Chapter 13

“Healing’s going to be a long, slow process, but they should at least grow back better than silver ribs; never make a pretty X-ray, though.” Doc held the instrument in his hand, staring down at the flap opened in Jorgenson’s chest, and his shoulders came up in a faint shrug. The little platinum filaments had been removed from around the nerves to heart and lungs and the man’s normal impulses were operating again, less steadily than under the exciter, but with no danger signals. “Well, it won’t much matter if he’s still sane.”

Jenkins watched him begin stitching the flap back, his eyes centered over the table out toward the converter. “Doc, he’s got to be sane! If Hoke and Palmer find it’s what it sounds like out there we’ll have to count on Jorgenson. There’s an answer somewhere; has to be. But we won’t find it without him.”

“Ummm. Seems to me you’ve been having ideas yourself, son. You’ve been right so far, and if Jorgenson’s out…” He shut off the stitcher, finished the dressings and flopped down on a bench, knowing that all they could do was wait for the drugs to work on Jorgenson and bring him around. Now that he relaxed the control over himself, exhaustion hit down with full force; his fingers were uncertain as he pulled off the gloves. “Anyhow, we’ll know in another five minutes or so.”

“And Heaven help us, Doc, if it’s up to me. I’ve always had a flair for atomic theory; I grew up on it. But he’s the production man who’s been working at it week in and week out, and it’s his process, to boot…. There they are now! All right for them to come back here?”

But Hokusai and Palmer were waiting for no permission. At the moment Jorgenson was the nerve center of the plant, drawing them back, and they stalked over to stare down at him, then sat where they could be sure of missing no sign of returning consciousness. Palmer picked up the conversation where he’d dropped it, addressing his remarks to both Hokusai and Jenkins.

“Damn that Link-Stevens postulate! Time after time it fails, until you figure there’s nothing to it; then this! It’s black magic, not science, and if I get out I’ll find some fool with more courage than sense to discover why. Hoke, are you positive it’s the theta chain? There isn’t one chance in ten thousand of that happening, you know. It’s unstable, hard to start, tends to revert to the simpler ones at the first chance.”

Hokusai spread his hands, lifted one heavy eyelid at Jenkins questioningly, then nodded. The boy’s voice was dull, almost uninterested. “That’s what I thought it had to be, Palmer. None of the others throw off that much energy at this stage, the way you described conditions out there. Probably the last thing we tried to quench it set it up in that pattern and it’s in a concentration just right to keep it going. We figured ten hours was the best chance, so it had to pick the six-hour short chain.”

“Yeah.” Palmer was pacing up and down nervously again, his eyes swinging toward Jorgenson from whatever direction he moved. “And in six hours maybe all the population around here can be evacuated, maybe not, but we’ll have to try it. Doc, I can’t even wait for Jorgenson now! I’ve got to get the Governor started at once!”

“They’ve been known to practice lynch law, even in recent years,” Ferrel reminded him grimly. He’d seen the result of one such case of mob violence when he was practicing privately and he knew that people remain pretty much the same year after year; they’d move, but first they’d demand a sacrifice. “Better get the men out of here first, Palmer, and my advice is to get yourself a good long distance off; I heard some of the trouble at the gate, but that won’t be anything compared to what an evacuation order will do.”

Palmer grunted. “Doc, you might not believe it, but I don’t give a continental about what happens to me or the plant right now.”

“Or to the men? Put a mob in here hunting your blood and the men will be on your side, because they know it wasn’t your fault and they’ve seen you out there taking chances yourself. That mob won’t be too choosy about its targets, either, once it gets worked up, and you’ll have a nice vicious brawl all over the place. Besides, Jorgenson’s practically ready.”

A few more minutes would make no difference in the evacuation, and Doc had no desire to think of his partially crippled wife going through the hell evacuation would be; she’d probably refuse to go until he returned. His eyes fell on the box Jenkins was playing with nervously, and he stalled for time. “I thought you said it was risky to break the stuff down into small particles, Jenkins. But that box contains the stuff in various sizes, including one big piece we scraped out, along with the contaminated instruments. Why hasn’t it exploded?”

