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 never 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
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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