Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  “What makes you think that?” I asked. “I haven’t seen anything to make me hopeful about it.”

  “You wouldn’t notice anything. You don’t know her well enough—oh, don’t get vexed. Even if you are in love with her, you’ve only known her for a very short time, whereas I’ve studied her since she was a child. I know the symptoms. She’s coming round a little.”

  “Much good that will do now! If you decimate the Area it will be worse than ever. I hate to think of my own affairs in the middle of this catastrophe; but I simply can’t help it. If your plan goes through, it’s the end of my romance.’”

  He played with the cord of his desk telephone for a moment before replying. I could see that he had some doubt as to whether he ought to speak or not. At last he made up his mind.

  “If you’re brooding over things as much as all that, Jack, I suppose I must say something; but I’m very much afraid of raising false hopes. You wonder, probably, why I don’t go straight ahead and weed out the useless mouths now and be done with it? Well, the fact is I’m staking it all on the next couple of days. Henley-Davenport seems, by his way of it, to be just on the edge of something definite at last. If he pulls it off, then all’s well. If not . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Henley-Davenport gets his results, we won’t need coal; because we shall have all the energy we require from his process. I’ve stretched things to the limit in the hope that he will give us the ace of trumps and not the two. If he succeeds, we don’t need to weed out the Area; we can go on as we are; and we shall be absolutely certain to pull through with every soul alive. But I shouldn’t have told you this, perhaps; it may be only a false hope and will just depress you more by the reaction. But you look so miserable that I thought I had better take the risk.”

  “When do you expect to know definitely?”

  “He promised me that within two days he would be able to tell me, one way or the other. Of course, even if he fails now, he may pull it off later; but I can only wait two days more before beginning the elimination of all the useless mouths in the Area. Everything is ready to put into operation in that direction. But I hope we may not need these plans. It’s just a chance, Jack; so don’t build too much on it.”

  It was advice easy enough to give; but I found it very hard to follow. All that day my hopes were rising; things seemed brighter at last: and it was only now and again that I stopped to remind myself that the whole thing was a gamble with colossal stakes. Even Nordenholt himself was afraid to count too much upon Henley-Davenport, though I knew that he believed implicitly in his capacity. But even as I said this to myself I felt my spirits rising. After the certainty of disaster which had confronted us, even this hazard was a relief. For the first time in many weeks I began to build castles in the air once more. I was half-afraid to do so; but I could not help myself. And as the hours passed by bringing no news of success or failure, I think my nerves must have become more and more tense. A whole day went by without news of any kind.

  *****

  The morning of the following day seemed interminable to me. I knew that within another twenty-four hours Nordenholt would have given up all hope of Henley-Davenport’s success and would be setting in motion the machinery which he had devised for reducing the population of the Area; and as hour after hour passed without bringing any news, I became more and more restless. I tried to work and to ease my mind by concentrating it upon details; but I soon found that this was useless. Strive as I might, I could not banish the thought of the tragedy which hung over us.

  At 3.27 p.m.—I know the exact minute, because my watch was stopped then and I read the time from it afterwards—I was standing beside my desk, consulting some papers on a file. Suddenly I heard a high detonation, a sound so sharp that I can liken it to nothing familiar. The air seemed full of flying splinters of glass; and simultaneously I was wrenched from my foothold and flung with tremendous violence against my desk. Then, it seemed, a dead silence fell.

  I found that my right hand was streaming with blood from various cuts made by the razor-edges of the broken glass of the window. More blood was pouring from a gash on my forehead; but my eyes had escaped injury. When I moved, I found I suffered acute pain; though no bones seemed to be broken. The concussion had completely deafened me; and, as I found afterwards, my left ear-drum had been perforated, so that even to this day I can hear nothing on that side.

  All about me the office was in confusion. Every pane of glass had been blown inward from the windows and the place looked as though a whirlwind had swept through it scattering furniture and papers in its track. The shock had dazed me; and for several minutes I stood gazing stupidly at the havoc around me. It was, I am sure, at least five minutes before I grasped what had happened. As soon as I did so, I made my way, still in intense pain, down the stairs and into the quadrangle.

  The pavements were littered with fragments of broken glass which had fallen outward in the breaking of the windows; but there was not so much of this as I had expected, since most of the panes had been driven inward by the explosion. Quite a crowd of people were running out of the building and making in the direction of the new Chemistry Department in University Avenue. I followed them, noticing as I passed the Square that all the chimneypots of the houses seemed to have been swept off though I could see no traces of them on the ground. Later on, I found that they had been blown down on the further side of the terrace.

  When I came in sight of the Chemistry building I was amazed, even though I was prepared for a catastrophe. One whole wing had been reduced to a heap of ruins, a mere pile of building-stone and joists flung together in utter confusion. Here and there among the debris, jets of steam and dust were spouting up; and from time to time came an eruption of small stones from the wreckage. The remainder of the edifice still stood almost intact save for its broken windows and shattered doors.