Jenkins’ hand jerked up from it as if burned and he backed away a step before checking himself. Then he was across the room toward the I-631 and back, pouring the white powder over everything in the box in a jerky frenzy. Hokusai’s eyes had snapped fully open and he was slopping water to fill up the remaining space and keep the I-631 in contact with everything else. Almost at once, in spite of the low relative energy release, it sent up a white cloud of steam faster than the air conditioner could clear the room; but that soon faded down and disappeared.

Hokusai wiped his forehead slowly. “The suits—armor of the men?”

“Sent’ em back to the converter and had them dumped into the stuff to be safe long ago,” Jenkins answered. “But I forgot the box, like a fool. Ugh! Either blind chance saved us, or else the stuff spit out was all one kind, some reasonably long chain I don’t know nor care right—”

“S’ot! Nnuh… Whmah nahh?”

“Jorgenson!” They swung from the end of the room like one man, but Jenkins was the first to reach the table. Jorgenson’s eyes were open and rolling in a semi-orderly manner, his hands moving sluggishly. The boy hovered over his face, his own practically glowing with the intensity behind it. “Jorgenson, can you understand what I’m saying?”

“Uh.” The eyes ceased moving and centered on Jenkins. One hand came up to his throat, clutching it, and he tried unsuccessfully to lift himself with the other, but the aftereffects of what he’d been through seemed to have left him in a state of partial paralysis.

Ferrel had hardly dared to hope that the man could be rational, and his relief was tinged with doubt. He pushed Palmer back and shook his head. “No, stay back. Let the boy handle it; he knows enough to avoid a shock to the man now, and you don’t. This can’t be rushed too much.”

“I—uh… Young Jenkins? You gotta righ’. Been thinkin’—wrong’ bout ever’thing!” Somewhere in Jorgenson’s huge frame, an untapped reserve of energy and will sprang up, and he forced himself into a sitting position, his eyes on Jenkins, his hands still catching at the reluctant throat that refused to cooperate. His words were blurry and uncertain, but sheer determination overcame the obstacles and made the words understandable. “Y’r dad tol’ me—”

“Dad’s dead, Jorgenson. Now—.”

“‘Sright.’ N I’m grown up.’ Bout twelve years old, y’were… The plant—!”

“Easy, Jorgenson.” Jenkins’ own voice managed to sound casual, though his hands under the table were white where they clenched together. “Listen, and don’t try to say anything until I finish. The plant’s still all right, but we’ve got to have your help. Here’s what happened.”

Ferrel could make little sense of the cryptic sentences that followed, though he gathered that they were some form of engineering shorthand; apparently, from Hokusai’s approving nod, they summed up the situation briefly but fully, and Jorgenson sat rigidly still until it was finished, his eyes fastened on the boy.

“Helluva mess! Gotta think. Yuh tried—” He made an attempt to lower himself back, and Jenkins assisted him, hanging feverishly on each awkward, uncertain change of expression on the man’s face. “Uh—da’ sroat! Yuh—uh—urrgh!”

“Got it?”

“Uh!” The tone was affirmative, unquestionably, but the clutching hands around his neck told their own story. The temporary burst of energy he’d forced was exhausted and he couldn’t get through with the answer. He lay there breathing heavily and struggling, then relaxed after a few more half-whispered words, none intelligently articulated.

Palmer clutched at Ferrel’s sleeve. “Doc, isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Try.” He metered out a minute quantity of drug doubtfully, felt Jorgenson’s pulse, and decided on half that amount. “Not much hope, though; that man’s been through hell and it wasn’t good for him to be forced around in the first place. Carry it too far and he’ll be delirious if he does talk. Anyway, I suspect it’s a partly his speech centers as well as the throat.”

But Jorgenson began a slight rally almost instantly, trying again, then apparently drawing himself together for a final attempt. When they came, the words spilled out harshly in forced clearness, but without inflection.

“First… variable… at… twelve… water… stop.” His eyes, centered on Jenkins, closed, and he relaxed again, this time no longer fighting off the inevitable unconsciousness.

