The Past Through Tomorrow (17 page)

It worked. They did not reverse themselves all at once, but a committee was appointed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed spaceship power plant. By sheer brass Lentz suggested names for the committee and Dixon confirmed his nominations, not because he wished to, particularly, but because he was caught off guard and could not think of a reason to refuse without affronting those colleagues. Lentz was careful to include his one supporter in the list.

The impending retirement of King was not mentioned by either side. Privately, Lentz felt sure that it never would be mentioned.

It worked, but there was left much to do. For the first few days, after the victory in committee, King felt much elated by the prospect of an early release from the soul-killing worry. He was buoyed up by pleasant demands of manifold new administrative duties. Harper and Erickson were detached to Goddard Field to collaborate with the rocket engineers there in design of firing chambers, nozzles, fuel stowage, fuel metering, and the like. A schedule had to be worked out with the business office to permit as much use of the pile as possible to be diverted to making atomic fuel, and a giant combustion chamber for atomic fuel had to be designed and ordered to replace the pile itself during the interim between the time it was shut down on earth and the later time when sufficient local, smaller plants could be built to carry the commercial load. He was busy.

When the first activity had died down and they were settled in a new routine, pending the shutting down of the plant and its removal to outer space, King suffered an emotional reaction. There was, by then, nothing to do but wait, and tend the pile, until the crew at Goddard Field smoothed out the bugs and produced a space-worthy rocket ship.

At Goddard they ran into difficulties, overcame them, and came across more difficulties. They had never used such high reaction velocities; it took many trials to find a nozzle shape that would give reasonably high efficiency. When that was solved, and success seemed in sight, the jets burned out on a time-trial ground test. They were stalemated for weeks over that hitch.

There was another problem quite separate from the rocket problem: what to do with the power generated by the breeder pile when relocated in a satellite rocket? It was solved drastically by planning to place the pile proper
outside
the satellite, unshielded, and let it waste its radiant energy. It would be a tiny artificial star, shining in the vacuum of space. In the meantime research would go on for a means to harness it again and beam the power back to Earth. But only its power would be wasted; plutonium and the newer atomic fuels would be recovered and rocketed back to Earth.

Back at the power plant Superintendent King could do nothing but chew his nails and wait. He had not even the release of running over to Goddard Field to watch the progress of the research, for, urgently as he desired to, he felt an even stronger, an overpowering compulsion to watch over the pile more lest it—heartbreakingly!—blow up at the last minute.

He took to hanging around the control room. He had to stop that; his unease communicated itself to his watch engineers; two of them cracked up in a single day—one of them on watch.

He must face the fact—there had been a grave upswing in psychoneurosis among his engineers since the period of watchful waiting had commenced. At first, they had tried to keep the essential facts of the plan a close secret, but it had leaked out, perhaps through some member of the investigating committee. He admitted to himself now that it had been a mistake ever to try to keep it secret—Lentz had advised against it, and the engineers not actually engaged in the change-over were bound to know that something was up.

He took all of the engineers into confidence at last, under oath of secrecy. That had helped for a week or more, a week in which they were all given a spiritual lift by the knowledge, as he had been. Then it had worn off, the reaction had set in, and the psychological observers had started disqualifying engineers for duty almost daily. They were even reporting each other as mentally unstable with great frequency; he might even be faced with a shortage of psychiatrists if that kept up, he thought to himself with bitter amusement. His engineers were already standing four hours in every sixteen. If one more dropped out, he’d put himself on watch. That would be a relief, to tell himself the truth.

Somehow some of the civilians around about and the non-technical employees were catching on to the secret. That mustn’t go on—if it spread any further there might be a nationwide panic. But how the hell could he stop it? He couldn’t.

He turned over in bed, rearranged his pillow, and tried once more to get to sleep. No good. His head ached, his eyes were balls of pain, and his brain was a ceaseless grind of useless, repetitive activity, like a disc recording stuck in one groove.

