by Herman Wouk
Oppenheimer stood, walked forward, and shook hands with Sime, smiling in remote recognition. “Well done, Anderson.” Sime sat down, his heart swelling with relief.
Oppenheimer looked around with large sombre eyes. “The figure of one point four is the reason for this meeting. We have made a very fundamental, very serious, very embarrassing mistake,” he said in a slow weary voice, “all of us have, who share responsibility for this effort. It seems we were bemused by the greater elegance and originality of gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation. We were obsessed, too, with going to ninety percent enrichment along a single path. It didn’t occur to us that combined processes might be a speedier way. Now here we are. From the last word on barriers, K-25 will not work in time for this war. Hanford too is a question. Out in New Mexico we’re testing bomb configurations for an explosive that doesn’t yet exist. Not in usable quantities.”
Picking up chalk, Oppenheimer went on, “Now thermal diffusion itself won’t provide the enrichment we need, but a combination of thermal diffusion and the Y-12 process will give us a bomb by July 1945. That is clear.” He rapidly scrawled on the board figures that showed a fourfold increase in the electromagnetic separation of the Y-12 plant, given feed enriched to one part in seventy. “The question is, can a thermal plant on a very large scale be erected within a few months to feed Y-12? I’ve recommended this urgently to General Groves. We’re here to discuss ways and means.”
Stooped, skinny, melancholy, Oppenheimer returned to his seat. Now that the meeting had a direction, ideas and questions sparked around in quick insiders’ shorthand. Sime Anderson was called on to answer many questions. The meeting pressed him hard on the core of the Navy system, the forty-eight-foot vertical steam pipes of concentric iron, copper, and nickel cylinders.
“But the Navy’s using only a hundred of them, hand-fashioned at that,” exclaimed a big red-faced civilian in the front row. “That’s lab equipment. We’re talking here about several thousand of the damn things, aren’t we? A whole forest of them, factory-made! It’s a plumber’s nightmare, Colonel Nichols. You won’t get a corporation in this country to take on such a contract. Three thousand pipes of that length, with those tolerances, in a few months? Forget it.”
The meeting split into two groups for lunch: one to talk about design with Oppenheimer and Anderson, one to confer with Nichols and Peters on construction and manufacturing. “The general wants this thing done,” Colonel Nichols summed up in adjourning. “So it will be. Well all meet back here at two o’clock, and start making some decisions.”
With a wave of his pipe, Oppenheimer stopped Sime from leaving the room. When they were alone he said, walking to the blackboard, “A-minus, Anderson.” He picked up chalk, corrected an equation with a nervous rub of a fist and a scrawl of symbols; then asked a series of quick questions, dazzling the naval officer with his total grasp of thermal diffusion in every aspect. “Well, let’s get on to the cafeteria,” he said, dropping the chalk, “and join the others.”
“Yes, sir.”
Leaning against the desk, arms folded, Oppenheimer made no move to go. “What next for you?”
“I’m returning to Washington tonight, sir.”
“I know that. Now that the Army will get into thermal diffusion, what about a new challenge? Come and join us out in New Mexico.”
“You’re sure the Army will do it?”
“They have to. There’s no alternative. The weapon itself still poses some nice problems in ideas. Not lion hunting, so to say, but a lively rabbit shoot. Are you married, Anderson?”
“Ah — no, I’m not.”
“Better so. The mesa is a strange place, quite isolated. Some of the wives take to it, but others — well, that won’t concern you. You’ll soon be hearing from Captain Parsons.”
“Captain Parsons? Is he in New Mexico now?”
“He’s a division head. You’ll come, won’t you? There’s a lot of excellence out there.”
“I go where I’m ordered, Dr. Oppenheimer.”
“Orders won’t be a problem.”
All the trudging in ropy mud wore Victor Henry down. McDermott drove a jeep, but the narrow rutted roads ended abruptly in brush or muck, sometimes far from where they wanted to go. Pug didn’t mind the slogging here and there, because they were getting the answers he wanted. One after another, the technicians concurred that with a modified sleeve and a thicker gasket, the substitute coupling would answer. It was the old story — administrative rigidity in Washington, good-humored horse sense among the men with hard hats, dirty hands, and muddy shoes. Pug had broken many a supply impasse this way.