Hokusai, Palmer and Jenkins were staring back and forth at one another questioningly. The little Japanese shook his head negatively at first, frowned and repeated it, to be imitated almost exactly by the manager. “Delirious ravings!”

“The great white hope, Jorgenson!” Jenkins’ shoulders dropped and the blood drained from his face, leaving it ghastly with fatigue and despair. “Oh, damn it, Doc, stop staring at me! I can’t pull a miracle out of a hat!”

Doc hadn’t realized that he was staring but he made no effort to change it. “Maybe not, but you happen to have the most active imagination here, when you stop abusing it to scare yourself. Well, you’re on the spot now and I’m still giving odds on you. Want to bet, Hoke?”

It was an utterly stupid thing and Doc knew it; but somewhere during the long hours together he’d picked up a queer respect for the boy and a dependence on the nervousness that wasn’t fear but closer akin to the reaction of a rear-running thoroughbred on the home stretch. Hoke was too slow and methodical and Palmer had been too concerned with outside worries to give anywhere nearly full attention to the single most urgent phase of the problem; that left only Jenkins, hampered by his lack of self-confidence.

Hoke gave no sign that he caught the meaning of Doc’s heavy wink, but he lifted his eyebrows faintly. “No, I think I am not bet. Dr. Jenkins, I am to be command!”

Palmer looked briefly at the boy, whose face mirrored incredulous confusion, but he had neither Ferrel’s ignorance of atomic technique nor Hokusai’s fatalism. With a final glance at the unconscious Jorgenson, he started across the room toward the phone. “You men play if you like. I’m starting evacuation immediately!”

“Wait!” Jenkins was shaking himself, physically as well as mentally. “Hold it, Palmer! Thanks, Doc. You knocked me out of the rut and bounced my memory back to something I picked up somewhere; I think it’s the answer! It has to work—nothing else can at this stage of the game!”

“Give me the Governor, operator.” Palmer had heard but he went on with the phone call. “This is no time to play crazy hunches, until after we get the people out, kid. I’ll admit you’re a darned clever amateur, but you’re no atomicist!”

“And if we get the men out it’s too late—there’ll be no one left in here to do the work!” Jenkins’ hand snapped out and jerked the receiver of the plug-in telephone from Palmer’s hand. “Cancel the call, operator; it won’t be necessary. Palmer, you’ve got to listen to me; you can’t clear the whole middle of the continent and you can’t depend on the explosion to limit itself to less ground. It’s a gamble, but you’re risking fifty million people against a mere hundred thousand. Give me a chance!”

“I’ll give you exactly one minute to convince me, Jenkins, and it had better be good! Maybe the blow-up won’t hit beyond the fifty-mile limit!”

“Maybe. And I can’t explain in a minute.” The boy scowled tensely. “Okay, you’ve been belly-aching about a man named Kellar being dead. If he were here would you take a chance on him? Or on a man who’d worked under him on everything he tried?”

“Absolutely, but you’re not Kellar. And I happen to know he was a lone wolf; didn’t hire outside engineers after Jorgenson had a squabble with him and came here.” Palmer reached for the phone. “It won’t wash, Jenkins.”

Jenkins’ hand clamped down on the instrument, jerking it out of reach. “I wasn’t outside help, Palmer. When Jorgenson was afraid to run one of the things off and quit, I was twelve; three years later things got too tight for Dad to handle alone but he decided he might as well keep it in the family, so he started me in. I’m Kellar’s stepson!”

Pieces clicked together in Doc’s head then, and he kicked himself mentally for not having seen the obvious before. “That why Jorgenson knew you, then? I thought that was funny. It checks, Palmer.”

For a split second the manager hesitated uncertainly. Then he shrugged and gave in. “Okay. I’m a fool to trust you, Jenkins, but it’s too late for anything else, I guess. I never forgot that I was gambling with the locality against half the continent. What do you want?”

