It was up to Wilkie.
He showed up in Ardmore’s office a few days later with a roll of drawings under his arm. “Uh, Chief?”
“Eh? Oh, come in, Bob. Sit down. What’s eating on you? When do we start building the temple? See here — I’ve been thinking about other ways to conceal the fact that the Citadel will be under the temple. Do you suppose you could arrange the altar so that — ”
“Excuse me, Chief.”
“Eh?
“We can incorporate most any dodge you want into the design, but I’ve got to know something more about the design first.”
“That’s your problem — yours and Graham’s.”
“Yes, sir. But how big do you want it to be?”
“How big? Oh, I don’t know, exactly. It has to be big.” Ardmore made a sweeping motion with both hands that took in floor, walls, and ceiling.
“It has to be impressive.”
“How about thirty feet in the largest dimension?”
“Thirty feet? Why, that’s ridiculous! You aren’t building a soft-drinks stand; you’re building the mother temple of a great religion — of course you aren’t, but you’ve got to think of it that way. It’s got to knock their eyes out. What’s the trouble? Materials?”
Wilkie shook his head. “No, with Ledbetter-type transmutation materials are not a problem. We can use the mountain itself for materials.”
“That’s what I thought you intended to do. Carve out big chunks of granite and use your tractor and pressor beams to lay them up like giant bricks.”
“Oh, no!
“No? Why not?”
“Well, we could, but when we got through it wouldn’t look like much — and I don’t know how we would roof it over. What I intended to do was to use the Ledbetter effect not just for cutting or quarrying, but to make
— transmute — the materials I want. You see, granite is principally oxides of silicon. That complicates things a little because both elements are fairly near the lower end of the periodic table. Unless we go to a lot of trouble and get rid of a lot of excess energy — a tremendous amount; darn near as much as the Memphis power pile develops
— as I say, unless we arrange to bleed off all that power, and right now I don’t see just how we could do it, then — ”
“Get to the point, man!”
“I was getting to the point, sir,” Wilkie answered in hurt tones.
“Transmutations from the top or the bottom of the periodic scale toward the middle give off power; contrariwise, they absorb energy. Way back in the middle of the last century they found out how to do the first sort; that’s what atom bombs are based on. But to handle transmutations for building materials, you don’t want to give off energy like an atom bomb or a power pile. It would be embarrassing.”
“I should think so!”
“So I’ll use the second sort, the energy-absorbing sort. As a matter of fact I’ll balance them. Take magnesium for instance. It lies between silicon and oxygen. The binding energies involved — ”
“Wilkie!”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Just assume that I never got through third grade. Now can you make the materials you need, or can’t you?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I can make them.”
“Then how can I be of help to you?”
“Well, sir, it’s the matter of putting the roof on and the size. You say a thirty-foot over-all dimension is no good — ”
“No good at all. Did you see the North American Exposition? Remember the General Atomics Exhibit?”
“I’ve seen pictures of it.”
“I want something as gaudy and impressive as that, only bigger. Now why are you limited to thirty feet?”
“Well, sir, a panel six by thirty is the biggest I can squeeze out through the door, allowing for the turn in the passage.”
“Take ’em up through the scout-car lift.”
“I thought of that. It will take a panel thirteen feet wide, which is good, but the maximum length is then only twenty-seven feet. There’s a corner to turn between the hangar and the lift.”
“Hmm — Look, can you weld with that magic gimmick? I thought you could build the temple in sections, down below here, then assemble it above ground?”