suggested unmalicious amusement at the worst that life, or men, could do.
He had gusto. King found him remarkably easy to talk to.
At Lentz’s suggestion the superintendent went first into the history of the
atomic power plant, how the fission of the uranium atom by Dr. Otto Hahn in
December, 1938, had opened up the way to atomic power. The door was opened
just a crack; the process to be self-perpetuating and commercially usable
required an enormously greater mass of uranium than there was available in
the entire civilized world at that time.
But the discovery, fifteen years later, of enormous deposits of pitchblende
in the old rock underlying Little America removed that obstacle. The
deposits were similar to those previously worked at Great Bear Lake in the
arctic north of Canada, but so much more extensive that the eventual
possibility of accumulating enough uranium to build an atomic power plant
became evident.
The demand for commercially usable, cheap power had never been satiated.
Even the Douglas-Martin sun-power screens, used to drive the roaring road
cities of the period and for a myriad other industrial purposes, were not
sufficient to fill the ever-growing demand. They had saved the country from
impending famine of oil and coal, but their maximum output of approximately
one horsepower per square yard of sun-illuminated surface put a definite
limit to the power from that source available in any given geographical
area. Atomic power was needed — was demanded.
But theoretical atomic physics predicted that a uranium mass sufficiently
large to assist in its own disintegration might assist too well — blow up
instantaneously,
with such force that it would probably wreck every man-made structure on
the globe and conceivably destroy the entire human race as well. They dared
not build the bomb, even though the uranium was available.
“It was Destry’s mechanics of infinitesimals that showed a way out of the
dilemma,” King went on. “His equations appeared to predict that an atomic
explosion once started, would disrupt the molar mass inclosing it so
rapidly that neutron loss through the outer surface of the fragments would
dampen the progression of the atomic explosion to zero before complete
explosion could be reached.
“For the mass we use in the bomb, his equations predict a possible force of
explosion one seventh of one percent of the force of complete explosion.
That alone, of course, would be incomprehensibly destructive — about the
equivalent of a hundred and forty thousand tons of TNT — enough to wreck
this end of the State. Personally, I’ve never been sure that is all that
would happen.”
“Then why did you accept this job?” inquired Lentz.
King fiddled with items on his desk before replying. “I couldn’t turn it
down, doctor — I couldn’t. If I had refused, they would have gotten someone
else — and it was an opportunity that comes to a physicist once in
history,”
Lentz nodded. “And probably they would have gotten someone not as
competent. I understand, Dr. King — you were compelled by the
‘truth-tropism’ of the scientist. He must go where the data is to be found,
even if it kills him. But about this fellow Destry, I’ve never liked his
mathematics; he postulates too much.”
King looked up in quick surprise, then recalled that this was the man who
had refined and given rigor to the calculus of statement. “That’s just the
hitch,” he agreed. “His work is brilliant, but I’ve never been sure that
his predictions were worth the paper they were written on. Nor,
apparently,” he added bitterly, “do my junior engineers.”
He told the psychiatrist of the difficulties they had had with personnel,
of how the most carefully selected men would, sooner or later, crack under
the strain. “At first I thought it might be some degenerating effect from
the hard radiation that leaks out of the bomb, so we improved the screening
and the personal armor. But it didn’t help. One young fellow who had joined
us after the new screening was installed became violent at dinner one
night, and insisted that a pork chop was about to explode. I hate to think
of what might have happened if he had been on duty at the bomb when he blew