“Men—construction men, mostly, and a few volunteers for dirty work. I want all the blowers, exhaust equipment, tubing, booster blowers, and everything ripped from the other three converters and connected as close to Number Four as you can get. Put them up some way so they can be shoved in over the stuff by crane—I don’t care how; the shop men will know better than I do. You’ve got sort of a river running off behind the plant; get everyone within a few miles of it out of there and connect the blower outlets down to it. Where does it end, anyway—some kind of a swamp?”

“About two miles farther down, yes; we didn’t bother keeping the drainage system going since the land meant nothing to us and the swamps made as good a dumping ground as anything else.” When the plant had first used the little river as an outlet for their waste products, there had been so much trouble that National had been forced to take over all adjacent land and quiet the owners’ fears of the atomic activity in cold cash. Since then it had gone to weeds and rabbits, mostly. “Everyone within a few miles is out, anyway, except a few fishers or tramps who don’t know we use it. I’ll have the militia sent in to scare them out.”

“Good. Ideal, in fact, since the swamps will hold stuff longer in there where the current’s slow. Now, what about the super-thermite stuff you were producing last year? Any around?”

“Not in the plant. But we’ve got tons of it at the ware-house, still waiting for the army’s requisition. That’s pretty hot stuff to handle, though. Know much about it?”

“Enough to know it’s what I want.” Jenkins indicated the copy of the Weekly Ray still lying where he’d dropped it, and Doc remembered skimming through the nontechnical part of the description. The super-thermite was made up of two superheavy atoms, kept separate. By itself neither was particularly important or active but together they reacted with each other atomically to release a tremendous amount of raw heat and comparatively little unwanted radiation. “Goes up around twenty thousand centigrade, doesn’t it? How’s it stored?”

“In ten-pound cans that have a fragile partition; it breaks with shock, starting the action. Hoke can explain it—it’s his baby.” Palmer reached for the phone. “Anything else? Then get out and get busy! The men will be ready for you when you get there! I’ll be out myself as soon as I can put through your orders.”

Doc watched them go out, to be followed in short order by the manager, and was alone in the Infirmary with Jorgenson and his own thoughts. They weren’t pleasant; he was both too far outside the inner circle to know what was going on and too much mixed up in it not to know the dangers. Now he could have used some work….

He grunted in disgust at himself and dug out the blood sample of the ringer. It was no great effort to prepare it and to set up the microscope. Then he was studying the cells. There wasn’t much question. The excess white count and large number of juvenile cells were typical. Everything indicated chronic myelogenous leukemia. If the woman didn’t receive treatment soon, she’d be dead in a year.

That meant that Palmer had no worry there—and that Doc again had nothing to do. He wriggled down in the leather chair, making the mistake of trying to force sleep, while his mind chased out after every sound that came in from outside. There were the drones of crane and tank motors coming to life, the shouts of hurried orders and above all the jarring rhythm of pneumatic hammers on metal, each sound suggesting some possibility to him without adding to his knowledge. The Decameron was boring, the whiskey tasted raw and rancid, and solitaire wasn’t worth the trouble of cheating.

Finally he gave up and turned out to the field hospital tent. Jorgenson would be better off out there under the care of the staff from Mayo’s, and perhaps he could make himself useful. As he passed through the rear entrance he heard the sound of a number of helicopters coming over with heavy loads and looked up as they began settling over the edge of the buildings. From somewhere a group of men came running forward and disappeared in the direction of the freighters. He wondered whether any of those men would be forced back into the stuff out there to return filled with radioactive; though it didn’t matter so much now that the isotope could be eliminated without surgery.

Blake met him at the entrance of the field tent, obviously well satisfied with his duty of bossing and instructing the others. “Scram, Doc. You aren’t needed here, and you have to get some rest. Don’t want you added to the casualties. What’s the latest dope from the powwow front?”

“Jorgenson didn’t come through, but the kid had an idea and they’re out there working on it.” Doc tried to sound more hopeful than he felt. “I was thinking you might as well bring Jorgenson in here; he’s still unconscious, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about. Where’s Brown? She’ll probably want to know what’s up, if she isn’t asleep.”

