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The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
by Robert A. Heinlein



Contents
Introduction: PANDORA'S BOX - copyright 1952
FREE MEN - (First time in print)
BLOWUPS HAPPEN - copyright 1940
SEARCHLIGHT - copyright 1962
LIFE-LINE - copyright 1939
SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY - copyright 1940



INTRODUCTION: PANDORA'S BOX

ONCE OPENED, the Box could never be closed. But after the myriad swarming
Troubles came Hope.
Science fiction is not prophecy. It often reads as if it were prophecy; indeed
the practitioners of this odd genre (pun intentional ù I won't do it again) of
fiction usually strive hard to make their stones sound as if they were true
pictures of the future. Prophecies.
Prophesying is what the weatherman does, the race track tipster, the stock
market adviser, the fortune-teller who reads palms or gazes into a crystal. Each
one is predicting the future ù sometimes exactly, sometimes in vague, veiled, or
ambiguous language, sometimes simply with a claim of statistical probability,
but always with a claim seriously made of disclosing some piece of the future.
This is not at all what a science fiction author does. Science fiction is almost
always laid in the future ù or at least in a fictional possible-future ù and is
almost invariably deeply concerned with the shape of that future. But the method
is not prediction; it is usually extrapolation and/or speculation. Indeed the
author is not required to (and usually does not) regard the fictional "future"
he has chosen to write about as being the events most likely to come to pass;
his purpose may have nothing to do with the probability that these storied
events may happen.
"Extrapolation" means much the same in fiction writing as it does in
mathematics: exploring a trend. It means continuing a curve, a path, a trend
into the future, by extending its present direction and continuing the shape it
has displayed in its past performance-i.e., if it is a sine curve in the past,
you extrapolate it as a sine curve in the future, not as an hyperbola, nor a
Witch of Agnesi and most certainly not as a tangent straight line.
"Speculation" has far more elbowroom than extrapolation; it starts with a "What
if?" ù and the new factor thrown in by the what-if may be both wildly improbable
and so revolutionary in effect as to throw a sine-curve trend (or a yeast-growth
trend, or any trend) into something unrecognizably different. What if little
green men land on the White House lawn and invite us to join a Galactic union? ù
or big green men land and enslave us and eat us? What if we solve the problem of
immortality? What if New York City really does go dry? (And not just the present
fiddlin' shortage tackled by fiddlin' quarter-measures ù can you imagine a man
being lynched for wasting an ice cube? Try Frank Herbert's Dune World saga,
which is not ù I judge ù prophecy in any sense, but is powerful, convincing, and
most ingenious speculation. Living, as I do, in a state which has just two sorts
of water, too little and too much ù we just finished seven years of drought with
seven inches of rain in two hours, and one was about as disastrous as the other
ù I find a horrid fascination in Dune World, in Charles Einstein's The Day New
York Went Dry, and in stories about Biblical-size floods such as S. Fowler
Wright's Deluge.)
Most science fiction stories use both extrapolation and speculation. Consider
"Blowups Happen," elsewhere in this volume. It was written in 1939, updated very
slightly for book publication just after World War II by inserting some words
such as "Manhattan Project and "Hiroshima," but not rewritten, and is one of a
group of stories published under the pretentious collective title of The History
of the Future (!) ù which certainly sounds like prophecy.
I disclaim any intention of prophesying; I wrote that story for the sole purpose
of making money to pay off a mortgage and with the single intention of
entertaining the reader. As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face ù
any tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces ù but I think it is still
entertaining as a story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation
to protect and wish to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this
motivation. Very little of the great literature of our heritage arose solely
from a wish to "create art"; most writing, both great and not-so-great, has as
its proximate cause a need for money combined with an aversion to, or an
inability to perform, hard writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out
of this dilemma.
A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in
addition to pursuit of profit. He may wish to create "art for art's sake," he
may want to warn the world against a course he feels to be disastrous (Orwell's
1984, Huxley's Brave New World ù but please note that each is intensely
entertaining, and that each made stacks of money), he may wish to urge the human
race toward a course which he considers desirable (Bellamy's Looking Backwards,
Wells' Men Like Gods), he may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle.
But the science fiction writer ù any fiction writer ù must keep entertainment
consciously in mind as his prime purpose . . . or he may find himself back
dragging that old cotton sack.
If he succeeds in this purpose, his story is likely to remain gripping
entertainment long years after it has turned out to be false "prophecy." H. G.
Wells is perhaps the greatest science fiction author of all time ù and his
greatest science fiction stories were written around sixty years ago . . . under
the whip. Bedfast with consumption, unable to hold a job, flat broke, paying
alimony ù he had to make money somehow, and writing was the heaviest work he
could manage. He was clearly aware (see his autobiography) that to stay alive he
must be entertaining. The result was a flood of some of the most brilliant
speculative stories about the future ever written. As prophecy they are all
hopelessly dated . . .
which matters not at all; they are as spellbinding now as they were in the Gay
'Nineties and the Mauve Decade.
Try to lay hands on his The Sleeper Awakes. The gadgetry in it is ingenious ù
and all wrong. The projected future in it is brilliant ù and did not happen. All
of which does not sully the story; it is a great story of love and sacrifice and
blood-chilling adventure set in a matrix of mind-stretching speculation about
the nature of Man and his Destiny. I read it first forty-five years ago, plus
perhaps a dozen times since . . . and still reread it whenever I get to feeling
uncertain about just how one does go about the unlikely process of writing
fiction for entertainment of strangers ù and again finding myself caught up in
the sheer excitement of Wells' story.
"Solution Unsatisfactory" herein is a consciously Wellsian story. No, no, I'm
not claiming that it is of H. G. Wells' quality ù its quality is for you to
judge, not me. But it was written by the method which Wells spelled out for the
speculative story: Take one, just one, basic new assumption, then examine all
its consequences ù but express those consequences in terms of human beings. The
assumption I chose was the "Absolute Weapon"; the speculation concerns what
changes this forces on mankind. But the "history" the story describes simply did
not happen.
However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues just
as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an
"unsatisfactory" solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached
no solution.
In the twenty-five years that have passed since I wrote that story the world
situation has grown much worse. Instead of one Absolute Weapon there are now at
least five distinct types ù an "Absolute Weapon" being defined as one against
which there is no effective defense and which kills indiscriminately over a very
wide area. The earliest of the five types, the A-bomb, is now known to be
possessed by at least five nations, at least twenty-five other nations have the
potential to build them in the next few years.
But there is a possible sixth type. Earlier this year I attended a seminar at
one of the nation's new think-factories. One of the questions discussed was
whether or not a "Doomsday Bomb" could be built ù a single weapon which would
destroy all life of all sorts on this planet; one weapon, not an all-out nuclear
holocaust involving hundreds or thousands of ICBMs. No, this was to be a
world-wrecker of the sort Dr. E. E. Smith used to use in his interstellar sagas
back in the days when S-F magazines had bug-eyed monsters on the cover and were
considered lowbrow, childish, fantastic.
The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built? ù yes, no
question about it. What would it cost? ù quite cheap. A seventh type hardly
seems necessary.
And that makes the grimness of "Solution Unsatisfactory" seem more like an Oz
book in which the most harrowing adventures always turn out happily.
"Searchlight" is almost pure extrapolation, almost no speculation. The gadgets
in it are either hardware on the shelf, or hardware which will soon be on the
shelf because nothing is involved but straight-forward engineering development.
"Life-Line" (my first story) is its opposite, a story which is sheer speculation
and either impossible or very highly improbable, as the What-If postulate will
never be solved ù I think. I hope. But the two stories are much alike in that
neither depends on when it was written nor when it is read. Both are independent
of any particular shape to history; they are timeless.
"Free Men" is another timeless story. As told, it looks like another "after the
blowup" story ù but it is not. Although the place is nominally the United States
and the time (as shown by the gadgetry) is set in the not-distant future, simply
by changing names of persons and places and by inserting other weapons and other
gadgets this story could be any country and any time in the past or future ù or
could even be on another planet and concern a non-human race. But the story does
apply here-and-now, so I told it that way.
"Pandora's Box" was the original title of an article researched and written in
1949 for publication in 1950, the end of the half-century. Inscrutable are the
ways of editors: it appeared with the title 'Where To?" and purported to be a
non-fiction prophecy concerning the year 2000 A.D. as seen from 1950. (I agree
that a science fiction writer should avoid marihuana, prophecy, and time
payments ù but I was tempted by a soft rustle.)
Our present editor decided to use this article, but suggested that it should be
updated. Authors who wish to stay in the business listen most carefully to
editors' suggestions, even when they think an editor has been out in the sun
without a hat; I agreed.
And reread "Where To" and discovered that our editor was undeniably correct; it
needed updating. At least.
But at last I decided not to try to conceal my bloopers. Below is reproduced,
unchanged, my predictions of fifteen years back. But here and there through the
article I have inserted signs for footnotes ù like this: (z) ù and these will be
found at the end of the 1950 article . . . calling attention to bloopers and
then forthrightly excusing myself by rationalizing how anyone, even Nostradamus,
would have made the same mistake . . . hedging my bets, in other cases, or
chucking in brand-new predictions and carefully laying them farther in the
future than I am likely to live . . . and, in some cases, crowing loudly about
successful predictions.
So ù



