instrument board, and power sources. That is to say, he could vary the
bombardment on the beryllium target to increase or decrease the power
output of the plant, and he could tell from his instruments that the
internal reaction was dampened — or, rather, that it had been dampened the
split second before. He could not possibly know what was actually happening
now within the bomb — subatomic speeds are too great and the time intervals
too small. He was like the bird that flew backward; he could see where he
had been, but he never knew where he was going.
Nevertheless, it was his responsibility, and his alone, not only to
maintain the bomb at a high input-output efficiency, but to see that the
reaction never passed the critical point and progressed into mass
explosion.
But that was impossible. He could not be sure; he could never be sure.
He could bring to the job all of the skill and learning of the finest
technical education, and use it to reduce the hazard to the lowest
mathematical probability, but the blind laws of chance which appear to rule
in subatomic action might turn up a royal flush against him and defeat his
most skillful play.
And each atomic engineer knew it, knew that he gambled not only with his
own life, but with the lives of countless others, perhaps with the lives of
every human being on the planet. Nobody knew quite what such an explosion
would do. The most conservative estimate assumed that, in addition to
destroying the plant and its personnel completely, it would tear a chunk
out of the populous and heavily traveled Los Angeles-Oklahoma Road City a
hundred miles to the north.
That was the official, optimistic viewpoint on which the plant had been
authorized, and based on mathematics which predicted that a mass of uranium
would itself be disrupted on a molar scale, and thereby rendered
comparatively harmless, before progressive and accelerated atomic explosion
could infect the entire mass.
The atomic engineers, by and large, did not place faith in the official
theory. They judged theoretical mathematical prediction for what it was
worth — precisely nothing, until confirmed by experiment.
But even from the official viewpoint, each atomic engineer while on watch
carried not only his own life in his hands, but the lives of many others —
how many, it was better not to think about. No pilot, no general, no
surgeon ever carried such a daily, inescapable, ever-present weight of
responsibility for the lives of other people as these men carried every
time they went on watch, every time they touched a vernier screw or read a
dial.
They were selected not alone for their intelligence and technical training,
but quite as much for their characters and sense of social responsibility.
Sensitive men were needed — men who could fully appreciate the importance
of the charge intrusted to them; no other sort would do. But the burden of
responsibility was too great to be born indefinitely by a sensitive man.
It was, of necessity, a psychologically unstable condition. Insanity was an
occupational disease.
Dr. Cummings appeared, still buckling the straps of the armor worn to guard
against stray radiation. “What’s up?” he asked Silard.
“I had to relieve Harper.”
“So I guessed. I met him coming up. He was sore as hell — just glared at
me.”
“I know. He wants an immediate hearing. That’s why I had to send for you.”
Cummings grunted, then nodded toward the engineer, anonymous in
all-inclosing armor. “Who’d I draw?”
“Erickson.”
“Good enough. Squareheads can’t go crazy — eh, Gus?”
Erickson looked up momentarily and answered, “That’s your problem,” and
returned to his work.
Cummings turned back to Silard and commented: “Psychiatrists don’t seem
very popular around here. O.K. — I relieve you sir.”
“Very well, sir.”
Silard threaded his way through the zigzag in the tanks of water which
surrounded the disintegration room. Once outside this outer shield, he
divested himself of the cumbersome armor, disposed of it in the locker room
provided, and hurried to a lift. He left the lift at the tube station,
underground, and looked around for an unoccupied capsule. Finding one, he