“Asleep when the kid isn’t? Uh-unh. Mother complex, has to worry about him.” Blake grinned. “She got a look at him running out with Hoke tagging at his heels, and hiked out after him, so she probably knows everything now. Wish Anne’d chase me that way just once—Jenkins, the wonder boy! Well, it’s out of my line; I don’t intend to start worrying until they pass out the order. Okay, Doc, I’ll have Jorgenson out here in a couple of minutes, so you grab yourself a cot and get some shut-eye.”

Doc grunted, looking curiously at the refinements and well-equipped interior of the field tent. “I’ve already prescribed that, Blake, but the patient can’t seem to take it. I think I’ll hunt up Brown, so give me a call over the public speaker if anything turns up.”

He headed toward the center of action, knowing that he’d been wanting to do it all along but hadn’t been sure of not being a nuisance. Well if Brown could look on there was no reason why he couldn’t. He passed the machine shop, noting the excited flurry of activity going on, and went past Number Two, where other men were busily ripping out long sections of big piping and various other devices. There was a rope fence barring his way, well beyond Number Three, and he followed along the edge, looking for Palmer or Brown.

She saw him first. “Hi, Dr. Ferrel, over here in the truck. I thought you’d be coming soon. From up here we can get a look over the heads of all these other people and we won’t be trampled on.” She stuck down a hand to help him up and smiled faintly as he disregarded it and mounted more briskly than his muscles wanted to. He wasn’t so old that a girl had to help him yet.

“Know what’s going on?” he asked, sinking down onto the plank across the truck body, facing out across the men below toward the converter. There seemed to be a dozen different centers of activity, all crossing each other in complete confusion, and the general pattern was meaningless.

“No more than you do. I haven’t seen my husband, though Mr. Palmer took time enough to chase me here out of the way.”

Doc centered his attention on the’ copters, unloading, rising and coming in with more loads, and he guessed that those boxes must contain the little thermodyne bombs. It was the one thing he could understand and consequently the least interesting. Other men were assembling the big sections of piping he’d seen before, connecting them up in almost endless order, while some of the tanks hooked on and snaked them off in the direction of the small river that ran off beyond the plant.

“Those must be the exhaust blowers, I guess,” he told Brown, pointing them out. “Though I don’t know what any of the rest of the stuff hooked on is.”

“I know—I’ve been inside the plant Bob’s father had.” She lifted an inquiring eyebrow at him and went on as he nodded. “The pipes are for exhaust gases, all right, and those big square things are the motors and fans—they put in one at each five hundred feet or less of piping. The things they’re wrapping around the pipe must be the heaters to keep the gases hot. Are they going to try to suck all that out?”

Doc didn’t know, though it was the only thing he could see. But he wondered how they’d get around the problem of moving in close enough to do any good. “I heard your husband order some thermodyne bombs, so they’ll probably try to gassify the magma; then they’re pumping it down the river.”

As he spoke there was a flurry of motion at one side and his eyes swung over instantly, to see one of the cranes laboring with a long framework stuck from its front holding up a section of pipe with a nozzle on the end. It tilted precariously, even though heavy bags were piled everywhere to add weight, but an inch at a time it lifted its load and began forcing its way forward, carrying the nozzle out in front and rather high.

Below the main exhaust pipe was another smaller one. As it drew near the outskirts of the danger zone, a small object ejaculated from the little pipe, hit the ground, and was a sudden blazing inferno of glaring blue-white light, far brighter than it seemed, judging by the effect on the eyes. Doc shielded his, just as someone below put something into his hands.

“Put’ em on. Palmer says the light’s actinic.”

He heard Brown fussing beside him, then his vision cleared and he looked back through the goggles to see a glowing cloud spring up from the magma, spread out near the ground, narrowing down higher up, until it sucked into the nozzle above and disappeared. Another bomb slid from the tube and erupted with blazing heat. A sideways glance showed another crane being fitted and a group of men near it wrapping what might have been oiled rags around the small bombs; probably no tubing fitted them exactly and they were padding them so pressure could blow them forward and out. Three more dropped from the tube, one at a time, and the fans roared and groaned, pulling the cloud that rose into the pipe and feeding it down toward the river.