WHERE TO?
(And Why We Didn't Get There)

Most science fiction consists of big-muscled stories about adventures in space,
atomic wars, invasions by extra-terrestrials, and such. All very well ù but now
we will take time out for a look at ordinary home life half a century hence.
Except for tea leaves and other magical means, the only way to guess at the
future is by examining the present in the light of the past. Let's go back half
a century and visit your grandmother before we attempt to visit your
grandchildren.

1900: Mr. McKinley is President and the airplane has not yet been invented.
Let's knock on the door of that house with the gingerbread, the stained glass,
and the cupola.
The lady of the house answers. You recognize her ù your own grandmother, Mrs.
Middleclass. She is almost as plump as you remember her, for she "put on some
good, healthy flesh" after she married.
She welcomes you and offers coffee cake, fresh from her modern kitchen (running
water from a hand pump; the best coal range Pittsburgh ever produced).
Everything about her house is modern ù hand-painted china, souvenirs from the
Columbian Exposition, beaded portieres, shining baseburner stoves, gas lights, a
telephone on the wall.
There is no bathroom, but she and Mr. Middleclass are thinking of putting one
in. Mr. Middleclass's mother calls this nonsense, but your grandmother keeps up
with the times. She is an advocate of clothing reform, wears only one petticoat,
bathes twice a week, and her corsets are guaranteed rust proof. She has been
known to defend female suffrage ù but not in the presence of Mr. Middleclass.
Nevertheless, you find difficulty in talking with her. Let's jump back to the
present and try again.
The automatic elevator takes us to the ninth floor, and we pick out a door by
its number, that being the only way to distinguish it.
"Don't bother to ring," you say? What? It's your door and you know exactly what
lies beyond it ù
Very well, let's move a half century into the future and try another middle
class home.
It's a suburban home not two hundred miles from the city. You pick out your
destination from the air while the cab is landing you ù a cluster of hemispheres
which makes you think of the houses Dorothy found in Oz
You set the cab to return to its hangar and go into the entrance hall. You
neither knock, nor ring. The screen has warned them before you touched down on
the landing flat and the autobutler's transparency is shining with: PLEASE
RECORD A MESSAGE.
Before you can address the microphone a voice calls out, "Oh, it's you! Come in,
come in." There is a short wait, as your hostess is not at the door. The
autobutler flashed your face to the patio ù where she was reading and sunning
herself ù and has relayed her voice back to you.
She pauses at the door, looks at you through one-way glass, and frowns slightly,
she knows your old-fashioned disapproval of casual nakedness. Her kindness
causes her to disobey the family psychiatrist; she grabs a robe and covers
herself before signaling the door to open.
The psychiatrist was right; you have thus been classed with strangers,
tradespeople, and others who are not family intimates. But you must swallow your
annoyance; you cannot object to her wearing clothes when you have sniffed at her
for not doing so.
There is no reason why she should wear clothes at home. The house is clean ù not
somewhat clean, but clean ù and comfortable. The floor is warm to bare feet;
there are no unpleasant drafts, no cold walls. All dust is precipitated from the
air entering this house. All textures, of floors, of couch, of chair, are
comfortable to bare skin. Sterilizing ultra-violet light floods each room
whenever it is unoccupied, and, several times a day, a "whirlwind" blows
house-created dust from all surfaces and whisks it out. These auto services are
unobtrusive because automatic cut-off switches prevent them from occurring
whenever a mass in a room is radiating at blood temperature.
Such a house can become untidy, but not dirty. Five minutes of straightening, a
few swipes at children's fingermarks, and her day's housekeeping is done.
Oftener than sheets were changed in Mr. McKinley's day, this housewife rolls out
a fresh layer of sheeting on each sitting surface and stuffs the discard down
the oubliette. This is easy; there is a year's supply on a roll concealed in
each chair or couch. The tissue sticks by pressure until pulled loose and does
not obscure the pattern and color.
You go into the family room, sit down, and remark on the lovely day. "Isn't it?"
she answers. "Come sunbathe with me."
The sunny patio gives excuse for bare skin by anyone's standards; thankfully she
throws off the robe and stretches out on a couch. You hesitate a moment. After
all, she is your own grandchild, so why not? You undress quickly, since you left
your outer wrap and shoes at the door (only barbarians wear street shoes in a
house) and what remains is easily discarded. Your grandparents had to get used
to a mid-century beach. It was no easier for them.
On the other hand, their bodies were wrinkled and old, whereas yours is not. The
triumphs of endocrinology, of cosmetics, of plastic surgery, of figure control
in every way are such that a woman need not change markedly from maturity until
old age. A woman can keep her body as firm and slender as she wishes ù and most
of them so wish. This has produced a paradox: the United States has the highest
percentage of old people in all its two and a quarter centuries, yet it seems to
