kid; and if you're interested, and we live through this, you can start
sticking an engineering degree after the M.D. any time you want. Your wife's
been giving me your qualifications and I think you've passed the final test,
so you're now an atomic engineer, duly graduated from National!"
Brown's breath caught and her eyes seemed to glow, even through the goggles,
but Jenkins' voice was flat. "Okay, I expected you to give me the degree, if
we don't blow up. But you'll have to see Dr. Ferrel about it; he's got a
contract with me for medical practice. Be there shortly."
Nine of the estimated minimum of twelve minutes had ticked by when Jenkins
climbed up beside them, mopping off some of the sweat that covered him. Palmer
was hugging the watch. More minutes ticked off slowly, while the last sound
faded out in the plant and the men stood around, staring down toward the river
or the hole that had been Number Four. Silence. Jenkins stirred and grunted.
"Palmer, I meant to tell you where I got the idea. Jorgenson was trying to
remind me of it-not raving-only I didn't get it until Doc jiggled my thoughts.
It was one of Dad's, the one he told Jorgenson was a last resort, in case the
thing they broke up over went haywire. It was the first variable Dad tried. I
was twelve, and he insisted water would break it up into all its chains and
kill the danger. Only Dad didn't really expect it to work, as he told me
later!"
Palmer didn't look up from the watch, but he caught his breath and swore.
"Fine time to tell me that!"
"He didn't have your isotopes to heat it up with, either," Jenkins answered
mildly. "Suppose you look up from the watch and down the river for a minute!"
As Doc raised his eyes he was aware suddenly of a roar from the men. Over to
the south, stretching out in a huge mass, was a cloud of steam that spread
upward and out as he watched, and the beginnings of a mighty hissing sound
came in. Then Palmer was hugging Jenkins and yelling until Brown could pry him
away and replace him.
"Steam from heat-steam, not explosive spray! Three miles or more of river,
plus the swamps, Doc!" Palmer was shouting in Ferrel's ear. "All that
dispersion, while it cooks slowly from now until the last chain is finished,
atom by atom! The theta chain broke, unstable, and now there's everything
there, too scattered to set itself off! It'll cook the river bed up and dry
it, but that's all!"
Doc was still dazed, unsure of how to take the relief. He wanted to lie down
and cry or stand up with the men and shout his head off. Instead, he sat
loosely, gazing at the cloud. "So I lose the best assistant I ever had!
Jenkins, I won't hold you; you're free for whatever Palmer wants."
"Hoke wants him to work on R-he's got a starting point now for digging into
that rocket fuel he wants!" Palmer was clapping his hands together slowly,
like an excited child watching a steam shovel. "Heck, Doc, pick out anyone you
want until your own boy gets out next year. You wanted a chance to work him in
here, now you've got it. Right now I'll give you anything you want! This is
one time even the Guilden papers won't be able to twist the truth!"
"You might see what you can do about hospitalizing the injured and fixing
things up for the men in the tent behind the Infirmary. And I think I'll take
Brown in Jenkins' place, with the right to grab him in an emergency until that
year's up."
"Done!" Palmer slapped the boy's back, stopping the protest, while Brown
winked at him. "Your wife likes working, kid; she told me that herself.
Besides, a lot of the women work here where they can keep an eye on their men;
my own wife does, usually. Doc, you and these two kids head for home, where
I'm going myself. Don't come back until you get good and ready, and don't let
anything spoil your sleep this time!"
Doc pulled himself from the truck and started off, with Brown and Jenkins
following through the yelling, relief-crazed men. The three were too
thoroughly worn out for any exhibition themselves, but they could feel it. Men
and guards were piling in from the gates, joining crazily in the exultation.
There were even a few cars forcing their way slowly through the milling ranks
of people.
One of them was almost at Ferrel's side when the door swung open and a haggard
woman began getting out painfully, crying his name. He stopped, staring at her
unbelievingly as she limped toward him.
"Emma!"
She caught him to her briefly, then shoved him away, blushing, as she saw
Jenkins and Brown watching her. She choked and made motions toward the car,
unable to talk. But it didn't matter. Explanations could come later.
He sank behind the wheel of the car, reaching out a hand for one of hers.
Life, he decided, wasn't bad after all; and it would be even better, once they
were out of the mob and headed for home.
Then he chuckled and climbed out again. "You three get acquainted, will you?
If I leave here without making out that order for extra disinfection at the
showers, Blake'll swear I'm getting old and feeble-minded. I can't have that!"
Old? Maybe a little tired, but he'd been that before and with luck would be
again. He wasn't worried. His nerves were good for twenty years and fifty
accidents more, and by that time Blake would be due for a little ribbing
himself.