The 13th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by Lester Del Rey

  “Just what will happen if it all goes off?” he asked.

  Jenkins shrugged, biting at his inner lip as he went over a sheaf of papers on the desk, covered with the scrawling symbols of atomics, “Anybody’s guess. Suppose three tons of the army’s new explosives were to explode in a billionth—or at least, a millionth—of a second? Normally, you know, compared to atomics, that stuff burns like any fire, slowly and quietly, giving its gases plenty of time to get out of the way in an orderly fashion. Figure it one way, with this all going off together, and the stuff could drill a hole that’d split open the whole continent from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and leave a lovely sea where the Middle West is now. Figure it another, and it might only kill off everything within fifty miles of here. Somewhere in between is the chance we count on. This isn’t U-235, you know.”

  Doc winced. He’d been picturing the plant going up in the air violently, with maybe a few buildings somewhere near it, but nothing like this. It had been purely a local affair to him, but this didn’t sound like one. No wonder Jenkins was in that state of suppressed jitters; it wasn’t too much imagination, but too much cold, hard knowledge that was worrying him. Ferrel looked at their faces as they bent over the symbols once more, tracing out point by point their calculations in the hope of finding one overlooked loophole, then decided to leave them alone.

  The whole problem was hopeless without Jorgenson, it seemed, and Jorgenson was his responsibility; if the plant went, it was squarely on the senior physician’s shoulders. But there was no apparent solution. If it would help, he could cut it down to a direct path from brain to speaking organs, strap down the body and block off all nerves below the neck, using an artificial larynx instead of the normal breathing through vocal cords. But the indicator showed the futility of it; the orders could never get through from the brain with the amount of radioactive still present throwing them off track—even granting that the brain itself was not affected, which was doubtful.

  Fortunately for Jorgenson, the stuff was all finely dispersed around the head, with no concentration at any one place that was unquestionably destructive to his mind; but the good fortune was also the trouble, since it could not be removed by any means known to medical practice. Even so simple a thing as letting the man read the questions and spell out the answers by winking an eyelid as they pointed to the alphabet was hopeless.

  Nerves! Jorgenson had his blocked out, but Ferrel wondered if the rest of them weren’t in as bad a state. Probably, somewhere well within their grasp, there was a solution that was being held back because the nerves of everyone in the plant were blocked by fear and pressure that defeated its own purpose. Jenkins, Palmer, Hokusai—under purely theoretical conditions, any one of them might spot the answer to the problem, but sheer necessity of finding it could be the thing that hid it. The same might be true with the problem of Jorgenson’s treatment. Yet, though he tried to relax and let his mind stray idly around the loose ends and seemingly disconnected knowledge he had, it returned incessantly to the necessity of doing something, and doing it now!

  * * * *

  Ferrel heard weary footsteps behind him and turned to see Palmer coming from the front entrance. The man had no business walking into the surgery, but such minor rules had gone by the board hours before.

  “Jorgenson?” Palmer’s conversation began with the same old question in the usual tone, and he read the answer from Doc’s face with a look that indicated it was no news. “Hoke and that Jenkins kid still in there?”

  Doc nodded, and plodded behind him toward Jenkins’ office; he was useless to them, but there was still the idea that in filling his mind with other things, some little factor he had overlooked might have a chance to come forth. Also, curiosity still worked on him, demanding to know what was happening. He flopped into the third chair, and Palmer squatted down on the edge of the table.

  “Know a good spiritualist, Jenkins?” the manager asked. “Because if you do, I’m about ready to try calling back Kellar’s ghost. The Steinmetz of atomics—so he had to die before this Isotope R came up, and leave us without even a good guess at how long we’ve got to crack the problem. Hey, what’s the matter?”

  Jenkins’ face had tensed and his body straightened back tensely in the chair, but he shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching wryly. “Nothing. Nerves, I guess. Hoke and I dug out some things that give an indication on how long this runs, though. We still don’t know exactly, but from observations out there and the general theory before, it looks like something between six and thirty hours left; probably ten’s closer to being correct!”

