Prescription for Chaos

by Christopher Anvil

  Dave blinked.

  Barrow said, "They're naturally interested in anything that tends to discredit science. A disaster in any advanced research center would back up their argument that science is unpredictable."

  "Would Bates stoop to that?"

  "In that outfit," said Bardeen, "the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, and the head is ignorant of both. Do you know much about the League?"

  "I know a girl," said Dave, "who has every quality a woman should have. But she's also a member of the League. I can tell you, that can ruin a date."

  Bardeen smiled. "She doesn't question you about your work?"

  "Never. It's a part of science, and she doesn't like science."

  Barrow said, "What do you think of Bates' argument."

  "He's right that the ultimate results of an experiment are unpredictable. We don't really know whether, in the long run, science will turn out to have been good or bad. But that's beside the point."

  "How so?"

  "We're committed. We're in the position of a man who'd decided to jump a chasm, has gone back for a start, and now, running full speed, is almost at the edge. That's no time to think, 'Maybe I won't make it. I'll stop here.' He can't stop. He's got to go faster yet, and hope and pray he makes it. We're in the same spot. Science and technology have depleted the natural resources of the earth, disturbed the balance of nature, enlarged the population. If we tried to drop science now—even if we could get everyone on earth to agree to it—we'd face a terrific explosion of hunger, disease, and misery, followed by a drop straight into barbarism. The only visible way out is to complete the jump."

  Bardeen nodded. "That's the point. Exactly."

  Barrow looked at Dave almost with awe. "That's a remarkable comparison."

  Bardeen, too, for some reason was looking at Dave with visible respect. Then he thanked Dave for coming over, and expressed his appreciation for Dave's help in catching the intruder. When Dave was in the hall, Barrow came out.

  "Excuse me," said Barrow, frowning. "You like this girl you mentioned?"

  "Very much," said Dave.

  Barrow paused, his eyes unfocussed. Dave waited. This was the way things often went, and the reason why Dave had been so surprised at Barrow's commonplace remark about fools on the road.

  "Yes," said Barrow, "we must have an open house. Project 'S' is almost finished. That's the only way. We'll have the people here, in case—" He looked directly at Dave, and smiled. "Invite her. Show her around. Perhaps she'll see your viewpoint."

  "I don't know if she'll come."

  "Tell her if you can't convince her science is all right, you'll join the League. That will bring her." He looked Dave flatly in the eyes. "If you really like her, be sure she's here. The day after tomorrow. Before two in the afternoon."

  Barrow went back into Bardeen's office.

  Dave stood staring for a moment, then shook his head, and went back to the lab.

  When he mentioned this to some friends, they all laughed. "That's Barrow, all right. That's our boy."

  Official word soon came from Bardeen's office, and they were all excited.

  "Who knows," said someone. "Maybe we'll find out what Project 'S' is."

  The day of the open house saw the wives, sweethearts, and families of the men thronging the grounds. Barrow's family was there, as was Bardeen's. And for once it was possible to move freely. Even the inner security compound was opened to the visitors, though the Project "S" building remained closed.

  Anita had agreed to come, and visited the lab, but Dave's explanation of his work was no great success.

  "You see," he was trying to tell her, "atoms and molecules at ordinary temperatures are in a state of rapid vibration. The properties that we take for granted, as natural characteristics of matter, actually are only special characteristics, dependent on the comparatively high temperature—which to us seems normal. But at such temperatures, the atoms and molecules are in a rapid state of vibration. In cryogenics, we study matter at low temperatures."

  "Are they going to have lunch outdoors?" said Anita. She was lovely, but her features were slightly pinched, as though she felt the intense cold of the cryogenics lab around her.

  Dave, realizing the hopelessness of it, suppressed a grin. "How can you judge what you don't understand?"

  "By its results," she said.

  Dave said, "Unfortunately, I don't know yet just what the final result of all this is going to be."

  "Then," she said, brightening, "we can't very well judge it, can we?" She was studying his face intently, and suddenly grinned. "You're teasing me, aren't you?"

  Dave laughed. "At the beginning I was in earnest."

  "I'm sorry. It just doesn't mean anything to me. I suppose a man would feel the same way if a woman described the fine points of sewing to him."

  Dave nodded. "Let's go outside."

  It was a beautiful day, with small fluffy clouds against a delicate blue sky, light at the horizon, and deep blue overhead. The sun was bright, and there was a brisk cool breeze that fluttered the women's dresses as they stood by the tables that were laden with potato salad, and steaming trays of hot dogs and hamburgers. Dave realized that he was hungry. But as he and Anita started toward the crowd, abruptly Dave stopped.

  The whole scene for an instant seemed unreal to him, as if it were painted on a balloon that had been blown so tight it could almost be seen through.