have a larger proportion of handsome young women than ever before.
("Don't whistle, son! That's your grandmother ù ")
This garden is half sunbathing patio, complete with shrubs and flowers, lawn and
couches, and half swimming pool. The day, though sunny, is quite cold ù but not
in the garden, nor is the pool chill. The garden appears to be outdoors, but is
not; it is covered by a bubble of transparent plastic, blown and cured on the
spot. You are inside the bubble; the sun is outside; you cannot see the plastic.
She invites you to lunch; you protest. "Nonsense!" she answers, "I like to
cook." Into the house she goes. You think of following, but it is deliciously
warm in the March sunshine and you are feeling relaxed to be away from the city.
You locate a switch on the side of the couch, set it for gentle massage, and let
the couch knead your troubles away. The couch notes your heart rate and
breathing; as they slow, so does it. As you fall asleep it stops.
Meanwhile your hostess has been "slaving away over a hot stove." To be precise,
she has allowed a menu selector to pick out an 800-calory, 4-ration-point
luncheon. It is a random-choice gadget, somewhat like a slot machine, which has
in it the running inventory of her larder and which will keep hunting until it
turns up a balanced meal. Some housewives claim that it takes the art out of
cookery, but our hostess is one of many who have accepted it thankfully as an
endless source of new menus. Its choice is limited today as it has been three
months since she has done grocery shopping. She rejects several menus; the
selector continues patiently to turn up combinations until she finally accepts
one based around fish disguised as lamb chops.
Your hostess takes the selected items from shelves or the freezer. All are
prepared; some are pre-cooked. Those still to be cooked she puts into her ù
well, her "processing equipment," though she calls it a "stove." Part of it
traces its ancestry to diathermy equipment; another feature is derived from
metal enameling processes. She sets up cycles, punches buttons, and must wait
two or three minutes for the meal to cook. She spends the time checking her
ration accounts.
Despite her complicated kitchen, she doesn't eat as well as her great
grandmother did ù too many people and too few acres.
Never mind; the tray she carries out to the patio is well laden and beautiful.
You are both willing to nap again when it is empty. You wake to find that she
has burned the dishes and is recovering from her "exertions" in her refresher.
Feeling hot and sweaty from your nap you decide to use it when she comes out.
There is a wide choice offered by the 'fresher, but you limit yourself to a warm
shower growing gradually cooler, followed by warm air drying, a short massage,
spraying with scent, and dusting with powder. Such a simple routine is an insult
to a talented machine.
Your host arrives home as you come out; he has taken a holiday from his
engineering job and has had the two boys down at the beach. He kisses his wife,
shouts, "Hi, Duchess!" at you, and turns to the video, setting it to hunt and
sample the newscasts it has stored that day. His wife sends the boys in to
'fresh themselves, then says, "Have a nice day, dear?"
He answers, "The traffic was terrible. Had to make the last hundred miles on
automatic. Anything on the phone for me?"
"Weren't you on relay?"
"Didn't set it. Didn't want to be bothered." He steps to the house phone, plays
back his calls, finds nothing he cares to bother with ù but the machine goes
ahead and prints one message; he pulls it out and tears it off.
"What is it?" his wife asks.
"Telestat from Luna City ù from Aunt Jane."
"What does she say?"
"Nothing much. According to her, the Moon is a great place and she wants us to
come visit her."
"Not likely!" his wife answers. "Imagine being shut up in an air-conditioned
cave."
"When you are Aunt Jane's age, my honey lamb, and as frail as she is, with a bad
heart thrown in, you'll go to the Moon and like it. Low gravity is not to be
sneezed at ù Auntie will probably live to be a hundred and twenty, heart trouble
and all."
"Would you go to the Moon?" she asks.
"If I needed to and could afford it." He turns to you. "Right?"
You consider your answer. Life still looks good to you ù and stairways are
beginning to be difficult. Low gravity is attractive, even though it means
living out your days at the Geriatrics Foundation on the Moon. "It might be fun
to visit," you answer. "One wouldn't have to stay."
Hospitals for old people on the Moon? Lets not be silly ù
Or is it silly? Might it not be a logical and necessary outcome of our world
today?
Space travel we will have, not fifty years from now, but much sooner. It's
breathing down our necks. As for geriatrics on the Moon, for most of us no price
is too high and no amount of trouble is too great to extend the years of our
lives. It is possible that low gravity (one sixth, on the Moon) may not lengthen
lives; nevertheless it may ù we don't know yet ù and it will most certainly add
greatly to comfort on reaching that inevitable age when the burden of dragging
around one's body is almost too much, or when we would otherwise resort to an
oxygen tent to lessen the work of a worn-out heart.
By the rules of prophecy, such a prediction is probable, rather than impossible.
But the items and gadgets suggested above are examples of timid prophecy.
What are the rules of prophecy, if any?



