Nucleus

by Rory Clements

  ‘We will talk over lunch. First, though, you must unpack and freshen yourself up. Is that well with you?’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Forster.’ Lydia hesitated. ‘I really am very grateful. I know that you have done everything humanly possible to find Albert but I couldn’t just sit there in London waiting. I had to come . . .’

  ‘Well, I admire your spirit.’ Miss Forster smiled and Lydia saw that her first impressions had been wrong; there was a great deal of warmth there. ‘Lunch in half an hour, yes?’

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’ And then she would go to Tiergartenstrasse and talk to the man whose name had been given to her by Philip Eaton.

  ‘Just a small word of warning, Miss Morris. You must realise that we are all watched. My house is observed, your entry into the country will have been noted and they will undoubtedly take an interest in you.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Sweat dripped from Wilde’s brow and streamed in rivulets down his cheeks. His hair was soaked, and his bare, tanned chest glistened. He hit the punchbag with a machine-gun flurry of sharp jabs, then stood back, breathing heavily.

  ‘You’re out of condition, Prof.’ The trainer raised a reproachful eyebrow. ‘Slow.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me, Joe. I think I’d worked that out for myself.’

  ‘Don’t they have gyms in Yankeeland?’

  They had plenty, of course, and some pretty damn fine boxers, too, but Wilde had found his time in America eaten up by his lecture tour, and, of course, staying with his mother in Boston. He could have found an hour or two for himself, he supposed; perhaps he had been too lazy.

  ‘Come on, let’s spar a little, Prof. Three minutes. I’ll go easy on you.’

  ‘No, not today, Joe.’ He had already untied the laces on his gloves and was removing them. He put them on the boards at the edge of the ring, then reached for his towel to wipe his face and body. ‘I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment.’

  ‘I’ll let you off then. Just this once.’

  Wilde was a lean, powerful man, a middleweight, but he knew that he could never beat Joe Spinks in a fight, even though Joe was six inches shorter and two and a half stone lighter than him, as well as a couple of years older. Joe had been an Army champion before going professional, featherweight division. He’d been about to have a crack at the British title when he got sick. After three months out he had come back, but he never got another shot at the title. He still fought with the courage and ferocity of a terrier, though. Could still whip any man within two weight divisions in the eastern counties, amateur or pro. Most of all, he possessed skills and speed of which Wilde, though a fair amateur, could only dream.

  He liked this little gym on the south side of Cambridge. It stank of stale sweat and leather and there were flecks of dried blood and plenty of dust because no one ever cleaned the place, which was all part of its questionable charm. Lydia, who considered boxing barbaric, would not have approved.

  Wilde picked up the gloves and handed them to Spinks. ‘Put those away for me, would you, Joe?’ He nodded towards the wall clock. ‘You keep that ten minutes slow, if I recall. I’ve got to make tracks.’

  ‘Next week then?’

  ‘Sooner than that, I hope. As you so bluntly said, I’m slow.’ He was stripped to the waist, his trousers held up by a belt and secured at the ankles with bicycle clips, above bare feet. His shirt and tie hung like limp rags from a hook on the far wall. He pulled on his shirt, aware that he probably smelt like a raccoon. But there were no washing facilities here and he didn’t have time to go home or to the college baths. Geoff would just have to take him as he was. He dragged on his socks and shoes. He didn’t bother to knot his tie properly, just let it hang about his neck and tucked the ends down his shirt front.

  He stepped outside into the balmy summer air. His motorbike was right in front of him, perched on its stand and he stood back for a brief moment to admire her. The Rudge Special. One hundred miles per hour guaranteed, as he had proved more than once when the summer roads were dry and traffic-free. He’d had the Rudge three years now and had grown to love her sensuous black body, her slender gold trimmings and her long chrome exhausts; she had served him well.

  Pulling on his goggles, he kicked the bike into life and sped off up the road, his shirt billowing around him. Five minutes later, he wound his way down the narrow thoroughfare known as Free School Lane and drew to a halt outside the Cavendish Laboratory, a rather prosaic late-Victorian building that might have pleased a self-satisfied municipal worthy.

