by C. P. Snow
Some of that spirit had come down to the younger men. Pure science was not national; the truth was the truth, and, in a sensible world, should not be withheld; science belonged to mankind. A good many scientists were as unselfconscious as Victorians in speaking of their ideals as though they were due to their own personal excellence. But the ideals existed. That used to be science; if you were ashamed of a sense of super-national dedication, men like Mounteney had no use for you; in the future, that must be science again.
Meanwhile, the war had forced their hands; but they often felt, even the most realistic of them, that they were mucking away in the dark. Though they saw no option but to continue, there were times, at this talk of secrets, leakages, espionage, when they turned their minds away.
It was startling to hear Martin break out, because of a violated ideal. In most respects, I thought of him as more earthbound than I was myself. But he would not take part in any more discussion about Sawbridge.
Soon he fell silent, the thoughts of pure science drained away, and he was brooding over the next test of the pile. His nerves had stayed steady throughout the fiasco, but now, within months or weeks of the second chance, they were fraying at last. In the windy August afternoon, the low black clouds drove on.
‘If it doesn’t go this time,’ he said to me, more angrily than he had spoken after the failure, as though holding me to blame, ‘you needn’t reckon on my future any more.’
20: The Taste of Triumph
Night after night that September I stayed by my sitting-room window with the curtains open, watching the swathe of light glisten on the dusty bushes in the square. The flying bombs had ceased, and it should have been easy to sleep; often I was wondering when I should get a message from Barford, giving the date of the second attempt to start the pile.
I decided that this time I would not go – but was the date already fixed? From Martin’s state I felt it could not be far off.
Sitting by the open window, tasting the autumn nights for the first time since 1939, I thought with regret of my own past troubles – with regret, not because I had undergone them, but because I was living through a quiet, lonely patch. Occasionally I thought of Martin: how many months in his adult life had been free from some ordeal approaching? Was this new one the biggest? Sometimes, from my quiet, I wished I were in his place.
One night at the end of the month, the telephone slowly woke me out of a deep sleep. Faintly it burred, in the hall, as though far away. When at last I understood the noise, I went towards it with dread.
The blue paint had not yet been taken from the hall bulb. In the crepuscular, livid light, I found the receiver: I heard Martin’s voice, active, repeating ‘Hallo, hallo, hallo.’ Up to that moment I had not thought of him, just of the pounce of bad news, any bad news.
As I muttered his voice came: ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s all right.’
I was stupefied, half awake, half comprehending:
‘What’s all right?’
I heard: ‘The pile began to run an hour ago. 3.5 a.m., the night of September 27–28 – just for purposes of reference.’
The words had been steady, but the flourish gave his joy away.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were starting?’ I answered with exultation, yet heard my temper rise.
‘I thought it was better like this.’
Then I congratulated him.
‘Yes, it’s something. They can’t take this from us.’
In his voice I could hear pure triumph, the words came out with the attack of triumph. At last he held success in his hands. If I had heard a friend speak so, even a most intimate friend, I should have known a splinter of rancour – the jag of the question: ‘Why hasn’t this happened to me?’
Listening to a brother in the pride of triumph, you could not feel even that splinter. It had been the same when I heard the news of his child. Just as in ‘unselfish’ love you can be crueller (as I was in Martin’s failure, which we had neither of us forgotten), so for the same reason you can be less envious. The more unassailable they are in success, the more total your rejoicing: for it is your own.
He could not resist telling me some details, there and then, in the middle of the night. It had been his idea to hold a ‘dress rehearsal’. During the summer, they had built a syphoning plant for the heavy water, so they had not required many hands: even of those present, few realized that this was the ‘real thing’. They had begun just after midnight, and the filling was still going on. For ten minutes, at the halfway stage, the graph points seemed to be going wrong again. ‘That was pretty hard to take,’ said Martin. Then the points began to come out according to calculation. In fact, they were coming out slightly better than calculation. Martin for once forgot his listener, and broke into technical language: ‘The k is 1.2 already, it’s too hot to put in more than three-quarters of the heavy water.
‘It’s embarrassing that it’s gone too well,’ he added. ‘Still, it’s quite a tolerable way to be embarrassed.’
The following afternoon, when he met me at the station, he was just as happy. It was no longer self-discipline that kept his expression firm; one could see the happiness beneath the skin; he was not a man to lose appetite for triumph the moment he had it.
We shook hands, which we did not often do.
‘The pile, I think,’ said Martin, without asking me where we should go first. He said, as we walked along: ‘When it looked as though we were due for another fiasco last night – that was getting near the bone.’
Contentedly browsing over past dramas, Martin led me into a hangar. It was empty, not a single human being in sight; it was noiseless, the pile standing silent in the airy space.
‘There she goes,’ said Martin. But he did not see the curious sinister emptiness of the place. He was thinking not of the silent, blank-faced pile but of the reaction going on within. He took me to the control room, a cubbyhole full of shining valves with one kitchen chair placed, domestic and incongruous, in front of a panel of indicators. Sitting there was the only other man I had seen that afternoon.