Look at the graph shown here. The solid curve is what has been going on this
past century. It represents many things ù use of power, speed of transport,
numbers of scientific and technical workers, advances in communication, average
miles traveled per person per year, advances in mathematics, the rising curve of
knowledge. Call it the curve of human achievement
What is the correct way to project this curve into the future? Despite
everything, there is a stubborn "common sense" tendency to project it along
dotted line number one ù like the patent office official of a hundred years back
who quit his job "because everything had already been invented." Even those who
don't expect a slowing up at once, tend to expect us to reach a point of
diminishing returns ( dotted line number two ).
Very daring minds are willing to predict that we will continue our present rate
of progress (dotted line number three-a tangent).
But the proper way to project the curve is dotted line number four ù for there
is no reason, mathematical, scientific, or historical, to expect that curve to
flatten out, or to reach a point of diminishing returns, or simply to go on as a
tangent. The correct projection, by all facts known today, is for the curve to
go on up indefinitely with increasing steepness.
The timid little predictions earlier in this article actually belong to curve
one, or, at most, to curve two. You can count on the changes in the next fifty
years at least eight times as great as the changes of the past fifty years.
The Age of Science has not yet opened.

AXIOM: A "nine-days' wonder" is taken as a matter of course on the tenth day.
AXIOM: A "common sense" prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity.
AXIOM: The more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to come
true.
So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future.
Some will be wrong ù but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.
1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door ù C.O.D. It's yours when
you pay for it. (a)
2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between sexes to
an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure. (b)
5. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to
repel an attack from outer space. (c)
4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a "preventive
war." We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have
guaranteed to defend. (d)
5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough" into
new technology which will make every house now standing as obsolete as privies.
(e)
6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.
7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called "modern art" will be
discussed only by psychiatrists.
8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and
psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing "operational psychology"
based on measurement and prediction.
9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the
revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish
"regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him
with an artificial limb. (f )
10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and
the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be abuilding. ( g )
11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your
house telephone will record messages, answer simple queries, and transmit
vision.
12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars. ( h )
13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short hauls
will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speeds. (i)
14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity. ( j )
15. We will not achieve a "world state" in the predictable future. Nevertheless,
Communism will vanish from this planet. (k)
16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About
1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining
the semblance.
17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide
basis by a multiple electronic "brain."
18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a
luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear. ( 1 )
19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "civilization" be destroyed. (m)
Here are things we won t get soon, if ever:
Travel through time.
Travel faster than the speed of light
"Radio" transmission of matter.
Manlike robots with manlike reactions.
Laboratory creation of life.
Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.
Scientific proof of personal survival after death.
Nor a permanent end to war. (I don't like that prediction any better than you
do.)

Prediction of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a fool would
attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so labeled);
there are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating them even if they
were known.
Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most
difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in
public, there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be six men
in the country who have a clear picture of what is going on in science today.
There may not be even one.
This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as
disabling as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology. Nevertheless
there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this coming era enormously
more productive and interesting than the frantic one we have just passed
through. Among them are:
Cybernetics: The study of communication and control of mechanisms and organisms.
This includes the wonderful field of mechanical and electronic "brains" ù but is
not limited to it. (These "brains" are a factor in themselves that will speed up
technical progress the way a war does.)
Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It is
not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology ù that is to say, how we know what
we know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired philosophers.
New tools of mathematics and log, such as calculus of statement, Boolean logic,
morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented mathematics of
every sort ù there is not space even to name these enormous fields, but they
offer us hope in every other field ù medicine, social relations, biology,
economics, anything.
Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme chemistry,
viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease, but that we may
someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through this, and with the aid
of cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we may eventually acquire a
rigor of chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline today; it is a jungle. We know
that chemical behavior depends on the number of orbital electrons in an atom and
that physical and chemical properties follow the pattern called the Periodic
Table. We don't know much else, save by cut-and-try, despite the great size and
importance of the chemical industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline,
mathematical chemists will design new materials, predict their properties, and
tell engineers how to make them ù without ever entering a laboratory. We've got
a long way to go on that one!
Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic power? ù
yes, we'll have it, in convenient packages ù when we understand the nucleus. The
field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the entire known body of science
in 1900. Before we are through with these problems, we may find out how the
universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous unknown vistas best
represented by ? ? ? ? ?
Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T-scale, and the tau-scale.
Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split second on the
other scale ù and yet both apply to you and your kitchen stove. Of such anarchy
is our present state in physics.
For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.