  Inset high in the ornate gatehouse wall was a statue of the Duke of Devonshire, whose family name was Cavendish, and who had provided the cash to found this place of discovery and science. Its motto invited you in: Magna opera Domini exquisita in omnes voluntates eius – the works of the Lord are great, searched for by all who delight in them.

  But fine words and a few noble carvings aside, the Cavendish was a dull building that had been blackened by soot in the half century since its construction. Nothing from the outside suggested that this characterless place had produced some of the most dramatic and astonishing scientific advances in human history; that it was, in fact, a place of magic.

  Wilde pushed the Rudge through the wide oak gateway into a cobbled courtyard where a mass of bicycles crowded the walls. To his right he saw the rather incongruous new Mond laboratory with its crocodile motif (said to be have been ordered by the Russian physicist Kapitsa in tribute to the late Lord Rutherford); further along, there was scaffolding and the noise of builders at work.

  He hoisted his motorbike onto its stand and strode into the main building. At the entrance, he spoke quickly to the porter, who pointed him in the right direction. He climbed up a flight of stone steps, two at a time, to a high, half-panelled corridor reeking of tobacco smoke and strange electrical smells, and he picked his way over a stone floor carpeted with discarded cigarette butts and ash.

  Geoff Lancing was at his workbench in a small, chaotic office. There were books and papers everywhere. Sunlight flooded in through the curtainless window on to a collection of unidentifiable pieces of machinery and glassware, some seemingly broken, some held together with rubber bands or bits of string.

  Lancing did not look up. ‘You’re late, Tom.’

  ‘All of five minutes. How can I ever make it up to you?’

  ‘I’ll find a way, don’t you worry.’ At last he raised his eyes, and grinned.

  ‘Is this really the place where they split the atom, Geoff? I rather think the Mad Hatter might have been at home here.’

  ‘Out of chaos comes order.’ Lancing backed his chair away from the bench and stood up. ‘Actually, that’s not entirely true.’

  ‘Entropy.’

  ‘You understand more science than you let on, Tom.’

  ‘I sometimes think entropy applies as much to history as it does the real world. Things fall apart . . .’

  ‘Well, you’ve obviously got a clear head this morning, which is a good start.’

  ‘What’s going on with that scaffolding outside?’

  ‘An extension – the Austin Wing – paid for with a generous grant. Should be up and running as a high-tension lab in next to no time. A cyclotron has already been installed.’ Lancing shook his head, but was still smiling. ‘Some of us already think it will be too small for our needs.’

  ‘A cyclotron?’

  ‘A particle accelerator. Much better than the one Walton and Cockcroft used when they split the atom back in 1932, but a little off the pace in 1939. I know, I know . . . double Dutch. I’ll try to keep it simple. If you’re going to study atoms – or split them – you have to fire them in a well-defined beam from a radioactive element, so that you can engineer a collision with other atoms. The accelerator does that for you.’ He clapped Wilde around the shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around, introduce you to some of the chaps, then we can retreat to the library for tea and buns and a layman’s guide to the building blocks of the universe.’


  *

  To Wilde, the lab he saw was as mysterious as an alchemist’s lair. And yet the work being done by the men hunched over tables, desks and workbenches was a world away from their forebears’ idea of science.

  Geoff introduced him briefly to Professor Bragg, who had succeeded Ernest Rutherford as director of the Cavendish. Bragg was clearly preoccupied, but other senior men were more welcoming, as were the lab technicians whose immense skill in preparing radioactive materials enabled the physicists to do their work.

  ‘These men are marvels,’ Geoff whispered in Wilde’s ear as they moved on. ‘But they need to be careful. Old Crowe, Rutherford’s assistant, burnt himself so badly handling radioactive materials without gloves that he needed skin grafts. Lost a finger, which did it for his piano playing.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Oh, Crowe’s still here. Still principal assistant.’

  They ranged through the building, up three floors and then into the stuffy, over heated loft where new students learned the tricks of the trade in their first weeks. Wherever they went, rooms seemed crowded with dons and research students. ‘There has never been enough space,’ Lancing said. ‘The Austin wing will help, but it’ll still be a jam. Come on.’

  Downstairs once more, Lancing pushed open a door to a room with bare brick walls and floors of wooden planks. At least two dozen men – and a couple of women – were packed into a space that should have housed no more than half that number. There was a low and constant murmur of voices and the buzz of high-voltage electrical discharges.