‘All well?’ asked Martin.
‘All well, Dr Eliot,’ said the duty officer.
‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ Martin said to me.
As we went out, there was a hallooing from close by, and Luke, who had just tramped in, called us into his office.
‘Well, Lewis,’ he said, ‘this is a bit better.’
‘To say the least of it,’ I said.
‘They ought to have known it was the neatest way to do it.’
‘They’ were Luke’s collection of enemies and detractors, and without malice, or even much interest, he dismissed them. He was sitting on his desk, and suddenly his whole face and body became vigorous.
‘There’s only one thing that matters now, as I’ve been saying to Martin this morning,’ he said, ‘and that is, how soon can we finish it off?’
Martin smiled. For himself, he would have been glad of a breathing space, to luxuriate in the success; to him, it was real success, the first he had had. But then Martin, less humble than Luke as a man, was far more so as a scientist. Luke knew his powers; he knew that this project had not stretched them; it had tested his character, but in terms of scientific imagination, it had needed little. He did not take much pride in the achievement; this was no place to rest; with all his energies, he wanted to push on.
‘We’ve got to make the bloody bomb while we’re about it,’ said Luke. ‘Until we’ve got the plutonium out, I shan’t be able to put my in-tray on top of my out-tray and go back to something worth doing.’
As I already knew, making the pile work was only the first stage, though the most important, in producing a bomb; second by second, the pile was now changing minute amounts of uranium into plutonium. In a hundred and fifty to two hundred days, they calculated, the transformation would have gone far enough: the slugs could then be taken out to cool: in another ninety days Luke and Martin co
uld begin extracting the plutonium. Luke said they might cut a little off those periods, but not much,
‘Perhaps we can begin extracting in March,’ he said. ‘Which leaves one question sticking out, when is the war going to end?’
This was late September 1944: we all agreed that there was no chance of an end that year. The intelligence teams in Germany were reporting that the Germans had got nowhere with their pile – but Luke and others at Barford found it hard to credit.
‘What we can do, so can they,’ said Luke. ‘Which is one reason why I want to whip that plutonium out. It would be too damn silly if they lifted this one out of the bag before us.’
‘What are the other reasons?’
Luke said quietly: ‘To tell you the truth, Lewis, I’d rather we got it first – so that we should have some influence in case any maniac wants to use the damned thing.’
It was the first time I had heard Luke talk about anyone using the bomb.
‘That is a point,’ said Martin.
‘But it isn’t the real point,’ said Luke, his face open and truculent once more. ‘Let’s come clean with you, Lewis. That’s a very good reason, but it isn’t the real reason, and you both know that as well as I do. The real reason is just that I can’t bear not to come in first.’
They could not touch the rods before March 1st; what was the earliest possible date to possess the plutonium?
Martin said: ‘The operative word is “possible”.’
Luke said: ‘I’ll get that stuff out in six weeks from March 1st if it’s the last thing I do.’
Martin said: ‘It may be.’
‘What is the matter?’ I said.
Luke and Martin looked at each other.
‘There are some hazards,’ said Luke.
That was the term they used for physical danger. Luke went on being frank. The ‘hazards’ might be formidable. No one knew much about handling plutonium; it might well have obscure toxic properties. There would not be time to test each step for safety, they might expose themselves to illness: conceivably grave illness, or worse.
‘Is that fair?’ Luke said to Martin, when he had finished.
‘Quite fair,’ said Martin.
There was a silence, which Martin broke: ‘I agree with you,’ he said, speaking straight to Luke. ‘There are good reasons for pushing ahead.’
‘I’m glad you admit it at last, anyway,’ said Luke.
‘I also agree that we’ve got to take certain hazards,’ said Martin. ‘I’m not happy about it, but I’m prepared to take a few modest risks. I don’t think, though, that I’m prepared to take the risks you are. I don’t believe the reasons justify them.’
‘They’re ninety per cent conclusive,’ said Luke.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin.
‘I haven’t thought it out yet,’ said Luke. ‘I must get it clear with myself where I stand about the risks. But I think I shall take them.’
‘You’re not the only person involved,’ said Martin.
‘Look here,’ Luke said, ‘this is going to be like walking blindfold, and I am not beginning to answer for anyone but myself’.’
Some of this repartee sounded as though they were repeating the morning’s argument, but, for a few moments past, they had seemed surprised by each other. Martin’s voice was sharp: ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I can’t ask any of our chaps to put their hands inside the blasted stew,’ Luke replied. ‘If anyone is going to dabble in chemistry with the lid off it’s me.’
‘Just before Lewis arrived,’ said Martin, on his side producing something new, ‘someone was waiting to volunteer.’
‘Who?’
‘Sawbridge.’
‘Good for him,’ said Luke, ‘but I can’t let him.’
‘Yes, I’m quite sure,’ said Martin slowly, ‘we can’t ask any of the others, or even let them volunteer.’
Luke’s face was flushed; his tone was quiet and sincere. ‘I’m not even asking you,’ he said.