The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not corruption
in government, not encroaching hunger, nor the morals of young. It is a crisis
in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an enormous
"encyclopedia" ù which isn't even arranged alphabetically. Our "file cards" are
spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be
buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already
known facts, place them side by side and derive a third fact, the one we
urgently need.
Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.
We need a new "specialist who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. (n) We need
a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.
But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful lot of
grief before us in the meantime.
Fortune-tellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what the
customer wants to hear . . . it matters not whether the prediction comes true.
Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.
Brace yourself.
In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man's hand ù but what lay
ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the
Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.
Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is
sighing in the distance.
The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long,
hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War of them
all. It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the mark! Even if we are
spared that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there will be no security
anywhere, save what you dig out of your own inner spirit.

But what of that picture we drew of domestic luxury and tranquillity for Mrs.
Middleclass, style 2000 A.D.?
She lived through it. She survived.
Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody Nose
Ridge, at Gettysburg ù or trudged across the Plains. You and I are here because
we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought ù and won ù against death
in all its forms. We're tough. We'll survive. Most of us.
We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.
But it's not for sissies.
The Last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora's box was Hope ù without which
men die.
The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science
change everything. Long after the first star ship leaves for parts unknown,
there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in
Texas, and ù no doubt ù the English will still stop for tea.

Afterthoughts, fifteen years later ù
(a) And now we are paying for it and the cost is high. But, for reasons
understandable only to bureaucrats, we have almost halted development of a
nuclear-powered spacecraft when success was in sight. Never mind; if we don't,
another country will. By the end of this century space travel will be cheap.
(b) This trend is so much more evident now than it was fifteen years ago that I
am tempted to call it a fulfilled prophecy. Vast changes in sex relations are
evident all around us ù with the oldsters calling it "moral decay" and the
youngsters ignoring them and taking it for granted. Surface signs: books such as
"Sex and the Single Girl" are smash hits; the formerly-taboo four-letter words
are now seen both in novels and popular magazines; the neologism "swinger" has
come into the language; courts are conceding that nudity and semi-nudity are now
parts of the mores. But the end is not yet; this revolution will go much farther
and is now barely started.
The most difficult speculation for a science fiction writer to undertake is to
imagine correctly the secondary implications of a new factor. Many people
correctly anticipated the coming of the horseless carriage; some were bold
enough to predict that everyone would use them and the horse would virtually
disappear. But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of
time the vast change in the courting and mating habits of Americans which would
result primarily from the automobile ù a change which the diaphragm and the oral
contraceptive merely confirmed. So far as I know, no one even dreamed of the
change in sex habits the automobile would set off.
There is some new gadget in existence today which will prove to be equally
revolutionary in some other way equally unexpected. You and I both know of this
gadget, by name and by function ù but we don't know which one it is nor what its
unexpected effect will be. This is why science fiction is not prophecy ù and why
fictional speculation can be so much fun both to read and to write.
( c) I flatly stand by this one. True, we are now working on Nike-Zeus and
Nike-X and related systems and plan to spend billions on such systems ù and we
know that others are doing the same thing. True, it is possible to hit an object
in orbit or trajectory. Nevertheless this prediction is as safe as predicting
tomorrow's sunrise. Anti-aircraft fire never stopped air attacks; it simply made
them expensive. The disadvantage in being at the bottom of a deep "gravity well"
is very great; gravity gauge will be as crucial in the coming years as wind
gauge was in the days when sailing ships controlled empires. The nation that
controls the Moon will control the Earth ù but no one seems willing these days
to speak that nasty fact out loud.
(d) Since 1950 we have done so in several theaters and are doing so as this is
written, in Viet Nam. "Preventive" or "pre-emptive" war seems as unlikely as
ever, no matter who is in the White House. Here is a new prediction: World War
III (as a major, all-out war) will not take place at least until 1980 and could
easily hold off until 2000. This is a very happy prediction compared with the
situation in 1950, as those years of grace may turn up basic factors which
(hopefully!) might postpone disaster still longer. We were much closer to
ultimate disaster around 1955 than we are today ù much closer indeed than we
were at the time of the Cuban Confrontation in 1962. But the public never knew
it. All in all, things look pretty good for survival, for the time being ù and
that is as good a break as our ancestors ever had. It was far more dangerous to
live in London in 1664-5 than it is to live in a city threatened by H-bombs
today.
(e) Here I fell flat on my face. There has been no break-through in housing, nor
is any now in prospect ù instead the ancient, wasteful methods of building are
now being confirmed by public subsidies. The degree of our backwardness in this
field is hard to grasp; we have never seen a modern house. Think what an
automobile would be if each one were custom-built from materials fetched to your
home ù what would it look like, what would it do, and how much would it cost.
But don't set the cost lower than $100,000, nor the speed higher than 10 m/h, if
you want to be realistic about the centuries of difference between the housing
industry and the automotive industry.
I underestimated ( through wishful thinking ) the power of human stupidity ù a
fault fatal to prophecy.
(f) In the meantime spectacular progress has been made in organ transplants ù
and the problem of regeneration is related to this one. Biochemistry and
genetics have made a spectacular breakthrough in "cracking the genetic code." It
is a tiny crack, however, with a long way to go before we will have the human
chromosomes charted and still longer before we will be able to "tailor" human
beings by gene manipulation. The possibility is there ù but not by year 2000.
This is probably just as well. If we aren't bright enough to build decent
houses, are we bright enough to play God with the architecture of human beings?
(g) Our editor suggested that I had been too optimistic on this one ù but I
still stand by it. It is still thirty-five years to the end of the century. For
perspective, look back thirty-five years to 1930 ù the American Rocket Society