  Anita said, "What is it?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know."

  He felt a compulsion again, the same feeling that had led him to press the brake pedal the other night. But this feeling was far stronger and more urgent.

  Anita was watching him. "What's wrong, Dave?"

  "I don't know. But I've got to find Bardeen." At that moment, he saw Bardeen, standing with Barrow a little apart from the crowd, which was now spreading out into small groups, holding paper plates and rolls, and balancing their cups.

  Anita said, "I'll get you something to eat. I'll wait over here while you talk to Mr. Bardeen."

  "Yes," he said. "Thanks."

  Bardeen and Barrow were standing like two statues, each of them holding a hamburger and a paper cup. Barrow had his eyes shut as Dave approached, but now he opened them.

  "No chance," Barrow said. "The lasers will melt the rock in front of them and when the rocket passes, the additional heat, and the release of pressure, will cause sudden vaporization."

  Bardeen said, "It can't be that hot."

  "The rockets will be traveling at such a speed as to compress the laser beam longitudinally. Remember, the rockets won't be working against gravity. Gravity will be helping them."

  Dave frowned. How could that be, unless a rocket were fired down into a hole? Suddenly he remembered the news broadcast. Geologists planned to study the structure of the earth by analyzing the shock waves from underground explosions.

  Bardeen said, "The phenomenon will be evanescent, unstable. But it will travel right along with the rocket, which will be moving at too high a speed to be crushed from the sides by the pressure. Remember, the deep layers will liquefy, then vaporize, and the pressure of vaporization behind the rocket will plunge it deeper and faster. The top of that hole will be hell on earth. There'll be a column of vapor miles high and the uprush will blast away the sides of the hole, widening it as it goes."

  "It will melt the rocket."

  "Yes, but too late."

  "Will it explode?"

  "Yes. Very, very deep."

  "So far, we have a geological expedition wiped out."

  "Yes, but a nuclear explosion at that depth is going to find matter under higher pressure than in any previous experiment. When the particles from the explosion strike those close-packed atomic nuclei—"

  Bardeen said tightly, "Chain reaction?"

  "Yes."

  "Self-sustaining?"

  "I can't tell yet. A small error at the beginning would slowly cause the rocket to fall behind the wave front, and penetrat
e less deeply."

  "If we could only warn—"

  "How? We tried that once, remember?"

  "I know. There's no reason for them to believe us."

  Before he thought, Dave said, "What is this—precognition?"

  Sam Bardeen's eyes were cool. Barrow glanced at Dave without expression, then nodded.

  "So that's how you could warn me last night about fools on the road."

  Bardeen cleared his throat.

  Dave said, "I remembered after those fools almost finished me off twice."

  Bardeen started to speak.

  Barrow said, "Hold it, Sam." He frowned at Dave. "After they almost hit you twice, then you remembered?"

  "That's right." Dave, thinking it over, was wondering again where these hunches came from. What had made him put his foot on the brake pedal?

  Bardeen started to speak.

  Barrow silenced him with a raised hand. "My department, Sam." He shut his eyes for a long moment, then looked at Bardeen with a faint grin. "Now the twins work."

  Dave glanced from one of them to the other.

  Bardeen was saying incredulously. "No waiting to match configurations?"

  "They'll match on signal. This is our boy here. They'll match, if he gives the signal."

  Bardeen glanced from Barrow to Dave, and abruptly the coldness was gone.

  "You see," he said to Dave smiling, "why Dick and I have come up fast. With precognition it's possible to avoid wasted time following the wrong path."

  "If," said Barrow, "the experiment first has been carefully formulated."

  Dave still felt the overpowering sense of pressure.

  "What are the 'twins' you spoke of?"

  Barrow said, "That's Project 'S'."

  Bardeen said, "Project 'S,' is a twin set of transmission stations."

  "What do they transmit?"

  "Matter."

  "Matter?"

  "That's right. The structure of the matter is sent in a code that modulates a carrier wave. The matter is picked up here, converted to energy, transmitted as a finely-focused transient beam, and reverted to matter."

  "The way a radio station sends a voice? One of the 'twins' is a transmitter and the other a receiver?"

  "Not quite. Either one can focus on an object close enough to be encoded, send out its focused signal, and at the focus the object sent is reconstituted."

  "How far away?"

  "Tens of thousands of miles. Further yet, outside the Earth's gravitational field."

  "Why 'twins'? Are they the same?"

  "Identical."

  "Why?"

  "We need two."

  "What for?"

  "Because neither one can send itself."

  Dave looked at him blankly, then stared.

  "Good Lord! The two together are a space vehicle?"

  Bardeen nodded.