  “Can’t be much longer. It’s driving the men back right now! Even the tanks can’t get in where they can do the most good, and we’re using the shielding around No. 3 as a headquarters for the men; in another half hour, maybe they won’t be able to stay that near the thing. Radiation indicators won’t register any more, and it’s spitting all over the place, almost constantly. Heat’s terrific; it’s gone up to around three hundred centigrade and sticks right there now, but that’s enough to warm up 3, even.”

  Doc looked up. “No. 3?”

  “Yeah. Nothing happened to that batch—it ran through and came out I-713 right on schedule, hours ago.” Palmer reached for a cigarette, realized he had one in his mouth, and slammed the package back on the table. “Significant data, Doc; if we get out of this, we’ll figure out just what caused the change in No. 4—if we get out! Any chance of making those variable factors work, Hoke?”

  Hoke shook his head, and again Jenkins answered from the notes. “Not a chance; sure, theoretically, at least, R should have a period varying between twelve and sixty hours before turning into Mahler’s Isotope, depending on what chains of reactions or subchains it goes through; they all look equally good, and probably are all going on in there now, depending on what’s around to soak up neutrons or let them roam, the concentration and amount of R together, and even high or low temperatures that change their activity somewhat. It’s one of the variables, no question about that.”

  “The sspitting iss prove that,” Hoke supplemented.

  “Sure. But there’s too much of it together, and we can’t break it down fine enough to reach any safety point where it won’t toss energy around like rain. The minute one particle manages to make itself into Mahler’s, it’ll crash through with energy enough to blast the next over the hump and into the same thing instantly, and that passes it on to the next, at about light speed! If we could get it juggled around so some would go off first, other atoms a little later, and so on, fine—only we can’t do it unless we can be sure of isolating every blob bigger than a tenth of a gram from every other one! And if we start breaking it down into reasonably small pieces, we’re likely to have one decide on the short transformation subchain and go off at any time; pure chance gave us a concentration to begin with that eliminated the shorter chains, but we can’t break it down into small lots and those into smaller lots, and so on. Too much risk!”

  Ferrel had known vaguely that there were such things as variables, but the theory behind them was too new and too complex for him; he’d learned what little he knew when the simpler radioactives proceeded normally from radium to lead, as an example, with a definite, fixed half life, instead of the super-heavy atoms they now used that could jump through several different paths, yet end up the same. It was over his head, and he started to get up and go back to Jorgenson.

  Palmer’s words stopped him. “I knew it, of course, but I hoped maybe I was wrong. Then—we evacuate! No use fooling ourselves any longer. I’ll call the Governor and try to get him to clear the country around; Hoke, you can tell the men to get the hell out of here! All we ever had was the counteracting isotope to hope on, and no chance of getting enough of that. There was no sense in making I-231 in thousand-pound batches before. Well—”

  V

  He reached for the phone, but Ferrel cut in. “What about the men in t
he wards? They’re loaded with the stuff, most of them with more than a gram apiece dispersed through them. They’re in the same class with the converter, maybe, but we can’t just pull out and leave them!”

  Silence hit them, to be broken by Jenkins’ hushed whisper. “My God! What damned fools we are. I-231 under discussion for hours, and I never thought of it. Now you two throw the connection in my face, and I still almost miss it!”

  “I-231? But there iss not enough. Maybe twenty-five pound, maybe less. Three and a half days to make more. The little we have would be no good, Dr. Jenkinss. We forget that already.” Hoke struck a match to a piece of paper, shook one drop of ink onto it, and watched it continue burning for a second before putting it out. “Sso. A drop of water for sstop a foresst fire. No.”