had not yet been founded then. Another curve, similar to the one herewith in
shape but derived entirely from speed of transportation, extrapolates to show
faster-than-light travel by year 2000. I guess I'm chicken, for I am not
predicting FTL ships by then, if ever. But the prediction still stands without
hedging.
(h) Predicting intelligent life on Mars looks pretty silly after those dismal
photographs. But I shan't withdraw it until Mars has been thoroughly explored.
As yet we really have no idea ù and no data ù as to just how ubiquitous and
vaned life may be in this galaxy; it is conceivable that life as we don't know
it can evolve on any sort of a planet . . . and nothing in our present knowledge
of chemistry rules this out. All the talk has been about
life-as-we-know-it-which means terrestrial conditions.
But if you feel that this shows in me a childish reluctance to give up thoats
and zitidars and beautiful Martian princesses until forced to, I won't argue
with you ù I'll just wait.
(i) I must hedge number thirteen; the "cent" I meant was scaled by the 1950
dollar. But our currency has been going through a long steady inflation, and no
nation in history has ever gone as far as we have along this route without
reaching the explosive phase of inflation. Ten-dollar hamburgers? Brother, we
are headed for the hundred-dollar hamburger ù for the barter-only hamburger.
But this is only an inconvenience rather than a disaster as long as there is
plenty of hamburger.
(j) This prediction stands. But today physics is in a tremendous state of flux
with new data piling up faster than it can be digested; it is anybody's guess as
to where we are headed, but the wilder you guess, the more likely you are to hit
it lucky. With "elementary particles" of nuclear physics now totaling about half
the number we used to use to list the "immutable" chemical elements, a spectator
needs a program just to keep track of the players. At the other end of the
scale, "quasars" ù quasi-stellar bodies ù have come along; radio astronomy is
now bigger than telescopic astronomy used to be; and we have redrawn our picture
of the universe several times, each time enlarging it and making it more complex
ù I haven't seen this week's theory yet, which is well, as it would be out of
date before this gets into print. Plasma physics was barely started in 1950; the
same for solid-state physics. This is the Golden Age of physics ù and it's an
anarchy.
(k) I stand flatly behind prediction number fifteen.
(I) I'll hedge number eighteen just a little. Hunger is not now a problem in the
USA and need not be in the year 2000 ù but hunger as a world problem and problem
for us if we were conquered . . . a distinct possibility by 2000. Between our
present status and that of subjugation lies a
whole spectrum of political and economic possible
shapes to the future under which we would share the
worldwide hunger to a greater or lesser extent. And
the problem grows. We can expect to have to feed
around half a billion Americans circa year 2000-our
present huge surpluses would then represent acute
shortages even if we never shipped a ton of wheat to
India.
(m) I stand by prediction number nineteen.
I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the
numbered affirmative ones. They are all conceivably possible; they are all
wildly unlikely by year 2000. Some of them are debatable if the terms are
defined to suit the affirmative side ù definitions of "life" and "manlike," for
example. Let it stand that I am not talking about an amino acid in one case, nor
a machine that plays chess in the other.
(n) Today the forerunners of these synthesists are already at work in many
places. Their titles may be anything; their degrees may be in anything ù or they
may have no degrees. Today they are called "operations researchers," or
sometimes "systems development engineers," or other interim tags. But they are
all interdisciplinary people, generalists, not specialists ù the new Renaissance
Man. The very explosion of data which forced most scholars to specialize very
narrowly created the necessity which evoked this new non-specialist. So far,
this "unspecialty" is in its infancy; its methodology is inchoate, the results
are sometimes trivial, and no one knows how to train to become such a man. But
the results are often spectacularly brilliant, too ù this new man may yet save
all of us.

I'm an optimist. I have great confidence in Homo Sapiens.
We have rough times ahead ù but when didn't we? Things have always been "tough
all over." H-bombs, Communism, race riots, water shortage ù all nasty problems.
But not basic problems, merely current ones.
We have three basic and continuing problems: The problem of population
explosion; the problem of data explosion; and the problem of government.
Population problems have a horrid way of solving themselves when they are not
solved rationally; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are always saddled up and
ready to ride. The data explosion is now being solved, mostly by cybernetics'
and electronics' men rather than by librarians ù and if the solutions are less
than perfect, at least they are better than what Grandpa had to work with. The
problem of government has not been solved either by the 'Western Democracies" or
the "Peoples' Democracies," as of now. (Anyone who thinks the people of the
United States have solved the problem of government is using too short a time
scale.) The peoples of the world are now engaged in a long, long struggle with
no end in sight, testing whether one concept works better than another; in that
conflict millions have already died and it is possible that hundreds of millions
will die in it before year 2000. But not all.
I hold both opinions and preferences as to the outcome. But my personal
preference for a maximum of looseness is irrelevant; what we are experiencing is
an evolutionary process in which personal preference matters, at most, only
statistically. Biologists, ecologists in particular are working around to the
idea that natural selection and survival of the fittest is a notion that applies
more to groups and how they are structured than it does to individuals. The
present problem will solve itself in the cold terms of revolutionary survival,
and in the course of it both sides will make changes in group structure. The
system that survives might be called "Communism" or it might be called
"Democracy" (the latter is my guess) ù but one thing we can be certain of: it
will not resemble very closely what either Marx or Jefferson had in mind. Or it
might be called by some equally inappropriate neologism; political tags are
rarely logical.
For Man is rarely logical. But I have great confidence in Man, based on his past
record. He is mean, ornery, cantankerous, illogical, emotional ù and amazingly
hard to kill. Religious leaders have faith in the spiritual redemption of Man;
humanist leaders subscribe to a belief in the perfectibility of Man through his
own efforts; but I am not discussing either of these two viewpoints. My
confidence in our species lies in its past history and is founded quite as much
on Man's so-called vices as on his so-called virtues. When the chips are down,
quarrelsomeness and selfishness can be as useful to the survival of the human
race as is altruism, and pig-headedness can be a trait superior to sweet
reasonableness. If this were not true, these "vices" would have died out through
the early deaths of their hosts, at least a half million years back.
I have a deep and abiding confidence in Man as he is, imperfect and often
unlovable ù plus still greater confidence in his potential. No matter how tough
things are, Man copes. He comes up with adequate answers from illogical reasons.
But the answers work.
Last to come out of Pandora's Box was a gleaming, beautiful thing ù eternal
Hope.



