“What choice did we have?” asked Marlene irritably. “Should we have tried it with just the adults? Then I can guarantee you the beasts would have made it into the canyon.”
“Perhaps we could have found another solution!”
“Yes, perhaps. And if you hadn’t blown up the transporter on Earth, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in this shitty situation,” Marlene’s voice was trembling.
Russell was silent. Her last words hit him hard. When the shit hits the fan, people say what they really think.
But it didn’t change the fact that she was right. What right had he had to decide over the lives of forty people? The question was in fact easy to answer: he simply hadn’t thought it through.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Yeah, me too,” said Marlene. “There’s no point throwing accusations around like this. We’re still in a critical situation.”
Russell rubbed his throbbing knee. “Perhaps we should see it from this perspective: at least we can hope again.”
“Can we?”
“We managed to defeat the first wave. That’s more than we dared to hope for yesterday.”
Marlene groaned. “The situation hasn’t changed at all. The wave of wotans yesterday was smaller than we predicted. We cleared away around a thousand dead wotans. The next wave will be bigger. Much bigger. I spoke to Jenny this afternoon; she’s taking new infrared pictures. She thinks something is brewing again. The former wotan territory has been infiltrated by other animals who are themselves on the run. Jenny reckons that the next wave will drive at least twenty thousand beasts into the canyon.”
“Twenty thousand,” repeated Russell numbly. It was hard to even imagine such a number.
“Correct. The next wave will overrun us if we don’t manage to seal the pass first.” She picked up her cup. “What’s the latest?”
Russell sighed. “The work at the building site has been completed. The new bomb core is finished and the initiator should be done tonight. But both of our bomb constructors want to carry out an experiment tomorrow morning and turn the plutonium into a critical mass, in order to determine the amount of graphite necessary.”
Marlene looked confused. “To turn it into a critical mass?”
Russell shrugged. “They said they have to carry out this test. Ty’s explanation frightened me.”
“I don’t have time to deal with this. Please be at the test and make sure they don’t do anything stupid.”
Russell gave a despairing laugh. “I have absolutely no idea what they’re up to.” He hesitated. “I’m surprised that Dr. Cashmore wasn’t in the lab with them. Perhaps it would be better if he monitored the test.”
Marlene shook her head. “I took him off the bomb project.”
“Really?” asked Russell.
“Yes. Ben had an idea of how to create more firepower for the observation post, in case we really have to defend ourselves against another wave. I need Cashmore to implement Ben’s idea.”
“What does it involve?”
“That’s none of your concern. We don’t even know whether the idea is feasible or not. You just concentrate on your bomb. It’s enough for me to know that you’ll put the brakes on Ty if Dr. Dressel has any doubts.”
“Okay.”
“When will the bomb be ready?”
“If the test tomorrow morning works, we can start on the final stages in the canyon. Perhaps the day after tomorrow very early, with a bit of luck tomorrow evening.”
Marlene leaned over her desk and looked Russell straight in the eyes. “We can’t afford any delays. None. If it’s in any way possible it should happen tomorrow. We don’t know when the next wave will swarm toward the observation post, but if the bomb isn’t ready to detonate, we’re all dead.”
Chapter 39
“It already stinks like hell,” said Ernie Lawrence. He looked at the huge heap of dead wotans three-hundred feet away on the other side of the fence. The sun had just gone up. It looked like it was going to be a nice sunny day, but Ernie still had the shivers. They had spent the whole night piling up the bodies of the dead wotans into a huge heap, so that they would have a clear line of fire if it came to another battle. Lee had welded a shovel to one of the jeeps so that they didn’t come in contact with the acid.
“Can you imagine how bad they’ll stink when they start to really decompose?” asked Dillon Grant, who was standing next to him on the lookout. “Maybe we should have burnt them.”
“We can’t be wasting any fuel. And anyway, the fire would probably have attracted more of the beasts,” said Ernie.
