The Past Through Tomorrow

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Why not, Chief?” His tone was bewildered.

  “I’m being retired. My successor will take over in the near future; this is too big a matter to start just before a change in administration.”

  “You being retired! What the hell?”

  “About the same reason I took you off watch—at least, the directors think so.”

  “But that’s nonsense! You were right to take me off the watchlist; I was getting jumpy. But you’re another matter—we all depend on you.”

  “Thanks, Cal—but that’s how it is; there’s nothing to be done about it.” He turned to Lentz. “I think this is the last ironical touch needed to make the whole thing pure farce,” he observed bitterly. “This thing is big, bigger than we can guess at this stage—and I have to give it a miss.”

  “Well,” Harper burst out, “I can think of something to do about it!” He strode over to King’s desk and snatched up the manuscript. “Either you superintend the exploitation, or the Company can damn well get along without our discovery!” Erickson concurred belligerently.

  “Wait a minute.” Lentz had the floor. “Doctor Harper… have you already achieved a practical rocket fuel?”

  “I said so. We’ve got it on hand now.”

  “An escape-speed fuel?” They understood his verbal shorthand—a fuel that would lift a rocket free of the earth’s gravitational pull.

  “Sure. Why, you could take any of the Clipper rockets, refit them a trifle, and have breakfast on the moon.”

  “Very well. Bear with me…” He obtained a sheet of paper from King, and commenced to write. They watched in mystified impatience. He continued briskly for some minutes, hesitating only momentarily. Presently he stopped, and spun the paper over to King. “Solve it!” he demanded.

  King studied the paper. Lentz had assigned symbols to a great number of factors, some social, some psychological, some physical, some economic. He had thrown them together into a structural relationship, using the symbols of calculus of statement. King understood the paramathematical operations indicated by the symbols, but he was not as used to them as he was to the symbols and operations of mathematical physics. He plowed through the equations, moving his lips slightly in subconscious vocalization.

  He accepted a pencil from Lentz, and completed the solution. It required several more lines, a few more equations, before they cancelled out, or rearranged themselves, into a definite answer.

  He stared at this answer while puzzlement gave way to dawning comprehension and delight.

  He looked up. “Erickson! Harper!” he rapped out. “We will take your new fuel, refit a large rocket, install the breeder pile in it, and throw it into an orbit around the earth, far out in space. There we will use it to make more fuel, safe fuel, for use on earth, with the danger from the Big Bomb itself limited to the operators actually on watch!”

  There was no applause. It was not that sort of an idea; their minds were still struggling with the complex implications.

  “But Chief,” Harper finally managed, “how about your retirement? We’re still not going to stand for it.”

  “Don’t worry,” King assured him. “It’s all in there, implicit in those equations, you two, me, Lentz, the Board of Directors—and just what we all have to do about it to accomplish it.”

  “All except the matter of time,” Lentz cautioned.

  “Eh?”

  “You’ll note that elapsed time appears in your answer as an undetermined unknown.”

  “Yes… yes, of course. That’s the chance we have to take. Let’s get busy!”

  Chairman Dixon called the Board of Directors to order. “This being a special meeting we’ll dispense with minutes and reports,” he announced.

  “As set forth in the call we have agreed to give the retiring superintendent two hours of our time.”

  “Mr. Chairman—”

  “Yes, Mr. Strong?”

  “I thought we had settled that matter.”

  “We have, Mr. Strong, but in view of Superintendent King’s long and distinguished service, if he asks a hearing, we are honor bound to grant it. You have the floor, Doctor King.”

  King got up, and stated briefly, “Doctor Lentz will speak for me.” He sat down.

  Lentz had to wait for coughing, throat-clearing, and scraping of chairs to subside. It was evident that the Board resented the outsider.

  Lentz ran quickly over the main points in the argument which contended that the bomb presented an intolerable danger anywhere on the face of the earth. He moved on at once to the alternative proposal that the bomb should be located in a rocket ship, an artificial moonlet flying in a free orbit around the earth at a convenient distance—say fifteen thousand miles—while secondary power stations on earth burned a safe fuel manufactured by the bomb.

  He announced the discovery of the Harper-Erickson technique and dwelt on what it meant to them commercially. Each point was presented as persuasively as possible, with the full power of his engaging personality. Then he paused and waited for them to blow off steam.

  They did. “Visionary—”

  “Unproved—”

  “No essential change in the situation—” The substance of it was that they were very happy to hear of the new fuel, but not particularly impressed by it. Perhaps in another twenty years, after it had been thoroughly tested and proved commercially, they might consider setting up another breeder pile outside the atmosphere. In the meantime there was no hurry. Only one director supported the scheme and he was quite evidently unpopular.

  Lentz patiently and politely dealt with their objections. He emphasized the increasing incidence of occupational psychoneurosis among the engineers and the grave danger to everyone near the bomb even under the orthodox theory. He reminded them of their insurance and indemnity bond costs, and of the “squeeze” they paid state politicians.