Then the crane inched back out carefully as men uncoupled its piping from the main line, and a second went in to replace it. The heat generated must be too great for the machine to stand steadily without the pipe fusing, Doc decided; though they couldn’t have kept a man inside the heavily armored cab for any length of time if the metal had been impervious. Now another crane was ready and went in from another place; the work settled down to a routine of ingoing and outcoming cranes, and men feeding materials in, coupling and uncoupling the pipes and replacing the others who came from the cabs. Doc began to feel like a man at a tennis match, watching the ball without knowing the rules.

Brown must have had the same idea, for she caught Ferrel’s arm and indicated a little leather case that came from her handbag. “Doc, do you play chess? We might as well fill our time with that as sitting here on edge just watching. It’s supposed to be good for nerves.”

He seized on it gratefully, without explaining that he’d been city champion three years running; he’d take it easy, watch her game, handicap himself just enough to make it interesting by the deliberate loss of a rook, bishop, or knight, as was needed to even the odds…. Suppose they got all the magma out and into the river; how did that solve the problem? It removed it from the plant, but far less than the fifty-mile minimum danger limit.

“Check,” Brown announced. He castled, and looked up at the half-dozen cranes that were now operating. “Check! Checkmate!”

He looked back again hastily, then, to see her queen guarding all possible moves, a bishop checking him. Then his eyes followed down toward her end. “Umm. Did you know you’ve been in check for the last half-dozen moves? Because I didn’t.”

She frowned, shook her head, and began setting the men up again. Doc moved out the queen’s pawn, looked out at the workers, and then brought out the queen’s bishop, to see her take it with her king’s pawn. He hadn’t watched her move it out, and counted on her queen’s to block his. Things would require more careful watching on this little portable set. The men were moving steadily and there was a growing clear space, but as they went forward the violent action of the thermodyne had pitted the ground, carefully though it had been used, and going became more uncertain. Time was slipping by rapidly now.

“Checkmate!” He found himself in a hole, started to nod; but she caught herself in time. “Sorry, I’ve been playing my king for a queen. Doctor, let’s see if we can play at least one game right.”

Before it was half finished, it became obvious that they couldn’t. Neither had chess very much on the mind, and the pawns and men did fearful and wonderful things, while the knights were as likely to jump six squares as their normal L. They gave it up, just as one of the cranes lost its precarious balance and toppled forward, dropping the long extended pipe into the bubbling mass below. Tanks were in instantly, hitching on and tugging backward until it came down with a thump as the pipe fused, releasing the extreme forward load. It backed out on its own power, while another went in. The driver, by sheer good luck, hobbled from the cab, waving an armored hand to indicate he was all right. Things settled back to an excited routine again that seemed to go on endlessly, though seconds were dropping off too rapidly, turning into minutes that threatened to be hours far too soon.

“Uh!” Brown had been staring for some time, but her little feet suddenly came down with a bang and she straightened up, her hand to her mouth. “Doctor, I just thought; it won’t do any good—all this!”

“Why?” She couldn’t know anything; but he felt the faint hopes he had go downward sharply. His nerves were dulled, but still ready to jump at the slightest warning.

“The stuff they were making was a superheavy—it’ll sink as soon as it hits the water, and all pile up right there! It won’t float down river!”

Obvious, Ferrel thought; too obvious. Maybe that was why the engineers hadn’t thought of it. He started from the plank, just as Palmer stepped up, but the manager’s hand on his shoulder forced him back.

“Easy, Doc, it’s okay. So they teach women some science nowadays, eh, Mrs. Jenkins… Sue… Dr. Brown, whatever your name is? Don’t worry about it, though—the old principle of Brownian movement will keep any colloid suspended, if it’s fine enough to be a real colloid. We’re sucking it out and keeping it pretty hot until it reaches the water, then it cools off so fast it hasn’t time to collect in particles big enough to sink. Some of the dust that floats around in the air is heavier than water, too. I’m joining the bystanders, if you don’t mind; the men have everything under control and I can see better here than I could down there, if anything does come up.”

