Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

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

Page 37

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