  Then he changed his tone and let them have it directly and brutally. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we believe that we are fighting for our lives… our own lives, our families, and every life on the globe. If you refuse this compromise, we will fight as fiercely and with as little regard for fair play as any cornered animal.” With that he made his first move in attack.

  It was quite simple. He offered for their inspection the outline of a propaganda campaign on a national scale, such as any major advertising firm could carry out as a matter of routine. It was complete to the last detail, television broadcasts, spot plugs, newspaper and magazine coverage with planted editorials, dummy “citizens’ committees,” and—most important—a supporting whispering campaign and a letters-to-Congress organization. Every business man there knew from experience how such things worked.

  But its object was to stir up fear of the Arizona pile and to direct that fear, not into panic, but into rage against the Board of Directors personally, and into a demand that the Atomic Energy Commission take action to have the Big Bomb removed to outer space.

  “This is blackmail! We’ll stop you!”

  “I think not,” Lentz replied gently. “You may be able to keep us out of some of the newspapers, but you can’t stop the rest of it. You can’t even keep us off the air—ask the Federal Communications Commission.” It was true. Harrington had handled the political end and had performed his assignment well; the President was convinced.

  Tempers were snapping on all sides; Dixon had to pound for order. “Doctor Lentz,” he said, his own temper under taut control, “you plan to make every one of us appear a black-hearted scoundrel with no other thought than personal profit, even at the expense of the lives of others. You know that is not true; this is a simple difference of opinion as to what is wise.”

  “I did not say it was true,” Lentz admitted blandly, “but you will admit that I can convince the public that you are deliberate villains. As to it being a difference of opinion… you are none of you atomic physicists; you are not entitled to hold opinions in this matter.

  “As a matter of fact,” he went on callously, “the only doubt in
my mind is whether or not an enraged public will destroy your precious plant before Congress has time to exercise eminent domain and take it away from you!”

  Before they had time to think up arguments in answer and ways of circumventing him, before their hot indignation had cooled and set as stubborn resistance, he offered his gambit. He produced another lay-out for a propaganda campaign—an entirely different sort.

  This time the Board of Directors was to be built up, not torn down. All of the same techniques were to be used; behind-the-scenes feature articles with plenty of human interest would describe the functions of the Company, describe it as a great public trust, administered by patriotic, unselfish statesmen of the business world. At the proper point in the campaign, the Harper-Erickson ‘fuel would be announced, not as a semi-accidental result of the initiative of two employees, but as the long-expected end product of years of systematic research conducted under a fixed policy of the Board of Directors, a policy growing naturally out of their humane determination to remove forever the menace of explosion from even the sparsely settled Arizona desert.

  No mention was to be made of the danger of complete, planet-embracing catastrophe.

  Lentz discussed it. He dwelt on the appreciation that would be due them from a grateful world. He invited them to make a noble sacrifice, and, with subtle misdirection, tempted them to think of themselves as heroes. He deliberately played on one of the most deep-rooted of simian instincts, the desire for approval from one’s kind, deserved or not.

  All the while he was playing for time, as he directed his attention from one hard case, one resistant mind, to another. He soothed and he tickled and he played on personal foibles. For the benefit of the timorous and the devoted family men, he again painted a picture of the suffering, death, and destruction that might result from their well-meant reliance on the unproved and highly questionable predictions of Destry’s mathematics. Then he described in glowing detail a picture of a world free from worry but granted almost unlimited power, safe power from an invention which was theirs for this one small concession.

  It worked. They did not reverse themselves all at once, but a committee was appointed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed spaceship power plant. By sheer brass Lentz suggested names for the committee and Dixon confirmed his nominations, not because he wished to, particularly, but because he was caught off guard and could not think of a reason to refuse without affronting those colleagues. Lentz was careful to include his one supporter in the list.

  The impending retirement of King was not mentioned by either side. Privately, Lentz felt sure that it never would be mentioned.

  It worked, but there was left much to do. For the first few days, after the victory in committee, King felt much elated by the prospect of an early release from the soul-killing worry. He was buoyed up by pleasant demands of manifold new administrative duties. Harper and Erickson were detached to Goddard Field to collaborate with the rocket engineers there in design of firing chambers, nozzles, fuel stowage, fuel metering, and the like. A schedule had to be worked out with the business office to permit as much use of the pile as possible to be diverted to making atomic fuel, and a giant combustion chamber for atomic fuel had to be designed and ordered to replace the pile itself during the interim between the time it was shut down on earth and the later time when sufficient local, smaller plants could be built to carry the commercial load. He was busy.

  When the first activity had died down and they were settled in a new routine, pending the shutting down of the plant and its removal to outer space, King suffered an emotional reaction. There was, by then, nothing to do but wait, and tend the pile, until the crew at Goddard Field smoothed out the bugs and produced a space-worthy rocket ship.

  At Goddard they ran into difficulties, overcame them, and came across more difficulties. They had never used such high reaction velocities; it took many trials to find a nozzle shape that would give reasonably high efficiency. When that was solved, and success seemed in sight, the jets burned out on a time-trial ground test. They were stalemated for weeks over that hitch.