Doc’s momentary despair reacted to leave him feeling more sure of things than was justified. He pushed over on the plank, making room for Palmer to drop down beside him. “What’s to keep it from blowing up anyway, Palmer?”

“Nothing! Got a match?” He sucked in on the cigarette heavily, relaxing as much as he could. “No use trying to fool you, Doc, at this stage of the Nerves 132 game. We’re gambling and I’d say the odds are even; Jenkins thinks they’re ninety to ten in his favor, but he has to think so. What we’re hoping is that by lifting it out in a gas, thus breaking it down at once from full concentration to the finest possible form, and letting it settle in the water in colloidal particles, there won’t be a concentration at any one place sufficient to set it all off at once. The big problem is making sure we get every bit of it cleaned up here, or there may be enough left to take care of us and the nearby city! At least, since the last change, it’s stopped spitting, so all the men have to worry about is burn!”

“How much damage, even if it doesn’t go off all at once?”

“Possibly none, beyond raising the radioactive count of the air a little. If you can keep it burning slowly, a million tons of dynamite wouldn’t be any worse than the same amount of wood, but a stick going off at once will kill you. Of course, even if it doesn’t erupt violently, the stuff in the swamp afterward will be pure death for months, but that won’t bother us. Why the dickens didn’t Jenkins tell me he wanted to go into atomics? We could have fixed all that for anyone who’d been partly trained by Kellar. It’s hard enough to get good men as it is!”

Brown perked up, forgetting the whole trouble beyond them, and went into the story with enthusiasm, including details on how Jenkins had managed to continue his study of atomic theory, while Ferrel only partly listened. He could see the spot of magma growing steadily smaller, but the watch on his wrist went on ticking off the minutes remorselessly, and the time was growing limited. He hadn’t realized before how long he’d been sitting here. Now three of the crane nozzles were almost touching, and around them stretched the burned-out ground, with no sign of converter, masonry, or anything else; the heat from the ther—modyne had gassified everything, indiscriminately.

“Palmer!” The portable ultrawave set around the manager’s neck came to life suddenly. “Hey, Palmer, these blowers are about shot; the pipe’s pitting already. We’ve been doing everything we can to replace them, but that stuff eats faster than we can fix. Can’t hold up more’n fifteen minutes more.”

“Check, Briggs. Keep’ em going the best you can.” Palmer flipped a switch and looked out toward the tank standing by behind the cranes. “Jenkins, you get that?”

“Yeah. Surprised they held out this long. How much time till deadline?” The boy’s voice was completely toneless, neither hope nor nerves showing up, only the complete weariness of a man almost at his limit. Palmer looked and whistled. “Twelve minutes, according to the minimum estimate Hoke made! How much left?”

“We’re just burning around now, trying to make sure there’s no pocket left; I hope we’ve got the whole works, but I’m not promising. Might as well send out all the I-613 you have and we’ll boil it down the pipes to clear out any deposits on them. All the old treads and parts that contacted the R gone into the pile?”

“You melted the last, and your cranes haven’t touched the stuff directly. Nice pile of money’s gone down that pipe—converter, machinery, everything!”

Jenkins made a sound that was expressive of his worry about that. “I’m coming in now and starting the clearing of the pipe. What’ve you been paying insurance for?”

“At a huge rate, too! But I didn’t expect to get proof that we could prevent any danger from Mahler’s Isotope, so I figure I got a bargain. Okay, come on in, kid; and if you’re interested, and we live through this, you can start sticking an engineering degree after the M.D. any time you want. Your wife’s been giving me your qualifications and I think you’ve passed the final test, so you’re now an atomic engineer, duly graduated from National!”

Brown’s breath caught and her eyes seemed to glow, even through the goggles, but Jenkins’ voice was flat. “Okay, I expected you to give me the degree, if we don’t blow up. But you’ll have to see Dr. Ferrel about it; he’s got a contract with me for medical practice. Be there shortly.”