God! This was unbearable! He wondered if he were cracking up—if he already had cracked up. This was worse, many times worse, than the old routine when he had simply acknowledged the danger and tried to forget it as much as possible. Not that the pile was any different—it was this five-minutes-to-armistice feeling, this waiting for the curtain to go up, this race against time with nothing to do to help.

He sat up, switched on his bed lamp, and looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Not so good. He got up, went into his bathroom, and dissolved a sleeping powder in a glass of whisky and water, half and half. He gulped it down and went back to bed. Presently he dozed off.

He was running, fleeing down a long corridor. At the end lay safety—he knew that, but he was so utterly exhausted that he doubted his ability to finish the race. The thing pursuing him was catching up; he forced his leaden, aching legs into greater activity. The thing behind him increased its pace, and actually touched him. His heart stopped, then pounded again. He became aware that he was screaming, shrieking in mortal terror.

But he had to reach the end of that corridor, more depended on it than just himself. He had to. He had to—
He had to!

Then the flash came and he realized that he had lost, realized it with utter despair and utter, bitter defeat. He had failed; the pile had blown up.

The flash was his bed lamp coming on automatically; it was seven o’clock. His pajamas were soaked, dripping with sweat, and his heart still pounded. Every ragged nerve throughout his body screamed for release. It would take more than a cold shower to cure this case of the shakes.

He got to the office before the janitor was out of it. He sat there, doing nothing, until Lentz walked in on him, two hours later. The psychiatrist came in just as he was taking two small tablets from a box in his desk.

“Easy…easy, old man,” Lentz said in a slow voice. “What have you there?” He came around and gently took possession of the box.

“Just a sedative.”

Lentz studied the inscription on the cover. “How many have you had today?”

“Just two, so far.”

“You don’t need barbiturates; you need a walk in the fresh air. Come take one with me.”

“You’re a fine one to talk—you’re smoking a cigaret that isn’t lighted!”

“Me? Why, so I am! We both need that walk. Come.”

Harper arrived less than ten minutes after they had left the office. Steinke was not in the outer office. He walked on through and pounded on the door of King’s private office, then waited with the man who accompanied him—a hard young chap with an easy confidence to his bearing. Steinke let them in.

Harper brushed on past him with a casual greeting, then checked himself when he saw that there was no one else inside.

“Where’s the chief?” he demanded.

“Out. He’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll wait. Oh—Steinke, this is Greene. Greene—Steinke.”

The two shook hands. “What brings you back, Cal?” Steinke asked, turning back to Harper.

“Well… I guess it’s all right to tell you—”

The communicator screen flashed into sudden activity, and cut him short. A face filled most of the frame. It was apparently too close to the pickup, as it was badly out of focus. “Superintendent!” it yelled in an agonized voice. “The pile—!”

A shadow flashed across the screen, they heard a dull “Smack!”, and the face slid out of the screen. As it fell it revealed the control room behind it. Someone was down on the floor plates, a nameless heap. Another figure ran across the field of pickup and disappeared.

Harper snapped into action first. “That was Silard!” he shouted, “—in the control room! Come on, Steinke!” He was already in motion himself.

Steinke went dead white, but hesitated only an unmeasurable instant. He pounded sharp on Harper’s heels. Greene followed without invitation, in a steady run that kept easy pace with them.

They had to wait for a capsule to unload at the tube station. Then all three of them tried to crowd into a two-passenger capsule. It refused to start and moments were lost before Greene piled out and claimed another car.

The four minute trip at heavy acceleration seemed an interminable crawl. Harper was convinced that the system had broken down, when the familiar click and sigh announced their arrival at the station under the plant. They jammed each other trying to get out at the same time.

The lift was up; they did not wait for it. That was unwise; they gained no time by it, and arrived at the control level out of breath. Nevertheless, they speeded up when they reached the top, zig-zagged frantically around the outer shield, and burst into the control room.

The limp figure was still on the floor, and another, also inert, was near it.