“I’m convinced,” McDermott shouted over the grinding and bumping of the jeep, as they headed back under lowering storm clouds. They had been at this for hours, pausing only for sandwiches and coffee at a field canteen. “Now convince the Army, Captain.”
80
SHARING a drawing room on the train back to Washington, Pug and Peters hung up wet clothes as the train started, and Pug declined the whiskey the Army man offered him. He did not feel much like drinking with his wife’s current love. Sime Anderson came in, summoned by the colonel. “Stay here,” Peters said to Pug, when their discussion began and he offered to leave. “I want you in on this.”
Pug quickly gathered that the Army was taking a sudden urgent interest in a Navy system for processing uranium. He kept his mouth shut while the colonel, whose frame bulked large in the tiny room, puffed at a cigar, sipped whiskey, and asked Anderson questions. The train picked up speed, the wheels clattered, rain beat on the black windows, and Pug began to feel hungry.
“Sir, I’m on special detached duty, assigned directly to the lab,” Anderson replied to a query about the Navy chain of command on the project. “You’ll have to talk to Dr. Abelson.”
“I will. I see only one way through this mess,” Peters said, putting his notebook into a breast pocket. “We’ll have to build twenty Chinese copies of your plant. Just duplicate it and string ‘em in series. Designing a new two-thousand-column plant can take many months.”
“You could design for greater efficiency, sir.”
“Yes, for the next war. The idea is to make a weapon for this one. All right, Commander. Many thanks.”
When Anderson left, Peters asked Pug, “Do you know Admiral Purnell? I’m wondering how I go about getting the Navy’s blueprints for thermal diffusion real fast.”
“Your man is Ernest King.”
“But King may not even be clued in on uranium. Purnell’s the Navy man on the Military Policy Committee.”
“I know, but that doesn’t matter. Go to King.”
“Will you do that?”
“What? Approach Admiral King for the Army? Me?”
At the incredulous tone, Colonel Peters’s fleshy mouth widened in the grin which no doubt charmed the women; the naïve, cheery grin of a mature man who had not known much grief, a gray-haired boyish man. “Look, Henry, I can’t proceed through channels in the uranium business, and I can’t write letters. Ordinarily I’d go with this thing to the next meeting of the Military Policy Committee, but I want to get moving. The trouble is — and it hasn’t been my doing — we’ve cold-shouldered the Navy for years. We’ve shut Abelson out. We even got snotty about giving him a supply of uranium hexafluoride, when it was Abelson, for Christ’s sake, who first produced the stuff for us. I just found that out today. Stupid policy, and now we need the Navy. You know King, don’t you?”
“Quite well.”
“I have a feeling you could broker this thing.”
“Look, Colonel, just getting in to see Ernest King can take days. Tell you what, though. You release those couplings — I mean telephone that firm in Pennsylvania from Union Station tomorrow — and I’ll get right in a cab and try to break in on the CNO.”
“Pug, only the general can waive this priority.” Peters’s wide grin was wary and uncertain. “I could get my head cut off.”
“So you said. Well, I c
an get my head cut off for barging in on Ernest King without an appointment. Especially with an Army request.”
Staring at Pug, Colonel Peters rubbed his mouth hard, then burst out laughing. “Hell, those Oak Ridge fellows approved your coupling, didn’t they? You’re on. Let’s have a drink on it.”
“I’d rather have dinner. I’m hungry as a bear. Coming?”
“Go ahead.” Peters clearly did not like this second refusal. “I’ll be along.”
Sime Anderson stood in the queue outside the dining car, pondering a common quandary of wartime — whether to propose marriage before going off to serve in a distant place. He could take Madeline out to that mesa in New Mexico, but would she agree to go, and even if she did, would she be happy in such a place? Oppenheimer had hinted at difficulties with wives. When Madeline’s father showed up on the queue, Sime seized the chance to sit with him in the jammed dining car at a table for two. While they ate tepid tomato soup and very greasy fried pork chops, and the car swayed and rattled, and rippling rain slanted in streaks on the window, he told Pug his problem. Pug did not speak until he finished, and not for a while after that.