FREE MEN

"THAT MAKES three provisional presidents so far," the Leader said. "I wonder how
many more there are?" He handed the flimsy sheet back to the runner, who placed
it in his mouth and chewed it up like gum.
The third man shrugged. "No telling. What worries me ù " A mockingbird
interrupted. "Doity, doity, doity," he sang. "Terloo, terloo, terloo,
purty-purty-purty-purty."
The clearing was suddenly empty.
"As I was saying," came the voice of the third man in a whisper in the Leader's
ear, "it ain't how many worries me, but how you tell a de Gaulle from a Laval.
See anything?"
"Convoy. Stopped below us." The Leader peered through bushes and down the side
of a bluff. The high ground pushed out toward the river here, squeezing the
river road between it and the water. The road stretched away to the left, where
the valley widened out into farmland, and ran into the outskirts of Barclay
ten miles away.
The convoy was directly below them, eight trucks preceded and followed by
half-tracks. The following half-track was backing, vortex gun cast loose and
ready for trouble. Its commander apparently wanted elbow room against a possible
trap.
At the second truck helmeted figures gathered around its rear end, which was
jacked up. As the Leader watched he saw one wheel removed.
"Trouble?"
"I think not. Just a breakdown. They'll be gone soon." He wondered what was in
the trucks. Food, probably. His mouth watered. A few weeks ago an opportunity
like this would have meant generous rations for all, but the conquerors had
smartened up.
He put useless thoughts away. "It's not that that worries me, Dad," he added,
returning to the subject. "We'll be able to tell quislings from loyal Americans.
But how do you tell men from boys?"
"Thinking of Joe Benz?"
"Maybe. I'd give a lot to know how far we can trust Joe. But I could have been
thinking of young Morrie."
"You can trust him."
"Certainly. At thirteen he doesn't drink ù and he wouldn't crack if they burned
his feet off. Same with Cathleen. It's not age or sex ù but how can you tell?
And you've got to be able to tell."
There was a flurry below. Guards had slipped down from the trucks and withdrawn
from the road when the convoy had stopped, in accordance with an orderly plan
for such emergencies. Now two of them returned to the convoy, hustling between
them a figure not in uniform.
The mockingbird set up a frenetic whistling.
"It's the messenger," said the Leader. "The dumb fool! Why didn't he lie quiet?
Tell Ted we've seen it."
Dad pursed his lips and whistled: "Keewah, keewah, keewah, terloo."
The other "mockingbird" answered, "Terloo," and shut up.
"We'll need a new post office now," said the Leader. "Take care of it, Dad."
"Okay."
"There's no real answer to the problem," the Leader said. "You can limit size of
units, so that one person can't give away too many ù but take a colony like
ours. It needs to be a dozen or more to work. That means they all have to be
dependable, or they all go down together. So each one has a loaded gun at the
head of each other one."
Dad grinned, wryly. "Sounds like the United Nations before the Blow Off. Cheer
up, Ed. Don't burn your bridges before you cross them."
"I won't. The convoy is ready to roll."
When the convoy had disappeared in the distance, Ed Morgan, the Leader, and his
deputy Dad Carter stood up and stretched. The "mockingbird" had announced safety
loudly and cheerfully. "Tell Ted to cover us into camp," Morgan ordered.
Dad wheepled and chirruped and received acknowledgment. They started back into
the hills. Their route was roundabout and included check points from which they
could study their back track and receive reports from Ted. Morgan was not
worried about Ted being followed ù he was confident that Ted could steal baby
'possums from mama's pouch. But the convoy break-down might have been a trap ù
there was no way to tell that all of the soldiers had got back into the trucks.
The messenger might have been followed; certainly he had been trapped too
easily.
Morgan wondered how much the messenger would spill. He could not spill much
about Morgan's own people, for the "post office" rendezvous was all that he knew
about them.

