solid form partially hid Lentz.
“Wait a minute. You say that everything is ready to install the pile in the
ship? You’re sure?”
“Positive. The big ship has already flown with our fuel-longer and faster
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than she will have to fly to reach station in her orbit; I was in it-out in space,
Chief! We’re all set, six ways from zero.”
King stared at the dumping switch, mounted behind glass at the top of the
instrument board. “There’s fuel enough,” he said softly, as if he were alone and
speaking only to himself, “there’s been fuel enough for weeks.”
He walked swiftly over to the switch, smashed the glass with his fist, and
pulled it.
The room rumbled and shivered as tons of molten, massive metal, heavier than
gold, coursed down channels, struck against baffles, split into a dozen dozen
streams, and plunged to rest in leaden receivers-to rest, safe and harmless, until
it should be reassembled far out in space.
AFTERWORD
December 1979, exactly 40 years after I researched BLOWUPS HAPPEN (Dec.
’39): I had some doubt about republishing this because of the current ignorant fear
of fission power, recently enhanced by the harmless flap at Three Mile Island. When
I wrote this, there was not a full gram of purified U-235 on this planet, and no one
knew its hazards in detail, most especially the mass and geometry and speed of
assembly necessary to make “blowups happen.” But we now know from long experience
and endless tests that the “tons” used in this story could never be assembled-no
explosion, melt-down possible, melt-down being the worst that can happen at a power
plant; to cause U-235 to explode is very difficult and requires very different
design. Yes, radiation is hazardous
BUT- RADIATION EXPOSURE
Half a mile from Three-Mile plant
during the flap 83 millirems
At the power plant 1,100 millirems
During heart catheterization for
angiogram 45,000 millirems
– which I underwent 18 months ago. I feel fine.
R.A.H.
FOREWORD
I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage
was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no
interest in it- backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I
being always firmly resolved to quit the silly bus iness once I had my chart squared
away.
At a meeting of the Mai~ana Literary Society-an amorphous disorganization
having as its avowed purpose “to permit young writers to talk out their stories to
each other in order to get them off their minds and thereby save themselves the
trouble of writing them down”-at a gathering of this noble group I was expounding my
determination to retire from writing once my bills were paid-in a few weeks, during
1940, if the tripe continued to sell.
William A. P. White (“Anthony Boucher”) gave me a sour look. “Do you know
any retired writers?”
“How could I? All the writers I’ve ever met are in this room.
“Irrelevant. You know retired school teachers, retired naval officers,
retired policemen, retired farmers. Why don’t you know at least one retired writer?”
“What are you driving at?”
“Robert, there are no retired writers. There are writers who have stopped
selling. . . but they have not stopped writing.
I pooh-poohed Bill’s remarks-possibly what he said applied to writers in
general. . . but I wasn’t really a writer; I was just a chap who needed money and
happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without
stealing and without honest work. (“Honest work”-a euphemism for underpaid bodily
exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty
circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines,
tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.
Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be
described as “honest work.”)
Page 40
BLOWUPS HAPPEN sold and I gave a mortgageburning party. But I did not quit
writing at once (24 Feb 1940) because, while I had the Old Man of the Sea (that
damned mortgage) off my back, there were still some other items. I needed a new car;