“At the moment they’re still doing their own thing. But eventually they’ll come back,” said Dillon. He had a deep crudely bandaged gash on his forehead from the last battle. Thankfully, no more animals had come near the post since the attack.
“Hey, there’s our egghead. What’s he doing here?” asked Ernie.
Dr. Cashmore pulled up under the lookout. On the truck bed were three shimmering, silver objects that looked like little canons with long levers at one end, and the same number of metal containers. Ben hurried over and Cashmore shook his hand.
Ernie and Dillon leaned over the railing. “What’s he up to? He’s never shown up at the post before.”
“I have no idea. If you gave him a gun, he’d probably shoot himself in the foot by mistake,” added Dillon.
Ernie grinned. Cashmore might be a genius in his laboratory and he was not bad as an engineer—after all, he had built the refinery together with Lee. But as a soldier? Ernie remembered a drill with hand grenades, where the nervous chemist had only thrown away the safety pin. Fortunately it had been a practice grenade that couldn’t explode.
“Don’t stand around gaping! Help me and take this thing off my hands!” yelled Ben, who was climbing up the ladder with one of the objects from Dr. Cashmore’s jeep.
Ernie knelt down and grabbed it. The thing was heavier than it looked. Grunting, Ernie and Ben placed it on the front of the platform, while Dillon helped the chemist up onto the lookout. When he reached the top, Cashmore held onto the railing, gasping for air.
Ernie eyed the construction. What he had just taken to be a cannon resembled, on closer inspection, the spraying device of a fire truck. “What’s it supposed to be, Ken?”
“A little surprise for the next lot of beasts that get it into their heads to attack the observation post,” said Ben.
“That’s a spray nozzle,” explained the chemist. “A hose will be attached to the other side, and down there we’ll install a pump, which will pump the contents of the vats into the nozzle. Albert will bring the pump down in the next hour or so, once it’s cleaned. Then you can spray the stuff over the beasts.”
“The stuff? What’s in the vats?” asked Dillon.
“Napalm,” replied Ben with a grin.
“Napalm?” repeated Ernie and Dillon in unison. This wasn’t the Vietnam War. Back then the stuff had caused enormous damage—particularly to the civilian population. Ernie shook his head. “How did you get hold of it?”
“Fresh from the lab. Napalm isn’t difficult to produce,” answered Dr. Cashmore. “It’s basically kerosene gelatinized with additives. It’s easy to extract the necessary aluminum soaps from aluminum hydroxide, cyclopenthan and cyclo—”
“Spare us the lecture, Ken,” interrupted Ben. “The other two also need to be installed.”
Cashmore shrugged and started going back down the ladder.
“A flamethrower?” asked Ernie.
Ben nodded. “Like in Vietnam! With the pump that Albert’s bringing over soon, we can spray the stuff up to three-hundred feet on the other side of the barrier. The gel sticks to the beasts and the burning kerosene will finish them off in seconds. Unfortunately we don’t have much of it. It’ll probably take a minute to empty one vat, but at least the fire will keep burning for some time.”
“If only we’d had this two days ago,” said Ernie despondently. Maybe then Chris and the others wo
uld still be alive.
Ben nodded. “The annoying thing is that it won’t help us much against the next wave. There’ll be too many of them. The napalm will hold them back for a bit. But no more.”
“Better than nothing. Is there any news about how long we’ve still got?”
Ben grimaced. “No exact information. Jenny thinks it’ll be sometime between this afternoon and tomorrow morning.”
“And when is our amateur Oppenheimer blowing up the canyon?” asked Dillon.
“It’s planned for this evening.”
“Great,” said Ernie, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s hope there’s still someone left by then to ignite the bomb.”
Chapter 40
“We can start right away. But first I want to show you something.” Ty walked around the table and took a silver, marble-sized ball out of a container. He held it under Russell’s nose.
Russell took a step back. “Is that the initiator?”
Ty nodded. He was in his element. “The initiator has elements of beryllium and polonium. When it’s compressed by the implosion of the bomb core, the elements fuse and the initiator emits the neutrons into the plutonium.”