  What astonished me at the time was that the whole scene recalled a cinema picture—violent motion without a sound to accompany it. I saw spouts of dust, falling masses of masonry, people running and gesticulating in the most excited manner; yet no whisper of sound reached me. It was only when someone came up and spoke directly to me that I discovered that I was temporarily stone deaf; for I could see his lips moving but could hear nothing whatever. Like everyone else, I began to remove the debris. I think we understood even then that it was hopeless to think of saving anyone from this wreckage, but we were all moved to do something which might at least give us the illusion that we were helping. As I pulled and tugged with the others, I began to appreciate the enormous power of the explosive which had been at work. In an ordinary concussion, iron can be bent out of shape; but here I came across steel rafters which were cut clean through as though by a knife. I remember thinking vaguely that the explosive must have acted, as dynamite does, against the solid materials around it instead of spending its force upwards; for otherwise the whole place would have suffered a bombardment from flying blocks of stone.

  For some time I toiled with the others. I saw Nordenholt’s figure close at hand. Then the sky seemed to take on a tinge of violet which deepened suddenly. I saw a black spot before my eyes; and apparently I fainted from loss of blood.

  *****

  Even now, the causes of the Chemistry Department disaster are unknown. Henley-Davenport and his two assistants perished instantaneously in the explosion—in fact Henley-Davenport’s body was never recovered from the wreckage at all. A third assistant, who had been in the next room at the time, lived long enough to tell us the exact stage at which the catastrophe occurred; but even he could throw no direct light upon its origin.

  From Henley-Davenport’s notes, which we found in his house, it seems clear that his efforts had been directed towards producing the disintegration of iron; and that on the morning of the accident he had completed his chain of radioactive materials which furnished the accelerated evolution of energy required to break up the iron atoms. As we know now, he succeeded in his experim
ent and his iron yielded the short-period isotopes of chromium, titanium and calcium until the end-product of the series—argon—was produced. The four successive alpha-ray changes, following each other at intervals of a few seconds, liberated a tremendous store of intra-atomic energy; but, knowing the extremely minute quantities with which Henley-Davenport worked, it seems difficult to believe that the explosion which destroyed his laboratory was produced by this trace of material. To me it seems much more probable that his apparatus was shattered at the moment of the first disintegration of iron and that thus some of the short-period products were scattered abroad throughout the room, setting up radioactive change in certain of the metallic objects which they touched. No other explanation appears to fit the facts. We shall never learn the truth of the matter now; but knowing Henley-Davenport’s care and foresight, I cannot see any other way of accounting for the violence of the explosion.

  Luckily for us, no radioactive gas is produced by the disintegration of iron; for had there been any such material among the decay products it is probable that most of those who had run to the scene of the disaster would have perished.

  *****

  When I recovered consciousness again I found myself lying on a couch. A doctor was bandaging my hand. Nordenholt, looking very white and shaken, was sitting in a chair by the fire. At first I was too weak to do more than look round me; but after a few minutes I felt better and was able to speak to Nordenholt.

  “What has happened? Did they get Henley-Davenport out of the wreck?”

  “No, there’s no hope of that, Jack. He’s dead; and the best thing one can say is that he must have been killed instantaneously. But he’s done the trick for us, if we can only follow his track. He evidently tapped atomic energy of some kind or other. Did you notice the sharpness of the explosion before you were knocked out? There’s never been anything like it.”

  “What’s going to happen now?” I was still unable to think clearly.

  “I’ve sent Mitchell down to Henley-Davenport’s house to look at his last notes—he kept them there and he promised to indicate each day what he proposed to do next, so that we’d have something to go on if anything like this happened. Mitchell will ring up as soon as he has found them.”

  I heard afterwards that among the ruins of the laboratory Nordenholt had been struck by a falling beam and had just escaped with his life; but his voice gave no hint of it. I think that his complete concentration upon the main problem prevented him from realising that he might be badly hurt.

  The telephone bell rang suddenly and Nordenholt went to the receiver.

  “Yes, Mitchell. . . . You’ve got the notes? . . . Good. . . . You can repeat what he was doing? . . . No doubt about it? . . . All right. Start at once. We must have it immediately, cost what it may. . . . Come round here before you begin; but get going at once. There isn’t a minute to spare.” Nordenholt replaced the receiver. “I thought I could trust Henley-Davenport,” he said. “He’s left everything in order, notes written up to lunch-time complete and a full draft of his last experiment, which will allow Mitchell to carry on.”

  A few minutes later, Mitchell himself appeared and gave us some further details. In his jottings, Henley-Davenport had suggested some possible modifications of the experiment which had ended so disastrously; and Mitchell proposed to try the effect of these alterations in the conditions. Before he left us, he sat down at Nordenholt’s desk and made a few notes of the process he intended to try, handing the paper to Nordenholt when he had finished. I can still remember his alert expression as he wrote and the almost finical care with which he flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette as he rose from the desk. It was the last time any of us saw him. “Well, that’s all. I’m off.”

  Nordenholt rose stiffly from his chair and shook hands with Mitchell as he went out. Then he passed to the telephone and rang a number.

