City on the Moon
Page 14
"That's obvious," agreed Kenmore, "considering what happened."
"They'd been developing a focused, accelerated beam of neutrons," Thurston observed. He added, "I can tell you this, because you already know too much. They could focus the beam absolutely, and accelerate the neutrons to any degree. They found that, at low power, the beam was so dense that it would break down molecules. Nice work in itself! Then they found that with even tighter focus and higher acceleration they could break the heavier atoms—bismuth and up. The power gain was terrific. They had controlled atomic fission. They reported that."
Kenmore said ironically, "Very useful!"
He meant, of course, that the whole reason for the City and the Space Laboratory was that there was a limit to the amount of atomic fission that could be done on Earth. It poisoned the air. There was a time when controlled atomic fission would have seemed occasion for delirious joy. It was so no longer.
But Thurston said mildly, "Quite useful. You see, with a dense enough beam, the released energy couldn't backfire. The release was directional."
Kenmore jumped. Controlled atomic fission with the energy released directionally would solve many problems. All the released energy could be captured and used. All of it! And in space . . .
"So we made a couple of atomic rockets to try it out," said Thurston. "The Lab was to test them. While they waited for the rockets to be made, they started to figure what would happen if the neutron beam hit lighter elements at the speed needed to break them.
"But they'd been under a killing strain. It was inhuman. It was intolerable to work under the strain they were under! So when they came up with figures stating that such a beam would start a chain reaction, one which would destroy the universe—why, they couldn't weigh it calmly. It was an answer to end all research, and they were at the breaking point. So they believed it. They couldn't help themselves!"
"I knew most of this," said Kenmore. "Go on!"
"But they happened to be wrong," Thurston told him.
"They didn't take the structure of neutrons into consideration. They forgot. So I've brought up the rockets. They may detonate, though I don't think so. But I know they won't start a chain reaction. Since the Lab's gone, I want to mount them in the rocket racks of the ship you've got here. The Earthship. Run controls inside, and mount them along with standard rockets. Use the standard ones to get aloft and well out in space—and turn on the reaction that the men in the Lab thought would set off the cosmos. It won't do that Will you pilot the ship?"
Kenmore said hungrily, "What do you think I am? When de we start?"
It would be a matter of hours to clamp on the atomic rockets and install the complex controls inside the ship. But the test had to be made in a civilian vessel. The purpose of the City and the Laboratory had to be accomplished by civilians, or there would be anguish and accusations. If the Laboratory had been destroyed, and its work completed by the military—why, much of the world would accuse the Americans of murdering the geniuses who had achieved so much. So it was necessary, as a matter of politics, to complete the job through the international organization of the moon.
Kenmore found Arlene while missile-base technicians went to work on the Earthship. She smiled hopefully at him. "Anything—"
He picked her up and hugged hr. He swung her as extravagantly as a girl can be swung only on the moon. He babbled almost incoherently. Arlene freed herself.
"This is all very nice," she said breathlessly, "but what's happened?"
He managed to control himself. He told her. She stared. Then Cecile Ducros snapped, "My next broadcast! A magneeficent broadcast. Thees I must tell about!
Arlene, you shall go weeth Kenmore and tell me of eet, and the next broadcast weel be from witheen the returned sheep and I weel tell my listeners of the triumph of mankind!"
Kenmore grinned at Arlene. "Would you like to go along?"
"You're going, aren't you?"
There was no concourse of people to watch the Earthship take off. It was midmorning on the moon—the sun was four days high—and the surface of the mare was already hotter than boiling water. The sunlight itself had the virulence of the glare of an open furnace door. It could have been cooked by. So there was only the jeep from the missile base nearby, with its enormous heat reflectors looking like the headdress of a nursing nun, only forty-odd feet high and of glittering silver. The missile-base men withdrew into their jeep, and Thurston ascended the sun-heated ladder rungs to the ship's airlock. He went in.
Mike Scandia said grandly, via talkie in the shadow under the jeep, "Arlene, I gave you a bouquet once, when things looked pretty bad. Now I'm giving you another one, when things look pretty good for the Lunar Mining and Metals Corporation as soon as you get back. From the Board of Directors!"
In the shadow-space beneath the reflectors there were only harsh reflections of the incandescence outside. But Mike held out something in his mittened hand. And it was incredible. Where the moon flowers Arlene had seen before were silver, these were gold. They were infinitely intricate, of impossible delicacy, of breathtaking beauty. Mike held out a bouquet of slender stalks and branching leaves. They were inextricably intertwined. They had the seeming fragility of maidenhair fern, but they were golden, brightly shining—such things as would be dreamed of in fairy tales as suitable christening gifts for a princess.
Arlene stared at them. "Oh, beautiful! But, Mike—don't tell me they'll vanish!"
She almost wailed it, and the chief's chuckle came into the helmet phones.
"We argued about those moon flowers," he said comfortably. "They had to be mercury, of course. Mercury vapor made by sunshine of some kind of ore, condensing in shadow where they couldn't be just liquid because it was too cold. They had to be frost. Mercury frost. Snowflakes of mercury. Naturally they'd vanish when anybody came near to warm 'em! So Mike and Haney and me, we were out at the solar-heat mine, and we boiled some gold in front of a shadow-place to make sure. It couldn't happen except in low gravity but— pretty, ain't they?"
"They're lovely!" said Arlene, bright-eyed. "Lovely." "Use 'em," said the chief, "for a bridal bouquet when you and Joe get hitched up."
He stood back. He and Haney and Mike and Moreau watched from the shadow of the jeep as Arlene climbed to the airlock with Kenmore close behind her.
The jeep drew back and the four men trudged beneath it. Presently it stopped and they stared back at the tall Earthship, shining silver in a landscape of fire, with a star-speckled sky of purest black above it.
The Earthship spurted flame. It rose swiftly for the stars.
A long, long time later, Joe Kenmore said evenly, "You know how to do it, Arlene."
She nodded, and put her hand on his. The ship floated free, pointed away from both Earth and moon. There was no sound inside it. Thurston, new from Earth, watched composedly as Kenmore's and Arlene's hands hovered over the control which would start atomic rockets to low-power firing outside the hull.
"Five," said Kenmore. "Four. Three. Two. One. Fire!" Arlene pressed down on Kenmore's hand. There was a gentle rumbling, which ceased. There was a feeling of weight. Gentle weight. Kenmore pressed harder. The weight increased. He lifted his hand. It lessened. He pressed again, and the Earthship leaped ahead like a mettlesome horse . . .
Kenmore nodded, awed in spite of himself.
"It works," he said to Thurston. He sounded incredibly calm. "How much fuel is there?"
"A hundred hours at one gravity," said Thurston mildly. "Of course these are small rockets. We'll have bigger ones."
"We could go to Mars and back with these alone," said Kenmore very quietly. "Someday, now, we will reach the stars!"
Arlene said confidently, "Of course!"
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