“You told me that already,” said Russell irritably.
Ty’s posturing was getting on his nerves again.
“Oh . . . Well, in any case, we don’t have an implosion, so it wouldn’t work. Instead, I’ve opened up the initiator and slotted the individual elements directly into one another. And I’ve brushed a thin layer of nitrocellulose in between.”
“Aha.”
“Nitrocellulose is more commonly known as guncotton, and it’s impact-sensitive. At the moment it isn’t emitting any neutrons, since the alpha particles emitted by the beryllium are being absorbed by the thin layer between the elements. But when the second plutonium half hits the bottom half at the moment of detonation, the nitrocellulose evaporates and moves through little ducts to the outside. The beryllium comes into contact with the polonium, and neutrons instantly stream outside.”
Ty clearly expected some sign of comprehension, but Russell did not do him the favor. He turned round to John Dressel, who was standing apathetically in a corner of the room. The physicist’s eyes were red and puffy and he was staring numbly at the ceiling, lost in thought. Russell asked himself how he would feel if he had just lost a son. But it was no use. Somebody with the right knowledge had to supervise Ty’s work.
“What do you think? Will it work?”
The physicist didn’t react.
“John!” said Russell and took a step toward him.
The physicist gave a start, looked at him in momentary confusion and then nodded. “We did a test with a little piece of the initiator. It’ll work.”
Russell turned back to Ty. “Good. Now what? Shall we start the experiment? Time is of the essence.”
Ty nodded and waved Russell over to the test setup on a table. It was shielded on three sides by twelve-inch-high blocks of lead. In the middle lay the bottom half of the new bomb core. A row of graphite slabs surrounded the plutonium. Ty carefully placed the initiator in a depression in the center.
“After re-forming it into the hemispherical shape, we poured nickel tetracarbonyl over the plutonium. As a result, a thin layer of nickel formed on the bomb core, which prevents contact with the surrounding air, so that we can work with it safely. We set up a neutron source below the table, and are measuring the level of neutron multiplication in the core.” He pointed at an oscilloscope-like instrument with several digital indicators. “At the moment the k factor is at 0.9. That means that through nuclear fission, per neutron an average of 0.9 new ones are being generated.” He flipped a switch on the measuring device. An irregular ticking could be heard from the loudspeakers. “Every click represents a captured neutron, like with a Geiger counter.”
Russell could feel himself breaking out in a sweat. The whole thing was uncanny. “That means the core is now emitting radiation?” He found himself taking a step backward.
Ty laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re working with very few neutrons. We’re not in any danger. In any case, we will keep putting graphite around the core for as long as it takes to reach a k factor of precisely one. That is the precise value of the critical mass. And we will then position exactly that amount of graphite around the core in the bomb cave.” He turned to John. “Are you writing down the values?”
The physicist nodded weakly and picked up a clipboard with a table for filling in.
“Good, let’s get started. The test setup has exactly ten kilograms of graphite. The k factor is 0.905. Now I’ll lay more blocks around the core.” He picked up a plastic container, which was filled with grey cuboids.
Russell wondered how many scientists in the early days of the US atomic bomb program had been exposed to radiation during such experiments. He wished Dr. Cashmore could have been here to monitor the experiment.
“Twenty-six point five pounds of graphite. 0.951,” said Ty.
John Dressel added the values to the table. It seemed to Russell as if the clicking from the loudspeaker had become faster, but he could be imagining it.
“Twenty-eight point five pounds. 0.986. Now it’s getting interesting.” Ty picked up more graphite blocks.
“Twenty-eight point five,” murmured Dr. Dressel.
Ty carefully laid another block next to the plutonium and looked at the measuring device. “0.998. Twenty-nine point five.” He looked at Russell. “Now I’ll take a smaller block, then we should reach a stable chain reaction.”
Ty’s hands were shaking. Russell automatically took another step back.