  It seemed there was scarcely room to move. Glass-blowing equipment, lathes and vacuum pumps were crammed to the corners, while a jumble of instruments and appliances covered the solidly built workbenches. It seemed chaotic: retort stands for holding test tubes; electrical wires hanging and snaking from the walls in impenetrable tangles; pipes of all lengths and diameters, lights in the ceiling, lights on desks; ladders against walls and shelves; boxes of yet more equipment; dials; tubing; pulleys; levers; cogs; geiger counters and other measuring machines; soldering irons; condensers; transformers; yet more wires – nests of them protruding from the back of desks and dispersing like a delta; switches; generators; bottles; batteries.

  And always that intense hum and scent of electrical burning, cutting through the layer of pipe and cigarette smoke.

  An illuminated sign hung at an angle from the ceiling: TALK SOFTLY PLEASE.

  ‘Like bees in a hive,’ Lancing said. ‘This is why we need the extension. Too many people, too little space – and since Lawrence Bragg took over, he’s brought crystallography to the fore. There’s a hell of a lot going on – I lose count of our research graduates.’

  Wilde spotted Torsten Hellquist and Paul Birbach, working together at a bench. Hellquist waved him over.

  ‘Ah,’ Geoff said. ‘You know our two stars. Brilliant, and as mad as kites.’

  ‘Birbach’s on the same staircase as me in college.’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  They wove their way through the chaos.

  Hellquist shook Wilde’s hand vigorously. ‘Hello, Mr American, so you are back from your travels. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company at the Cavendish?’ Hellquist was Swedish, perhaps six foot two in his brogues. An amiable elk of a man, large in girth and character, he spoke excellent English with an attractive lilt. Despite his extended belly, he was handsome; with fair Nordic features and clear blue eyes. He was often at Wilde’s college, visiting his friend Birbach. Wilde had always liked Hellquist very much; he’d shared some pleasant and rather drunken sessions with him in the Eagle or the Bull – sometimes both in the same evening. Wilde thought back to his conversation in the White House: what had Dexter Flood said about Hellquist and Birbach? That they had ‘dubious sympathies’? What had he meant by that?

  Hellquist was certainly a much more imposing figure – and a better communicator – than his colleague, Birbach, who said little at the best of times and then with a German accent so heavy it was almost incomprehensible. A Jewish refugee from Göttingen, Birbach was perhaps a foot shorter than the Swede, and scrawny with it. His hair was dark and his short black moustache made him look like a cross between Hitler and a mouse. He looked up, but did not make eye contact. Without a word, he returned to his papers.

  ‘I’m trying to make sense of what you all do here,’ Wilde said. ‘It isn’t easy.’

  Hellquist laughed. ‘Particle physics in one easy lesson, eh? Good luck, Mr American.’

  Wilde nodded to a glass and metal contraption on the desk. ‘What’s that thing?’

  ‘Cloud chamber,’ Hellquist said.

  ‘It creates an artificial cloud in a glass case,’ Lancing said. ‘And then the condensation enables us to see the path of charged particles – particles so small that the most powerful of microscopes wouldn’t get you close to seeing them. Charlie Wilson earned himself a Nobel for inventing that. He made the invisible visible as the saying goes.’

  ‘What are you using the chamber for today, Dr Birbach?’

  The German still did not look up. Hellquist cupped his hand and leant into Wilde’s ear. ‘Take no notice of Birbach. He is like this when he concentrates. You ask what we are doing with the cloud chamber? Nothing today. All we are doing is thinking and tinkering and scratching numbers down on paper.’

  ‘They are trying to replicate and refine Otto Hahn’s fission experiment,’ Lancing put in. Fission. That word again. ‘Is it dangerous, Dr Hellquist?’

  Hellquist shrugged. ‘Depends what you use it for. Like everything. For me, I see it as the solution to all the world’s energy needs.’

  There were a few moments of silence. ‘We don’t believe they’re on our side,’ Dexter Flood had said, but all Wilde could see was that he was intruding on these men’s work. ‘Come on, Geoff,’ he said. ‘Where’s that tea and cake you promised?’

