Before him in the room, one for each projectile rocket, were the atom bombs, spaced in rows far enough apart to defeat any faint possibility of spontaneous chain reaction. They were the deadliest things in the known universe, but they were his babies. He had placed himself between them and anyone who would misuse them.
But, now that he was here, he had no plan to use his temporary advantage.
The speaker on the wall sputtered into life. “Hey! Lieutenant! What goes on here? You gone crazy?” Dahlquist did not answer. Let Lopez stay confused-it would take him that much longer to make up his mind what to do. And Johnny Dahlquist needed as many minutes as he could squeeze. Lopez went on protesting. Finally he shut up.
Johnny had followed a blind urge not to let the bombs – his bombs! – be used for “demonstrations on unimportant towns.” But what to do next? Well, Towers couldn’t get through the lock. Johnny would sit tight until hell froze over.
Don’t kid yourself, John Ezra! Towers could get in. Some high explosive against the outer door-then the air would whoosh out, our boy Johnny would drown in blood from his burst lungs-and the bombs would be sitting there, unhurt. They were built to stand the jump from Moon to Earth; vacuum would not hurt them at all.
He decided to stay in his space suit; explosive decompression didn’t appeal to him. Come to think about it, death from old age was his choice.
Or they could drill a hole, let out the air, and open, the door without wrecking the lock. Or Towers might even have a new airlock built outside the old. Not likely, Johnny thought; a coup d’etat depended on speed. Towers was almost sure to take the quickest way-blasting. And Lopez was probably calling the Base right now. Fifteen minutes for Towers to suit up and get here, maybe a short dicker-then whoosh! the party is over.
Fifteen minutes – In fifteen minutes the bombs might fall back into the hands of the conspirators; in fifteen minutes he must make the bombs unusable.
An atom bomb is just two or more pieces of fissionable metal, such as plutonium. Separated, they are no more explosive than a pound of butter; slapped together, they explode. The complications lie in the gadgets and circuits and gun used to slap them together in the exact way and at the exact time and place required.
These circuits, the bomb’s “brain,” are easily destroyed – but the bomb itself is hard to destroy because of its very simplicity. Johnny decided to smash the “brains” – and quickly!
The only tools at hand were simple ones used in handling the bombs. Aside from a Geiger counter, the speaker on the walkie-talkie circuit, a television rig to the base, and the bombs themselves, the room was bare. A bomb to be worked on was taken elsewhere-not through fear of explosion, but to reduce radiation exposure for personnel. The radioactive material in a bomb is buried in a “tamper” – in these bombs, gold. Gold stops alpha, beta, and much of the deadly gamma radiation – but not neutrons.
The slippery, poisonous neutrons which plutonium gives off had to escape, or a chain reaction – explosion! – would result. The room was bathed in an invisible, almost undetectable rain of neutrons. The place was unhealthy; regulations called for staying in it as short a time as possible.
The Geiger counter clicked off the “background” radiation, cosmic rays, the trace of radioactivity in the Moon’s crust, and secondary radioactivity set up all through the room by neutrons. Free neutrons have the nasty trait of infecting what they strike, making it radioactive, whether it be concrete wall or human body. In time the room would have to be abandoned.
Dahlquist twisted a knob on the Geiger counter; the instrument stopped clicking. He had used a suppressor circuit to cut out noise of “background” radiation at the level then present. It reminded him uncomfortably of the danger of staying here. He took out the radiation exposure film all radiation personnel carry; it was a direct-response type and had been fresh when he arrived. The most sensitive end was faintly darkened already. Half way down the film a red line crossed it. Theoretically, if the wearer was exposed to enough radioactivity in a week to darken the film to that line, he was, as Johnny reminded himself, a “dead duck”.