“1.001 at exactly Twenty-nine point nine six pounds.” Ty looked at his test setup almost lovingly. “That gives us a stable chain reaction.” He grinned. “What do you say now? We’ve made our own atomic reactor.”
The ticking from the loudspeaker became faster without Ty adding any more blocks. Russell was sure he wasn’t imagining it. “And now a chain reaction is taking place in the material?”
Ty beamed and nodded, and waved his arms around. “Yup. We exceeded critical mass very slightly. The nuclear fissions will continue to accelerate on their own, even if I switched off the neutron source. But it would take a long time until it was strong enough to expose us to radiation, because we’re still in the area of delayed neutrons.”
He was making a real show of this actually dangerous experiment. Suddenly Russell heard Dr. Dressel make a choking noise. The physicist was chalk white.
“What is it, John?”
“I don’t feel well. I’m dizzy.”
“No wonder,” said Ty. “You haven’t eaten anything since last night.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” said the physicist in a husky voice.
He can’t cope with his son’s death.
“Wait. I’ll take you outside into the fresh air.” Russell took John by the arm and led him toward the door. As they went, he turned to Ty. “Are we finished with the experiment?”
Ty nodded. “Yes, we know what we need to know. You can go outside, I’ll dismantle everything.”
Russell opened the door while propping up the physicist. He was about to sit him down on a wooden bench next to the door in the sun, when Ty let out a piercing scream. Russell spun around. A blinding, bluish light radiated out of the lab and cast a shadow of the door on the dusty ground. The ticking that up to a moment ago had still been regular was turning into an ear-splitting buzz. It only lasted a moment, then the light was gone again. The buzzing from the loudspeakers subsided and eventually fizzled out completely.
Russell stormed into the building. “What was that?” He was irritated. The experiment had been over.
Ty’s eyes were ripped open wide and his face was even paler than Dr. Dressel’s. His lips were quivering.
“What is it?” shouted Russell. Something had obviously gone very wrong.
“I wanted to gather up the graphite blocks,” whispered Ty. “I held the container at a slant, and a big bl
ock slipped out and fell straight onto the bomb core. It bounced off, but . . .” He stared straight through Russell. “Oh my God!”
Dr. Dressell pushed past Russell, doubled over. “What does your dosimeter say?” he asked quietly.
Ty put down the container with the blocks and with trembling hands took the film badge dosimeter out of his chest pocket. He looked at the reading and his eyes widened even more.
“It’s at the top of the scale. Over twenty sievert!”
Russell looked back and forth between Ty and the physicist.
Ty’s face, which a moment ago had been chalk white, was turning red. “Twenty sievert,” he repeated quietly. He started to cry.
“What happened?” Russell asked.
Dr. Dressel turned to look at him. “Get Dr. Lindwall. Right now!”
Perplexed, Russell left the barrack and made his way to the doctor.
Chapter 41
“Here comes Marlene,” said Dressel.
Russell spun round. Finally!
He, John Dressel, and Lee Shanker were standing in front of the entrance to the infirmary, when Marlene appeared. Lee had a bandage on his right hand. He had hurt himself with a saw at the building site in the canyon and Dr. Lindwall had just been treating him when Russell alerted the doctor.
“What happened?” asked Marlene, catching her breath.
“Ty was radiated in the experiment with the plutonium,” said Russel.
“Is it bad?”
“He got twenty sievert,” said Dr. Dressel.
“Is that a lot?”
Russell looked at the ground. He felt guilty. Marlene had asked him to supervise the experiment. And now this!
Dr. Dressel nodded. “The dosage is lethal.”
Marlene’s jaw dropped. “How could it happen?” She turned to Russell.
He was just about to answer when Dr. Dressel stepped in. “It’s my fault! I felt sick and Russell had to take me outside after the experiment was actually completed. Ty was in the process of dismantling the experiment, when a graphite block fell on the plutonium core. The graphite bounced straight off, but it was enough to turn the plutonium into a powerful nuclear reactor for a fraction of a second. Ty was standing right next to it and . . .”
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