A third figure was bending over the trigger. He looked up as they came in, and charged them. They hit him together, and all three went down. It was two to one, but they got in each other’s way. His heavy armor protected him from the force of their blows. He fought with senseless, savage violence.

Harper felt a bright, sharp pain; his right arm went limp and useless. The armored figure was struggling free of them. There was a shout from somewhere behind them: “Hold still!”

He saw a flash with the corner of one eye, a deafening crack hurried on top of it, and re-echoed painfully in the restricted space.

The armored figure dropped back to his knees, balanced there, and then fell heavily on his face. Greene stood in the entrance, a service pistol balanced in his hand.

Harper got up and went over to the trigger. He tried to reduce the power-level adjustment, but his right hand wouldn’t carry out his orders, and his left was too clumsy. “Steinke,” he called, “come here! Take over.”

Steinke hurried up, nodded as he glanced at the readings, and set busily to work.

It was thus that King found them when he bolted in a very few minutes later.

“Harper!” he shouted, while his quick glance was still taking in the situation. “What’s happened?”

Harper told him briefly. He nodded. “I saw the tail end of the fight from my office—Steinke!” He seemed to grasp for the first time who was on the trigger. “He can’t manage the controls—” He hurried toward him.

Steinke looked up at his approach. “Chief!” he called out, “Chief! I’ve
got my mathematics back!
”

King looked bewildered, then nodded vaguely, and let him be. He turned back to Harper. “How does it happen you’re here?”

“Me? I’m here to report—we’ve done it, Chief!”

“Eh?”

“We’ve finished; it’s all done. Erickson stayed behind to complete the power plant installation on the big ship. I came over in the ship we’ll use to shuttle between Earth and the big ship, the power plant. Four minutes from Goddard Field to here in her. That’s the pilot over there.” He pointed to the door, where Greene’s solid form partially hid Lentz.

“Wait a minute. You say that everything is ready to install the pile in the ship? You’re
sure
?”

“Positive. The big ship has already flown with our fuel—longer and faster than she will have to fly to reach station in her orbit; I was in it—out in space, Chief! We’re all set, six ways from zero.”

King stared at the dumping switch, mounted behind glass at the top of the instrument board. “There’s fuel enough,” he said softly, as if he were alone and speaking only to himself, “there’s been fuel enough for weeks.”

He walked swiftly over to the switch, smashed the glass with his fist, and pulled it.

The room rumbled and shivered as tons of molten, massive metal, heavier than gold, coursed down channels, struck against baffles, split into a dozen dozen streams, and plunged to rest in leaden receivers—to rest, safe and harmless, until it should be reassembled far out in space.

“
YOU
’
VE GOT
to be a believer!”

George Strong snorted at his partner’s declaration. “Delos, why don’t you give up? You’ve been singing this tune for years. Maybe someday men will get to the Moon, though I doubt it. In any case, you and I will never live to see it. The loss of the power satellite washes the matter up for our generation.”

D. D. Harriman grunted. “We won’t see it if we sit on our fat behinds and don’t do anything to make it happen. But we can make it happen.”

“Question number one: how? Question number two: why?”

“‘Why?’ The man asks ‘why.’ George, isn’t there anything in your soul but discounts, and dividends? Didn’t you ever sit with a girl on a soft summer night and stare up at the Moon and wonder what was there?”

“Yeah, I did once. I caught a cold.”

Harriman asked the Almighty why he had been delivered into the hands of the Philistines. He then turned back to his partner. “I could tell you why, the real ‘why,’ but you wouldn’t understand me. You want to know why in terms of cash, don’t you? You want to know how Harriman & Strong and Harriman Enterprises can show a profit, don’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Strong, “and don’t give me any guff about tourist trade and fabulous lunar jewels. I’ve had it.”

“You ask me to show figures on a brand-new type of enterprise, knowing I can’t. It’s like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to estimate how much money Curtiss-Wright Corporation would someday make out of building airplanes. I’ll put it another way. You didn’t want us to go into plastic houses, did you? If you had had your way we would still be back in Kansas City, subdividing cow pastures and showing rentals.”