  There was another problem quite separate from the rocket problem: what to do with the power generated by the breeder pile when relocated in a satellite rocket? It was solved drastically by planning to place the pile proper outside the satellite, unshielded, and let it waste its radiant energy. It would be a tiny artificial star, shining in the vacuum of space. In the meantime research would go on for a means to harness it again and beam the power back to Earth. But only its power would be wasted; plutonium and the newer atomic fuels would be recovered and rocketed back to Earth.

  Back at the power plant Superintendent King could do nothing but chew his nails and wait. He had not even the release of running over to Goddard Field to watch the progress of the research, for, urgently as he desired to, he felt an even stronger, an overpowering compulsion to watch over the pile more lest it—heartbreakingly!— blow up at the last minute.

  He took to hanging around the control room. He had to stop that; his unease communicated itself to his watch engineers; two of them cracked up in a single day—one of them on watch.

  He must face the fact—there had been a grave upswing in psychoneurosis among his engineers since the period of watchful waiting had commenced. At first, they had tried to keep the essential facts of the plan a close secret, but it had leaked out, perhaps through some member of the investigating committee. He admitted to himself now that it had been a mistake ever to try to keep it secret—Lentz had advised against it, and the engineers not actually engaged in the change-over were bound to know that something was up.

  He took all of the engineers into confidence at last, under oath of secrecy. That had helped for a week or more, a week in which they were all given a spiritual lift by the knowledge, as he had been. Then it had worn off, the reaction had set in, and the psychological observers had started disqualifying engineers for duty almost daily. They were even reporting each other as mentally unstable with great frequency; he might even be faced with a shortage of psychiatrists if that kept up, he thought to himself with bitter amusement. His engineers were already standing four hours in every sixteen. If one more dropped out, he’d put himself on watch. That would be a relief, to tell himself the truth.

  Somehow some of the civilians around about and the non-technical employees were catching on to the secret. That mustn’t go on—if it spread any further there might be a nationwide panic. But how the hell could he stop it? He couldn’t.

  He turned over in bed, rearranged his pillow, and tried once more to get to sleep. No good. His head ached, his eyes were balls of pain, and his brain was a ceaseless grind of useless, repetitive activity, like a disc recording stuck in one groove.

  God! This was unbearable! He wondered if he were cracking up—if he already had cracked up. This was worse, many times worse, than the old routine when he had simply acknowledged the danger and tried to forget it as much as possible. Not that the pile was any different—it was this five-minutes-to-armistice feeling, this waiting for the curtain to go up, this race against time with nothing to do to help.

  He sat up, switched on his bed lamp, and looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Not so good. He got up, went into his bathroom, and dissolved a sleeping powder in a glass of whisky and water, half and half. He gulped it down and went back to bed. Presently he dozed off.

  He was running, fleeing down a long corridor. At the end lay safety—he knew that, but he was so utterly exhausted that he doubted his ability to finish the race. The thing pursuing him was catching up; he forced his leaden, aching legs into greater activity. The thing behind him increased its pace, and actually touched him. His heart stopped, then pounded again. He became aware that he was screaming, shrieking in mortal terror.

  But he had to reach the end of that corridor, more depended on it than just himself. He had to. He had to— He had to!

  Then the flash came and he realized that he had lost, realized it with utter despair and u
tter, bitter defeat. He had failed; the pile had blown up.

  The flash was his bed lamp coming on automatically; it was seven o’clock. His pajamas were soaked, dripping with sweat, and his heart still pounded. Every ragged nerve throughout his body screamed for release. It would take more than a cold shower to cure this case of the shakes.

  He got to the office before the janitor was out of it. He sat there, doing nothing, until Lentz walked in on him, two hours later. The psychiatrist came in just as he was taking two small tablets from a box in his desk.

  “Easy… easy, old man,” Lentz said in a slow voice. “What have you there?” He came around and gently took possession of the box.

  “Just a sedative.”

  Lentz studied the inscription on the cover. “How many have you had today?”

  “Just two, so far.”

  “You don’t need barbiturates; you need a walk in the fresh air. Come take one with me.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk—you’re smoking a cigaret that isn’t lighted!”

  “Me? Why, so I am! We both need that walk. Come.”

  Harper arrived less than ten minutes after they had left the office. Steinke was not in the outer office. He walked on through and pounded on the door of King’s private office, then waited with the man who accompanied him— a hard young chap with an easy confidence to his bearing. Steinke let them in.

  Harper brushed on past him with a casual greeting, then checked himself when he saw that there was no one else inside.

  “Where’s the chief?” he demanded.

  “Out. He’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll wait. Oh—Steinke, this is Greene. Greene—Steinke.”

  The two shook hands. “What brings you back, Cal?” Steinke asked, turning back to Harper.

  “Well… I guess it’s all right to tell you—”

  The communicator screen flashed into sudden activity, and cut him short. A face filled most of the frame. It was apparently too close to the pickup, as it was badly out of focus. “Superintendent!” it yelled in an agonized voice. “The pile—!”