  “Wrong, Hoke. A drop to short a switch that’ll turn on the real stream—maybe. Look, Doc, I-231’s an isotope that reacts atomically with R—we’ve checked on that already. It simply gets together with the stuff and the two break down into non-radioactive elements and a little heat, like a lot of other such atomic reactions; but it isn’t the violent kind. They simply swap parts in a friendly way and open up to simpler atoms that are stable. We have a few pounds on hand, can’t make enough in time to help with No. 4, but we do have enough to treat every man in the wards, including Jorgenson!”

  “How much heat?” Doc snapped out of his lethargy into the detailed thought of a good physician. “In atomics you may call it a little; but would it be small enough in the human body?”

  Hokusai and Palmer were practically riding the pencil as Jenkins figured. “Say five grams of the stuff in Jorgenson, to be on the safe side, less in the others. Time for reaction…hm-m-m. Here’s the total heat produced and the time taken by the reaction, probably, in the body. The stuffs water-soluble in the chloride we have of it, so there’s no trouble dispersing it. What do you make of it, Doc?”

  “Fifteen to eighteen degrees temperature rise at a rough estimate. Uh!”

  “Too much! Jorgenson couldn’t stand ten degrees right now!” Jenkins frowned down at his figures, tapping nervously with his hand.

  Doc shook his head. “Not too much! We can drop his whole body temperature first in the hypothermy bath down to eighty degrees, then let it rise to a hundred, if necessary, and still be safe. Thank the Lord, there’s equipment enough. If they’ll rip out the refrigerating units in the cafeteria and improvise baths, the volunteers out in the tent can start on the other men while we handle Jorgenson. At least that way we can get the men all out, even if we don’t save the plant.”

  * * * *

  Palmer stared at them in confusion before his face galvanized into resolution. “Refrigerating units—volunteers—tent? What— O.K., Doc, what do you want?” He reached for the telephone and begun giving orders for the available I-231 to be sent to the surgery, for men to rip out the cafeteria cooling equipment, and for such other things as Doc requested. Jenkins had already gone to instruct the medical staff in the field tent without asking how they’d gotten there, but was back in the surgery before Doc reached it with Palmer and Hokusai at his heels.

  “Blake’s taking over out there,” Jenkins announced. “Says if you want Dodd, Meyers, Jones or Sue, they’re sleeping.”

  “No need. Get over there out of the way, if you must watch,” Ferrel ordered the two engineers, as he and Jenkins began attaching the freezing units and bath to the sling on the exciter. “Prepare his blood for it, Jenkins; we’ll force it down as low as we can to be on the safe side. And we’ll have to keep tab on the temperature fall and regulate his heart and breathing to what it would be normally in that condition; they’re both out of his normal control, now.”

  “And pray,” Jenkins added. He grabbed the small box out of the messenger’s hand before the man was fully inside the door and began preparing a solution, weighing out the whitish powder and measuring water carefully, but with the speed that was automatic to him under tension. “Doc, if this doesn’t work—if Jorgenson’s crazy or something—you’ll have another case of insanity on your hands. One more false hope would finish me.”

  “Not one more case; four! We’re all in the same boat. Temperature’s falling nicely—I’m rushing it a little, but it’s safe enough. Down to ninety-six now.” The thermometer under Jorgenson’s tongue was one intended for hypothermy work, capable of rapid response, instead of the normal fever thermometer. Slowly, with agonizing reluctance, the little needle on the dial moved over, down to ninety, then on. Doc kept his eyes glued to it, slowing the pulse and breath to the proper speed. He lost track of the number of times he sent Palmer back out of the way, and finally gave up.

  Waiting, he wondered how those outside in the field hospital were doing? Still, they had ample time to arrange their makeshift cooling apparatus and treat the men in groups—ten hours probably; and hypothermy was a standard thing, now. Jorgenson was the only real rush case. Almost imperceptibly to Doc, but speedily by normal standards, the temperature continued to fall. Finally it reached seventy-eight. “Ready, Jenkins, make the injection. That enough?”

  “No. I figure it’s almost enough, but we’ll have to go slow to balance out properly. Too much of this stuff would be almost as bad as the other Gauge going up, Doc?”

