Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

“Artificial radioactives.”

“All right. Let’s set up a list of them, both those that have been made up

to now, and those that might possibly be made in the future. Call that our group-or

rather, field, if you want to be pedantic about definitions. There are a limited

number of operations that can be performed on each member of the group, and on the

members taken in combination. Set it up.”

Erickson did so, using the curious curlicues of the calculus of statement.

Harper nodded. “All right-expand it.”

Erickson looked up after a few moments, and asked, “Cal, have you any idea

how many terms there are in the expansion?”

“No. . . hundreds, maybe thousands, I suppose.”

“You’re conservative. It reaches four figures without considering possible

new radioactives. We couldn’t finish such a research in a century. He chucked his

pencil down and looked morose.

Cal Harper looked at him curiously, but with sympathy. “Gus,” he said

gently, “the job isn’t getting you, too, is it?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“I never saw you so willing to give up anything before. Naturally you and I

will never finish any such job, but at the very worst we will have eliminated a lot

of wrong answers for somebody else. Look at Edison-sixty years of experimenting,

twenty hours a day, yet he never found out the one thing he was most interested in

knowing. I guess if he could take it, we can.”

Erickson pulled out of his funk to some extent. “I suppose so,” he agreed.

“Anyhow, maybe we could work out some techniques for carrying a lot of experiments

simultaneously.”

Harper slapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the ol’ fight. Besides, we may

not need to finish the research, or anything like it, to find a satisfactory fuel.

The way I see it, there are probably a dozen, maybe a hundred, right answers. We may

run across one of them any day. Anyhow, since you’re willing to give me a hand with

it in your off watch time, I’m game to peck away at it till hell freezes.”

Lentz puttered around the plant and the administration center for several

days, until he was known to everyone by sight He made himself pleasant and asked

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questions. He was soon regarded as a harmless nuisance, to be tolerated because he

was a friend of the superintendent. He even poked his nose into the commercial power

end of the plant, and had the radiation-to-electric-power sequence explained to him

in detail. This alone would have been sufficient to disarm any suspicion that he

might be a psychiatrist, for the staff psychiatrists paid no attention to the

hard-bitten technicians of the power-conversion unit. There was no need to; mental

instability on their part could not affect the pile, nor were they subject to the

strain of social responsibility. Theirs was simply a job personally dangerous, a

type of strain strong men have been inured to since the jungle.

In due course he got around to the unit of the radiation laboratory set

aside for Calvin Harper’s use. He rang the bell and waited. Harper answered the

door, his antiradiation helmet shoved back from his face like some grotesque

sunbonnet. “What is it?” he asked. “Oh-it’s you, Doctor Lentz. Did you want to see

me?”

“Why, yes, and no,” the older man answered, “I was just looking around the

experimental station and wondered what you do in here. Will I be in the way?”

“Not at all. Come in. Gus!”

Erickson got up from where he had been fussing over the power leads to their

trigger a modified betatron rather than a resonant accelerator. “Hello.”

“Gus, this is Doctor Lentz-Gus Erickson.”

“We’ve met,” said Erickson, pulling off his gauntlet to shake hands. He had

had a couple of drinks with Lentz in town and considered him a “nice old duck.”

“You’re just between shows, but stick around and we’ll start another run-not that

there is much to see.”

While Erickson continued with the set-up, Harper conducted Lentz around the

laboratory, explaining the line of research they were conducting, as happy as a

father showing off twins. The psychiatrist listened with one ear and made