  “Is that you, Kingan? Go across to the South Wing of the Chemistry place. Mitchell is there. See all that he does and then clear out before he tries the experiment. We must keep track of things, come what may. If he goes down, you will take on after him. Good-bye.”

  *****

  Just after seven o’clock, there was another tremendous explosion; but this time the concussion seemed less violent than before. Mitchell himself was not killed outright; but he suffered injuries which proved fatal within a few days. Meanwhile the work went on. One after another, the Chemistry section of Nordenholt’s young men went into the furnace, some to be killed instantaneously, others to escape alive, but blasted almost out of recognition by the forces which they unchained. Yet none of them faltered. Link by link they built up the chain which was to bring safety to the Area; and each link represented a life lost or a body crippled. Day after day the work went on, interrupted periodically by the rending crash of these fearful explosions, until at last it seemed almost beyond hope that the problem would ever be solved. But ten days later Barclay staggered into Nordenholt’s room, smothered in bandages, with one arm useless at his side, and gasped out the news that he had been successful.

  Looking back on that moment, I sometimes wonder that we were not almost hysterical with joy; but as a matter of fact, none of us said anything at all. Probably we did not really grasp the thing at the time. I know that I was busy getting a drink ready for Barclay, who had collapsed as soon as he gave his news; and all that I remember of Nordenholt is a picture of him standing looking out of the window with his back to us. Certainly it wasn’t the kind of scene one might have imagined.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE BREAKING-STRAIN

  ALTHOUGH Barclay’s work furnished us with the means of tapping the stores of energy which lie imprisoned within the atoms of elementary matter, it did not place us immediately in a position to utilise these immense forces for practical purposes. To tell the truth, we were in much the same position as a savage to whom a dynamite cartridge has been given ready fitted with a detonator. We could liberate the energy, but at first we could not bring it under control.

  The next few weeks were spent in planning and building machine after machine. All the best talent of Nordenholt’s group of engineers was brought to bear on the problem; but time after time we had to admit failure. Either the engines were too fragile for the power which they employed or there was some radical defect in their construction which could only be detected on trial. Thus the days passed in a series of disappointments, until it seemed almost as though hope of success was fading before our eyes.

  During that period, Nordenholt himself grew visibly older. It was the last lap in his great race against Time; and I think that this final strain told on him more than any that had gone before. The mines of the Area were still empty and silent; no fuel was coming forward to fill the gaps in our ever-shrinking reserves; and within a very short period the whole industry of the Area must collapse for want of coal.

  His anxiety was marked by a total change in his habits. Hitherto, he had sat in his office, directing from afar all the multitudinous activities of the Area, aloof from direct contact with details. Now, I noticed, he was continually about the machine-shops and factories in which the new atomic engines were being constructed; he had frequent consultations with his engineers and designers; he seemed to be incapable of isolating himself from the progress which was very slowly being made. Possibly he felt that in this last effort he must utilise all the magnetic power of his personality to stimulate his craftsmen in their labours.

  Whatever his motives may have been, when I think of him in those last days my memory always calls up a picture of that lean, dark figure against a background of drawing-office or engineering-shop. I see him discussing plans with his inventors, encouraging his workmen, watching the trial of engine after engine. And after every failure I seem to see him a little more weary, with a grimmer set in the lines about his mouth and a heavier stoop in his shoulders, as though the weight of his responsibilities was crushing him by degrees as the days went by.

  Yet he never outwardl
y wavered in his belief in success. He knew—we all knew—that the power was there if we could but find the means of harnessing it. The uncertainty had gone; and all that remained was a problem in chemistry and mechanics. But time was a vital factor to us; and more than once I myself began to doubt whether we should succeed in our efforts before it was too late.

  *****

  At last came success. One of my most vivid memories of that time is the scene in Beardmore’s yard when the Milne-Reid engine was tested for the first time. Nordenholt and I had motored down from the University to see the trial. By this time we were both familiar with the general appearance of atomic engines; but to me, at least, the new machine was a surprise. Its huge, distorted bulk seemed unlike anything which I had seen before: the enormous barrel of the disintegration-chamber overhung the main mass of machinery and gave it in some way a far-off resemblance to a gigantic howitzer on its carriage; and this resemblance was heightened by the absence of flywheels or any of the usual fittings of an engine. Although I was an engineer, I could make but little of this complex instrument, designed to utilise a power greater than any I had ever dreamed of; and I listened eagerly to the two inventors as they described its salient characteristics.

  Nordenholt, who had seen the plans, seemed to pay little attention to either Milne or Reid. He was evidently impatient for results and cared little for the methods by which they were to be obtained, so long as the machinery did its work.

  The last cables were being attached to the engine as we stood beside it; for Nordenholt had insisted on a test being made as soon as the machine was completed. The workmen screwed up the connections, everyone stood back a little, and then a switch was pushed home. Immediately the whole misshapen bulk seemed to be galvanised into violent activity and with a roar beyond the roof above us the torrent of escaping helium and argon made its way through the exhaust-pipe. The needle of the indicator dial jumped suddenly upward till it registered many thousands of horse-power.