  It was, much more rapidly than Ferrel liked. As the injection coursed through the blood vessels and dispersed out to the fine deposits of radioactive, the needle began climbing past eighty, to ninety, and up. It stopped at ninety-four and slowly began falling as the cooling bath absorbed heat from the cells of the body. The radioactivity meter still registered the presence of Isotope R, though much more faintly.

  The next shot was small, and a smaller one followed. “Almost,” Ferrel Commented. “Next one should about do the trick.”

  Using partial injections, there had been need for less drop in temperature than they had given Jorgenson, but there was small loss to that. Finally, when the last minute bit of the I-231 solution had entered the man’s veins and done its work, Doc nodded. “No sign of activity left. He’s up to ninety-five, now that I’ve cut off the refrigeration, and he’ll pick up the little extra temperature in a hurry. By the time we can counteract the curare, he’ll be ready. That’ll take about fifteen minutes, Palmer.”

  The manager nodded, watching them dismantling the hypothermy equipment and going through the routine of canceling out the curare. It was always a slower job than treatment with the drug, but part of the work had been done already by the normal body processes, and the rest was a simple, standard procedure. Fortunately, the neo-heroin would be nearly worn off, or that would have been a longer and much harder problem to eliminate.

  “Telephone for Mr. Palmer. Calling Mr. Palmer. Send Mr. Palmer to the telephone.” The operator’s words lacked the usual artificial exactness, and were only a nervous sing-song. It was getting her, and she wasn’t bothered by excess imagination, normally. “Mr. Palmer is wanted on the telephone.”

  “Palmer.” The manager picked up an instrument at hand, not equipped with vision, and there was no indication of the caller. But Ferrel could see what little hope had appeared at the prospect of Jorgenson’s revival disappearing. “Check! Move out of there, and prepare to evacuate, but keep quiet about that until you hear further orders! Tell the men Jorgenson’s about out of it, so they won’t lack for something to talk about.”

  He swung back to them. “No use, Doc, I’m afraid. We’re already too late. The stuff’s stepped it up again, and they’re having to move out of No. 3 now. I’ll wait on Jorgenson, but even if he’s all right and knows the answer, we can’t get in to use it!”

  VI

  “Healing’s going to be a long, slow process, but they should at least grow back better than silver ribs; never take a pretty X-ray photo, though.” Doc held the instrument in his hand, staring down at the flap opened in Jorgenson’s chest, and his shoulders came up in a faint shrug. The little platinum filaments ha
d been removed from around the nerves to heart and lungs, and the man’s normal impulses were operating again, less steadily than under the exciter, but with no danger signals. “Well, it won’t much matter if he’s still sane.”

  Jenkins watched him begin stitching the flap back, his eyes centered over the table out toward the converter. “Doc, he’s got to be sane! If Hoke and Palmer find it’s what it sounds like out there, we’ll have to count on Jorgenson. There’s an answer somewhere, has to be! But we won’t find it without him.”

  “Hm-m-m. Seems to me you’ve been having ideas yourself, son. You’ve been right so far, and if Jorgenson’s out—” He shut off the stitcher, finished the dressings, and flopped down on a bench, knowing that all they could do was wait for the drugs to work on Jorgenson and bring him around. Now that he relaxed the control over himself, exhaustion hit down with full force; his fingers were uncertain as he pulled off the gloves. “Anyhow, we’ll know in another five minutes or so.”

  “And Heaven help us, Doc, if it’s up to me. I’ve always had a flair for atomic theory; I grew up on it. But he’s the production man who’s been working at it week in and week out, and it’s his process, to boot… There they are now! All right for them to come back here?”

  But Hokusai and Palmer were waiting for no permission. At the moment, Jorgenson was the nerve center of the plant, drawing them back, and they stalked over to stare down at him, then sat where they could be sure of missing no sign of returning consciousness. Palmer picked up the conversation where he’d dropped it, addressing his remarks to both Hokusai and Jenkins.