“You love each other?” he asked at last.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then? Navy juniors are used to living in strange places.”
“She went to New York to break the mold of a Navy junior.” Sime had said nothing as yet about Hugh Cleveland. His sad tone, his miserable glance at the father, revealed to Pug that Madeline had told all, and that it had gone down hard.
“Sime, she came home.”
“Yes. To another big city, and another radio job.”
“Are you asking for my advice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever hear about faint hearts and fair ladies? Take your chances. I think she’ll go with you, and stay with you.” The father offered his hand. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir.” They gripped each other’s hands.
In the club car, Pug drank a large brandy in a contented glow. Madeline for years had seemed an irretrievable disaster; and now this! He mulled over images of Madeline through the years: the enchanting girl baby, the fairy princess in the school play, the disconcerting flirt with budding breasts, shining eyes, and inexpert makeup going to her first dance, the brassy horror in New York. Now it seemed that poor Madeline would make it; at least there was a damned good chance for her, after a rotten start.
Pug did not want to spoil his good mood by spending the night bedded down in a room with Colonel Harrison Peters. He was used to sleeping sitting up in trains and planes, and he decided to snooze in the club car. Peters had not appeared for dinner; probably he had quaffed several whiskeys and turned in. Pug dozed off with the lights on and drinkers’ noise all around him, having slipped the barman ten dollars to buy his peace.
The car was dimmed, and quiet except for the rapid clacking of the wheels, when he was poked awake. A tall figure in a bathrobe swayed over him. Peters said, “There’s a nice berth all made up for you.”
Yawning, stiff, Pug could think of no gracious way out. He stumbled after Peters to the drawing room, which for odors of whiskey and stale cigars was no better than the club car; but the crisply sheeted upper berth looked good. He quickly undressed.
“Nightcap?” Peters was pouring from an almost empty bottle.
“No, thanks.”
“Pug, don’t you want to drink with me?”
Without comment Pug accepted the glass. They drank, got into their berths, and turned out the lights. Pug was glad to be under covers after all. He relaxed with a sigh, and was sinking into sleep.
“Say, Pug.” Peters’s voice from below, warm and whiskeyish. “That Anderson’s a comer. Rhoda thinks he and Madeline are serious. You’d approve, wouldn’t you?”
“Yep.”
Silence. Train sounds.
“Pug, can I ask you a very personal question?”
No reply.
“Sorry as hell to disturb you. This is damned important to me.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you and Rhoda ever break up?”
Victor Henry had tried to avoid a night with the Army man, to duck the risk of just such a probe. He did not answer.
“It wasn’t my doing, was it? It’s unbelievably shitty to move in on a guy’s wife when he’s overseas. I understood you were already estranged.”
“That’s true.”
“Otherwise, believe me, attractive as she is, I’d have steered clear.”
“I believe you.”
“You and Rhoda are two of the finest people I know. What happened?”
“I fell in love with an Englishwoman.”
Pause.
“That’s what Rhoda says.”
“That’s it.”
“It doesn’t seem like you.”
Pug was silent.
“Are you going to marry her?”
“I thought I was, but she refused me.” So Peters wrung from Victor Henry his first reference to Pamela’s astounding letter, which he had tried to bury from mind.
“Jesus! You never know with a woman, Pug, do you? Sorry to hear that.”
“Good-night, Colonel.” It was a sharp cut-off tone.
“Pug, just one more question. Did Dr. Fred Kirby have anything to do with all this?”
There it was. The thing Rhoda had feared was coming to pass because of this forced intimacy. What Victor Henry said next could make or break the rest of Rhoda’s life; and he had to answer fast, for every second of hesitation was a slur on her, on him, and on their marriage.
“What the hell does that mean?” Pug hoped he put the right puzzlement, tinged with anger, in his tone.
“I’ve been getting letters, Pug, damnable anonymous letters, about Rhoda and Dr. Kirby. I’m ashamed of myself for paying them any attention, but —”
“You should be. Fred Kirby’s an old friend of mine. We met when I was stationed in Berlin. Rhoda had to come home when the war broke out. Fred was in Washington then, and he played tennis with her, and took her to shows and such, sort of the way you’ve been doing, but with no complications. I knew about it, and I appreciated it. I don’t like this conversation much, and I’d like to turn in.”