Nine of the estimated minimum of twelve minutes had ticked by when Jenkins climbed up beside them, mopping off some of the sweat that covered him. Palmer was hugging the watch. More minutes ticked off slowly, while the last sound faded out in the plant and the men stood around, staring down toward the river or the hole that had been Number Four. Silence. Jenkins stirred and grunted.

“Palmer, I meant to tell you where I got the idea. Jorgenson was trying to remind me of it—not raving—only I didn’t get it until Doc jiggled my thoughts. It was one of Dad’s, the one he told Jorgenson was a last resort, in case the thing they broke up over went haywire. It was the first variable Dad tried. I was twelve, and he insisted water would break it up into all its chains and kill the danger. Only Dad didn’t really expect it to work, as he told me later!”

Palmer didn’t look up from the watch, but he caught his breath and swore. “Fine time to tell me that!”

“He didn’t have your isotopes to heat it up with, either,” Jenkins answered mildly. “Suppose you look up from the watch and down the river for a minute!”

As Doc raised his eyes he was aware suddenly of a roar from the men. Over to the south, stretching out in a huge mass, was a cloud of steam that spread upward and out as he watched, and the beginnings of a mighty hissing sound came in. Then Palmer was hugging Jenkins and yelling until Brown could pry him away and replace him.

“Steam from heat—steam, not explosive spray! Three miles or more of river, plus the swamps, Doc!” Palmer was shouting in Ferrel’s ear. “All that dispersion, while it cooks slowly from now until the last chain is finished, atom by atom! The theta chain broke, unstable, and now there’s everything there, too scattered to set itself off! It’ll cook the river bed up and dry it, but that’s all!”

Doc was still dazed, unsure of how to take the relief. He wanted to lie down and cry or stand up with the men and shout his head off. Instead, he sat loosely, gazing at the cloud. “So I lose the best assistant I ever had! Jenkins, I won’t hold you; you’re free for whatever Palmer wants.”

“Hoke wants him to work on R—he’s got a starting point now for digging into that rocket fuel he wants!” Palmer was clapping his hands together slowly, like an excited child watching a steam shovel. “Heck, Doc, pick out anyone you want until your own boy gets out next year. You wanted a chance to work him in here, now you’ve got it. Right now I’ll give you anything you want! This is one time even the Guilden papers won’t be able to twist the truth!”

“You might see what you can do about hospitalizing the injured and fixing things up for the men in the tent behind the Infirmary. And I think I’ll take Brown in Jenkins’ place, with the right to grab him in an emergency until that year’s up.”

“Done!” Palmer slapped the boy’s back, stopping the protest, while Brown winked at him. “Your wife likes working, kid; she told me that herself. Besides, a lot of the women work here where they can keep an eye on their men; my own wife does, usually. Doc, you and these two kids head for home, where I’m going myself. Don’t come back until you get good and ready, and don’t let anything spoil your sleep this time!”

Doc pulled himself from the truck and started off, with Brown and Jenkins following through the yelling, relief-crazed men. The three were too thoroughly worn out for any exhibition themselves, but they could feel it. Men and guards were piling in from the gates, joining crazily in the exultation. There were even a few cars forcing their way slowly through the milling ranks of people.

One of them was almost at Ferrel’s side when the door swung open and a haggard woman began getting out painfully, crying his name. He stopped, staring at her unbelievingly as she limped toward him. ”

Emma!”

She caught him to her briefly, then shoved him away, blushing, as she saw Jenkins and Brown watching her. She choked and made motions toward the car, unable to talk, But it didn’t matter. Explanations could come later.

He sank behind the wheel of the car, reaching out a hand for one of hers. Life, he decided, wasn’t bad after all; and it would be even better, once they were out of the mob and headed for home.

Then he chuckled and climbed out again. “You three get acquainted, will you? If I leave here without making out that order for extra disinfection at the showers, Blake’ll swear I’m getting old and feeble-minded. I can’t have that!”

Old? Maybe a little tired, but he’d been that before and with luck would be again. He wasn’t worried. His nerves were good for twenty years and fifty accidents more, and by that time Blake would be due for a little ribbing himself.