“Hello.”
“Gus, this is Dr. Lentz — Gus Erickson.”
“We’ve met,” said Erickson, pulling off his gauntlet to shake hands. He had
had a couple of drinks with Lentz in town and considered him a “nice old
duck.” “You’re just between shows, but stick around and we’ll start another
run-not that there is much to see.”
While Erickson continued with the setup, Harper conducted Lentz around the
laboratory, explaining the line of research they were conducting, as happy
as a father showing off twins. The psychiatrist listened with one ear and
made appropriate comments while he studied the young scientist for signs of
the instability he had noted to be recorded against him.
“You see,” Harper explained, oblivious to the interest in himself, “we are
testing radioactive materials to see if we can produce disintegration of
the sort that takes place in the bomb, but in a minute, almost microscopic,
mass. If we are successful, we can use the power of the bomb to make a
safe, convenient, atomic fuel for rockets.” He went on to explain their
schedule of experimentation.
“I see,” Lentz observed politely. “What metal are you examining now?”
Harper told him. “But it’s not a case of examining one element — we’ve
finished Isotope II with negative results. Our schedule calls next for
running the same test on Isotope V. Like this.” He hauled out a lead
capsule, and showed the label to Lentz, who saw that it was, indeed, marked
with the symbol of the fifth isotope. He hurried away to the shield around
the target of the cyclotron, left open by Erickson. Lentz saw that he had
opened the capsule, and was performing some operation on it in a gingerly
manner, having first lowered his helmet. Then he closed and clamped the
target shield.
“O. K., Gus?” he called out. “Ready to roll?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Erickson assured him, coming around them. They crowded
behind a thick metal shield that cut them off from direct sight of the
setup.
“Will I need to put on armor?” inquired Lentz.
“No,” Erickson reassured him, “we wear it because we are around the stuff
day in and day out. You just stay behind the shield and you’ll be all
right. It’s lead — backed up by eight inches of case-hardened armor plate.
Erickson glanced at Harper, who nodded, and fixed his eyes on a panel of
instruments mounted behind the shield. Lentz saw Erickson press a push
button at the top of the board, then heard a series of relays click on the
far side of the shield. There was a short moment of silence.
The floor slapped his feet like some incredible bastinado. The concussion
that beat on his ears was so intense that it paralyzed the auditory nerve
almost before it could be recorded as sound. The air-conducted concussion
wave flailed every inch of his body with a single, stinging, numbing blow.
As he picked himself up, he found he was trembling uncontrollably and
realized, for the first time, that he was getting old.
Harper was seated on the floor and had commenced to bleed from the nose.
Erickson had gotten up; his cheek was cut. He touched a hand to the wound,
then stood there, regarding the blood on his fingers with a puzzled
expression on his face.
“Are you hurt?” Lentz inquired inanely. “What happened?”
Harper cut in. “Gus, we’ve done it! We’ve done it! Isotope V’s turned the
trick!”
Erickson looked still more bemused. “Five?” he said stupidly. “But that
wasn’t Five; that was Isotope II. I put it in myself.”
“You put it in? I put it in! It was Five, I tell you!”
They stood staring at each other, still confused by the explosion, and each
a little annoyed at the boneheaded stupidity the other displayed in the
face of the obvious. Lentz diffidently interceded.
“Wait a minute, boys,” he suggested. “Maybe there’s a reason — Gus, you
placed a quantity of the second isotope in the receiver?”
“Why, yes, certainly. I wasn’t satisfied with the last run, and I wanted to
check it.”
Lentz nodded. “It’s my fault, gentlemen,” he admitted ruefully. “I came in
and disturbed your routine, and both of you charged the receiver. I know