“Sorry, Pug.”
“Okay.”
Silence. Then Peters’s voice, low, troubled, and drunk. “It’s because I idolize Rhoda that I’m so upset. I’m more than upset, I’m tortured. Pug, I’ve known a hell of a lot of women, prettier than Rhoda, and sexier. But she’s virtuous. That’s where her preciousness lies. That sounds strange coming from me, but that’s how I feel. Rhoda’s the first lady in every sense of the word that I’ve ever known, except for my own mother. She’s perfect. She’s elegant, modest, decent, and truthful. She never lies. Christ, most women lie the way they breathe. You know that. You can’t blame them. We keep trying to screw them, they play a desperate game, and all’s fair. Don’t you agree?”
Peters had drunk up the bottle, Pug thought, to nerve himself for this. The maundering could go on all night. He made no reply.
“I mean I’m not talking about these stodgy wives, Pug. I’m talking about stylish women. My mother was a knockout till she was eighty-two. Christ, she looked like a chorus girl in her coffin. Yet I want to tell you, she was a saint. Like Rhoda, she went to church every Sunday, rain or shine. Rhoda’s as stylish as a movie queen, yet there’s something saintly about her, too. That’s why this thing’s hit me like an earthquake, Pug, and if I’ve offended you I’m sorry, because I think the world of you.”
“We’ve got a busy day tomorrow, Colonel.”
“Right, Pug.”
In a few minutes Peters was snoring.
There were two admirals in King’s outer office, when Pug came there straight from Union Station. He prevailed on the flag lieutenant to send in a short note, and King at once summoned him inside. The CNO sat behind his large desk in the bleak room, smoking a cigarette in a holder. “You look better than you did in Tehran,” h
e said, not offering Pug a chair. “What’s this about uranium now? I’ve shredded your note into the burn basket.”
Pug sketched the situation at Oak Ridge in spare sentences. King’s bald long head and seamed face turned very pink. His severe mouth puckered strangely, and Pug surmised that he was trying not to smile. “Are you saying,” King broke in harshly, “that the Army, after commandeering all the nation’s scientists and factories, and spending billions, hasn’t got a bomb, while we’ve cooked one up in that tinpot Anacostia lab of ours?”
“Not quite, Admiral. There’s a technical gap in the Army’s method. The Navy process closes that gap. They want to take our system and blow it up on a huge industrial scale.”
“And that way they’ll get this weapon made? Not otherwise?”
“So I understand. Not in time for use in this war.”
“Hell, I’ll give ‘em anything they need, then. Why not? This should make us look pretty good in the history books, hey? Except the Army will write the history, so we’ll probably get left out. How did you become involved in it?”
King listened to the tale of the couplings, nodding and smoking, his face rigid again. “Colonel Peters has telephoned the Dresser company,” Pug concluded, “It’s all set. I’m flying to Pennsylvania to make sure that the stuff gets on the trucks and rolls out.”
“Good idea. Flying how?”
“Navy plane out of Andrews.”
“Got transportation?”
“Not yet.”
King picked up the telephone and ordered a car and driver for Captain Henry. “Now then. What do you want me to do, Henry?”
“Assure Colonel Peters of Navy cooperation, Admiral. Before pushing this idea of duplicating our plant, he wants to be sure of his ground.”
“Give his phone number to my flag lieutenant. I’ll call the man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve heard about your expediting of the landing craft program. The Secretary is pleased.” King got up and held out a long lean arm crusted with gold to the elbow. “On your way.”
As Pug was paying off the taxicab on his return from Pennsylvania, Madeline opened the front door. She looked almost as she had, going to her first dance: flushed, shiny-eyed, too painted-up. She said nothing, but gave him a hug and led him into the living room. There sat Rhoda, looking very dressy for a weekday at home, behind a coffee table on which champagne was cooling in a silver bucket. Sime Anderson stood beside her with a bewildered, foolishly pleased look on his face.