Martin considered, rubbing the back of his forefinger across his lip. He was steady with the well-being of success; but he was also resentful, pinched with shame, as a prudent man is on being rushed by a leader much braver than himself.
‘I wish I could let you risk it by yourself,’ said Martin. ‘If I thought it was quite justified, I think I might.’
‘I’d rather do it myself,’ said Luke.
‘It may not be possible to let you.’
Suddenly Luke jumped down from the desk.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to make the decision yet awhile. It’s something that we should be fools to settle until we can look at it in cold blood.’
‘If you ask me,’ said Martin, rubbing his forefinger across his lip again, ‘I’m afraid the decision is already made.’
21: Beam of Light over the Snow
The decision was, in fact, already made. There were months in which to draw back, but no one suggested that Luke could or would. Even to those who disliked and envied him, he gave an impression of simple physical courage; it was the one virtue which, like any other group of men, the Barford scientists uncritically admired.
In those months, he received more respect than ever before.
‘Perhaps we ought to be doing something for Luke,’ I heard a rotund voice say in the Athenaeum. That meant, give him a decoration: he was passing into the ranks of solid respectable men.
Just about the same time, people at Barford noticed that Drawbell, whose Christian name no one had been known to utter, whose friends called him ‘C F’, had begun to sign himself with a large, plain, mesomorphic ‘Cyril Drawbell’.
‘A bad case of knight starvation,’ said someone. It was the kind of joke the scientists did not get tired of.
It was true that Drawbell spent many days in London, calling on Rose and the new Minister; no longer non-committal, but instead proclaiming ‘the success of our Barford policy’. With urgency he told Rose one day that the ‘team’ deserved some public credit. Rose, who had decided not to meet him halfway, responded with even more than his usual civility.
Drawbell tried his set of personal arts against Rose’s politeness, but could not get the response he was playing for. Yes, it was wonderfully exciting, yes, the Minister was well informed of the history of the project, Rose went on mellifluously, but gave no outright official praise to Drawbell, who, with the meeting inconclusive, returned with me to my room.
For once he looked dejected and tired, as though his vitality had sunk low. Suddenly he asked: ‘Eliot, do you hate this life?’ He meant the life of officials.
‘Sometimes I hate it,’ said Drawbell. He stared at me.
‘If anyone asked my reason for existence, what should I tell them?’ I tried to cheer him up, but he interrupted me: ‘I’m just a pedlar of other men’s dreams.’
Like many tricky men, he was wishing his character were simpler. He wished he were not self-seeking. But he did not exude the pathos one often finds in tricky men; his nature was harder than most of theirs. He was angry with himself, still more angry with Rose, and he took it out of me as Rose’s proxy.
At Barford he made one intervention, after trying to persuade Luke and Martin to go slow until the health risks were worked out. The only thing he had a right to insist on, he said, was this: they must not both expose themselves to danger at the same time. If one should happen to be laid out, the other must be left intact. It was reasonable and the two of them promised it.
All that winter they were experimenting with protective clothing, with various kinds of divers’ suits in order to do chemistry-at-a-distance. Sawbridge, who was still asserting his claim to take part, had developed a set of instruments for manipulating the rods out of sight.
Martin spent many of his evenings reading case histories of radiation illness. It seemed probable, he decided, that they would find, as well as the radiation hazards, that plutonium was also a chemical poison.
Luke scoffed at what he cal
led Martin’s ‘visits to the morgue’. To him, if you could do nothing about a danger, it was best to forget it. But Martin’s attitude was the exact opposite; if he were going to face a danger, he wanted to live with it beforehand. If he could become familiar in advance with the radioactive pathologies, he could more easily bear the moment of test. His clinical researches, which seemed to the others morbid, stiffened his resolve. With nothing like Luke’s or Sawbridge’s bravery of the fibres, Martin was training himself to face the March experiments with resignation.
Meanwhile, he continued to enjoy his taste of success. He was getting rather more than the credit due to Luke’s right-hand man; scientific elder statesmen, civil servants like Rose, found him comfortable to talk to, after Luke; he was cagey in speech, he showed some respect for etiquette, he had good manners; they were glad when he attended London committees instead of his chief, and on those visits he was taken to the Athenaeum more frequently than Luke had ever been.
He liked it. He seemed to view this official life with detachment, but really he saw it through a magnifying glass. I thought to myself that those like Martin, who were born worthy, were always half taken in by the world.
Even with March 1st coming on him, he still kept his satisfaction at having, in a modest sense, ‘arrived’. In January, he and Irene, when they came to London for a week’s leave, stood me a celebratory dinner. They had borrowed a flat in the first stretch of the Bayswater Road, just opposite the Albion Gate; it was still a luxury to let light stream out across the pavements, striking blue that night from the unswept snow. As we looked out, the middle of the road was dark, for the street lamps had not yet been lit.
We were saying (it was the kind of commonplace that we did not want to escape, since we were so content) how time had slipped by unnoticed, how the street lamps had now been dark for five and a half years. It was six years since Irene and I first met in my old rooms in Cambridge.