  Barrow shut his eyes.

  Dave could feel, around him, the tight-stretched balloon of the pleasant scene drawn tighter yet. The sunlight shimmered on it and it sparkled. But to Dave it seemed that any minute it might snap and be gone.

  Barrow sighed. "That does it."

  Bardeen said, "Self-sustaining?"

  "Self-sustaining. The picture's clear now. They'll drop that rocket with absolute precision. It's the same thing as lighting a fuse that leads straight to the dynamite shack."

  Dave said, "You see this?"

  Barrow nodded. "I shut my eyes, and it's right there, like a garden, in a way, and in another like an attic half-full of mirrors. All kinds of things are there, some clear, and some fuzzy, some already here, and mirrored as in a mirage. Those are in the future."

  "How did you learn—"

  "I don't know. The knack runs in my family. My mother, uncles, and children have it. It's a maddening thing, because usually you aren't interested. But there it is, the instant you shut your eyes. Mostly it's too complex to follow the interlocking chains of cause and effect. But with a scientific experiment, it's different. So far as possible, extraneous factors are ruled out, and the chains of cause and effect are simplified. To that extent, it becomes possible to predict results accurately."

  "And the accident I almost had?"

  "A matter of possibilities. I could see just enough to tell you'd be in danger."

  Bardeen said, "How will this—" but didn't finish the question. He looked at Dave. "It's all up to you now. Come on."

  Bardeen started for the Project "S" lab. Barrow waited to speak to several of the men, then followed.

  The "twins" were two huge cylinders lying side-by-side, mirrored in each other's brilliant stainless surface. Above each, near the center, was an apparatus like a wide, polished hoop. Thrust out on both sides of each huge cylinder were two short wide braces, each one powerfully hinged at the outer end to a long slender arm. At the end of each arm was a thing like a smooth bright dish. The four arms were held almost vertically, prevented, by heavy coil springs on the cylinder, from touching each other.

  Bardeen said, "That short cylinder, or hoop, in the center, can detect and record very complex electromagnetic forces. When the twins are in action, a housing rises up behind it and a sequence of fine penetrating beams of coding radiation reaches out to pass through every part of the object being sent. This structural information will be received in the form of faint, brief complex echoes—reflections from the atoms struck by the coding beam. These echoes will be interpreted, stored, and used to help modulate the carrier wave sent out from the ends of the four transmission arms, which will be lowered, and adjusted to focus on a distant place.

  "The coding beam is of a type of radiation we discovered in studying the various forms of instability that occur in an experimental fusion reactor. We call it 'efflux radiation'."

  Dave, concentrating hard under the increasing sense of pressure, nodded briefly, and Bardeen said, "Efflux radiation is to ordinary radiation much as contraterrene matter is to terrene matter."

  "What does it do?"

  "When an efflux ray strikes ordinary matter, that matter is converted into ordinary radiation, traveling in precisely the opposite direction. The total effect is that the atoms of the object sent, and everything in it are converted into electromagnetic radiation, which is sent out through the focused transmitter, and reassembled far away."

  Dave nodded slowly. "You said I was needed. Why?"

  "The trouble with this process is that we have great difficulty bringing about the form of instability that generates efflux radiation. The worst of it is that the proper form of instability must occur simultaneously, in both twins, if the process is to be successful."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Both of these cylinders are fitted out as colonization spaceships. We have a whopping government contract for this work, which is certain—was certain—to put this country far ahead of any other in space. Because after one of these two ships transmits the other, that other ship focuses on and transmits the first. But the proper type of instability to generate efflux radiation must occur in both ships simultaneously, because if only one has it, the other may be carried out of range before it can do its part."

  "What can I do about that? I never heard of efflux radiation before. I don't know the first thing about it."

  Barrow smiled. "Last night you were wrestling an intruder when a volley of shots was fired at him. He was killed. You were not touched. A moment before that volley of shots, he was shooting at you himself from a distance of possibly two feet. You weren't touched. Shortly after, you were in a deadly situation on the highway, again untouched."

  "Yes, but what did I have to do—"

  "Did you ever hear the expression 'wild talents'?"

  "Yes. Sure, but—"

  "Within limits, I can foresee the future—that's precognition. But you have a deeper control of time and motion relationships. It may be as automatic and unconscious as the blink of an eye, but it's there. And we need it."

  The crowd was coming into Project "S" building. They looked tens
e, white-faced, scared.

  Dave could feel the pressure, all but unbearable.

  "What do I do?"

  Barrow led him inside one of the huge cylinders, and down a corridor that had wide strips of strong black mesh on both walks.

  "For getting around," said Barrow, "when we're in space. You take hold of the mesh. We have no arrangement for artificial gravity on these ships."