  At the doorway, Lancing stopped and nodded back towards the bench where Hellquist and Birbach were working. ‘Those two,’ he said quietly. ‘You’d pass them in the street and never notice them, but they have two of the sharpest minds in the world. If anyone can find a simple way of turning fission into usable energy, it’s Paul Birbach. And if anyone can find a way to make it and sell it for a great deal of money, it’s Torsten Hellquist.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Wilde and Geoffrey Lancing sat facing each other at a small table in the Cavendish library, with a pot of tea, jug of milk, a bowl of sugar cubes and two cups. To Wilde, the word library conjured up a comfortable place smelling of dusty tomes and leisurely afternoons, but this place was rancid and dank, and smelt of rot. Lancing didn’t appear to notice. He had a pad of paper in front of him. His thin fingers clutched a pencil. ‘Perhaps you should bring your chair around and sit beside me, Tom? Then you can see what I’m writing and drawing.’

  Wilde shifted around the table. He realised that he was about to be on the receiving end of the sort of supervision that he gave to his undergraduates.

  ‘You will stop me if I’m boring you, won’t you?’ Lancing asked.

  ‘You won’t bore me, Geoff. Science is a wonderful thing. Where would we all be if Newton hadn’t discovered gravity, for instance?’

  ‘Floating in space?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Lancing laughed. ‘Sadly, not everyone shares your humour, however. Birbach wouldn’t spot a joke if it punched him in the face. Do you know about his baths?’

  ‘I’ve seen him trudging across the court in his dressing gown, clutching a towel.’

  ‘He has four-hour baths. He says it’s the best place to think. Think how cold and dirty the water must get, Tom. He’s a true eccentric. But that aside, I’ll be sorry to see him go.’

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  ‘He’s been recruited by the even madder J. Robert Oppenheimer in California.’

  ‘Hellquist not going with him?’

  ‘Not to date. Perhaps he’s not mad enough.’
/>   Wilde grinned. ‘What’s your secret insanity, Geoff?’

  ‘Oh, me? Flying, as you know. My sister Clarissa inherited all the family madness. I will always be the dull swot. Bloody awful at sport. Physics and aeroplanes, that’s me summed up.’

  Wilde looked at Lancing with a sceptical eye. He might have had a swot’s brain, and be a little under average height, but with his swept-back fair hair, his open good looks and his easy manner, he looked almost as much a movie star as his famous sister.

  ‘Come on, that’s enough fun,’ Lancing said, dropping a couple of sugar cubes into his tea. ‘You want to know about particle physics. Believe it or not, it’s actually quite interesting.’

  He began drawing. A circle which he labelled as nucleus, containing twelve smaller circles, six of which he shaded and tagged protons and six more which he left unshaded and marked as neutrons. Then encircling it all he drew orbital lines with six dots which he called electrons. ‘Imagine this as a carbon atom, Tom. This is gross simplification and still just theory, but this is how we believe it works. The electrons with a negative charge orbit the nucleus, rather in the way that the planets orbit the sun. The nucleus contains both protons – which have a positive charge – and neutrons, which have no charge at all. In the case of carbon, it’s all quite stable – but when you get to the heaviest elements such as uranium, which have a lot more protons and neutrons, the nucleus becomes less steady. In effect it begins to decay spontaneously. Are you taking this in?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It now seems that the instability inherent in uranium – particularly an extremely rare form of the element known as uranium-235 – makes an atom bomb possible. It is that instability which can lead to fission – the bursting apart of the nucleus, releasing huge amounts of energy. A concept that has been suggested for many years.’

  Wilde nodded. ‘H.G.Wells . . .’

  ‘Quite. It now seems he was right when he imagined that one day atomic bombs might be dropped from planes. Harold Nicolson suggested much the same thing in his book Public Faces, describing an “atom bomb” the size of an inkstand having the capacity to destroy New York. That might not be so far-fetched. Yet even as recently as the early thirties when that was written, our own dearly beloved Professor Ernest Rutherford was writing off the atom as a source of energy. But Nicolson’s grim prediction looks pretty accurate now.’ Lancing poured them both another cup of tea. ‘Have you heard of Leo Szilard?’ he went on.