“Three,” announced Harper. “Sit down, Gus.”
“That’s correct,” Erickson agreed, sliding his big frame into a low-slung chair. “You’ll do-for now. What the outcome?”
“Have a drink. Not,” he went on, “that this Scotch any good. I think Lance has taken to watering it. I surrendered, horse and foot.”
“Lance wouldn’t do that-stick to that theory anti you’ll sink in the sidewalk up to your knees. How come you capitulated? I thought you planned to beat ’em about the head and shoulders, at least.” ‘ I
“I did,” mourned Harper, “but, cripes, Gus, the chief is right. If a brain mechanic says you’re punchy, he has got to back him up, and take you off the watch list. The chief can’t afford to take a chance.”
“Yeah, the chief’s all right, but I can’t learn to love our dear psychiatrists. Tell you what-let’s find us one, and, see if he can feel pain. I’ll hold him while you slug ‘im.”
“Oh, forget it, Gus. Have a drink.”
“A pious thought-but not Scotch. I’m going to have a martini; we ought to eat pretty soon.”
“I’ll have one, too.”
“Do you good.” Erickson lifted his blond head and bellowed, “Israfell”
A large, black person appeared at his elbow. “Mistuh Erickson! Yes, sub!”
“Izzy, fetch two martinis. Make mine with Italian.” He turned back to Harper. “What are you going to do now, Cal?”
“Radiation laboratory.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. I’d like to have a go at the matter of rocket fuels ‘myself. I’ve got some ideas.”
Harper looked mildly amused. “You mean atomic fuel for interplanetary flight? That problem’s pretty well exhausted. No, son, the ionosphere is the ceiling until we think up something better than rockets. Of course, you could mount a pile in a ship, and figure out some jury rig to convert some of its output into push, but where does that get you? You would still have a terrible mass-ratio because of the shielding and I’m betting you couldn’t convert one percent into thrust. That’s disregarding the question of getting the company to lend you a power pile for anything that doesn’t pay dividends.”
Erickson looked balky. “I don’t concede that you’ve covered all the alternatives. What have we got? The early rocket boys went right ahead trying to build better rockets, serene in the belief that, by the time they could build rockets good enough to fly to the moon, a fuel would be perfected that would do the trick. And they did build ships that were good enough-you could take any ship that makes the Antipodes run, and refit it for the moon-if you had a fuel that was adequate. But they haven’t got it.
“And why not? Because we let ’em down, that’s why. Because they’re still depending on molecular energy, on chemical reactions, with atomic power sitting right here in our laps. It’s not their fault-old D. D. Harriman had Rockets Consolidated underwrite the whole first issue of Antarctic Pitchblende, and took a big slice of it himself, in the expectation that we would produce something usable in the way of a concentrated rocket fuel. Did we do it? Like hell! The company went hog-wild for immediate commercial exploitation, and there’s no atomic rocket fuel yet.”
“But you haven’t stated it properly,” Harper objected. “There are just two forms of atomic power-available, radioactivity and atomic disintegration. The first is too slow; the energy is there, but you can’t wait years for it to come out-not in a rocket ship. The second we can only manage in a large power plant. There you are-stymied.”
“We haven’t really tried,” Erickson answered. “The power is there; we ought to give ’em a decent fuel”
“What would you call a ‘decent fuel’?”
Erickson ticked it off. “A small enough critical mass so that all, or almost all, the energy could be taken up as heat by the reaction mass-I’d like the reaction mass to be ordinary water. Shielding that would have to be no more than a lead and cadmium jacket. And the whole thing controllable to a fine point.”
Harper laughed. “Ask for Angel’s wings and be done with it. You couldn’t store such fuel in a rocket; it would~ Set itself off before it reached the jet chamber.”