The base of Morgan's group was neither better nor worse than the average of the
several thousand other camps of recalcitrant guerrillas throughout the area that
once called itself the United States. The Twenty Minute War had not surprised
everyone. The mushrooms which had blossomed over Washington, Detroit, and a
score of other places had been shocking but expected ù by some.
Morgan had made no grand preparations. He had simply conceived it as a good
period in which to stay footloose and not too close to a target area. He had
taken squatter's rights in an abandoned mine and had stocked it with tools,
food, and other useful items. He had had the simple intention to survive; it was
during the weeks after Final Sunday that he discovered that there was no way for
a man with foresight to avoid becoming a leader.
Morgan and Dad Carter entered the mine by a new shaft and tunnel which appeared
on no map, by a dry rock route which was intended to puzzle even a blood-hound.
They crawled through the tunnel, were able to raise their heads when they
reached the armory, and stepped out into the common room of the colony, the
largest chamber, ten by thirty feet and as high as it was wide.
Their advent surprised no one, else they might not have lived to enter. A
microphone concealed in the tunnel had conveyed their shibboleths before them.
The room was unoccupied save for a young woman stirring something over a tiny,
hooded fire and a girl who sat at a typewriter table mounted in front of a
radio. She was wearing earphones and shoved one back and turned to face them as
they came in.
"Howdy, Boss!"
"Hi, Margie. What's the good word?" Then to the other, "What's for lunch?"
"Bark soup and a notch in your belt."
"Cathleen, you depress me."
"Well . . . mushrooms fried in rabbit fat, but darn few of them."
"That's better."
"You better tell your boys to be more careful what they bring in. One more
rabbit with tularemia and we won't have to worry about what to eat."
"Hard to avoid, Cathy. You just be sure you handle them the way Doc taught you."
He turned to the girl. "Jerry in the upper tunnel?"
"Yes."
"Get him down here, will you?"
"Yes, sir." She pulled a sheet out of her typewriter and handed it to him, along
with others, then left the room.
Morgan glanced over them. The enemy had abolished soap opera and singing
commercials but he could not say that radio had been improved. There was an
unnewsy sameness to the propaganda which now came over the air. He checked
through while wishing for just one old-fashioned, uncensored newscast.
"Here's an item!" he said suddenly. "Get this, Dad ù "
"Read it to me, Ed." Dad's spectacles had been broken on Final Sunday. He could
bring down a deer, or a man, at a thousand yards ù but he might never read
again.
"'New Center, 28 April ù It is with deep regret that Continental Coordinating
Authority for World Unification, North American District, announces that the
former city of St. Joseph, Missouri, has been subjected to sanitary measures. It
is ordered that a memorial plaque setting forth the circumstances be erected on
the former site of St. Joseph as soon as radioactivity permits. Despite repeated
warnings the former inhabitants of this lamented city encouraged and succored
marauding bands of outlaws skulking around the outskirts of their community. It
is hoped that the sad fate of St. Joseph will encourage the native authorities
of all North American communities to take all necessary steps to suppress
treasonable intercourse with the few remaining lawless elements in our
continental society.' "
Dad cocked a brow at Morgan. "How many does that make since they took over?"
"Let's see . . . Salinas . . . Colorado Springs . . . uh, six, including St.
Joe."
"Son, there weren't more than sixty million Americans left after Final Sunday.
If they keep up, we'll be kind of thinned out in a few years."
"I know." Morgan looked troubled. "We've got to work out ways to operate without
calling attention to the towns. Too many hostages."
A short, dark man dressed in dirty dungarees entered from a side tunnel,
followed by Margie. "You wanted me, Boss?"
"Yes, Jerry. I want to get word to McCracken to come in for a meeting. Two hours
from now, if he can get here.
"Boss, you're using radio too much. You'll get him shot and us, too."
"I thought that business of bouncing it off the cliff face was foolproof?"
"Well . . . a dodge I can work up, somebody else can figure out. Besides, I've
got the chassis unshipped. I was working on it."
"How long to rig it?"
"Oh, half an hour ù twenty minutes."
"Do it. This may be the last time we'll use radio, except as utter last resort."
Okay, boss.

The meeting was in the common room. Morgan called it to order once all were
present or accounted for. McCracken arrived just as he had decided to proceed
without him. McCracken had a pass for the countryside, being a veterinarian, and
held proxy for the colony's underground associates in Barclay.
"The Barclay Free Company, a provisional unit of the United States of America,
is now in session," Morgan announced formally. "Does any member have any item to
lay before the Company?"
He looked around; there was no response. "How about you?" he challenged Joe
Benz. "I heard that you had some things you thought the Company ought to
hear."
Benz started to speak, shook his head. "I'll wait."
"Don't wait too long," Morgan said mildly. "Well, I have two points to bring up
for discussion ù "
"Three," corrected Dr. McCracken. "I'm glad you sent for me." He stepped up to
Morgan and handed him a large, much folded piece of paper. Morgan looked it
over, refolded it, and put it in his pocket.
"It fits in," he said to McCracken. "What do the folks in town say?"
"They are waiting to hear from you. They'll back you up ù so far, anyway."
"All right." Morgan turned back to the group. "First item ù we got a message
today, passed by hand and about three weeks old, setting up another provisional
government. The courier was grabbed right under our noses. Maybe he was a
stooge; maybe he was careless ù that's neither here nor there at the moment. The
message was that the Honorable Albert M. Brockman proclaimed himself provisional
President of these United States, under derived authority, and appointed
Brigadier General Dewey Fenton commander of armed forces including irregular
militia ù meaning us ù and called on all citizens to unite to throw the Invader
out. All formal and proper. So what do we do about it?"
"And who the devil is the Honorable Albert M. Brockman?" asked someone in the
rear.
"I've been trying to remember. The message listed government jobs he's held,
including some assistant secretary job ù I suppose that's the 'derived
authority'
angle. But I can't place him."
"I recall him," Dr. McCracken said suddenly. "I met him when I was in the Bureau
of Animal Husbandry. A career civil servant . . . and a stuffed shirt."
There was a gloomy silence. Ted spoke up. "Then why bother with him?"
The Leader shook his head. "It's not that simple, Ted. We can't assume that he's
no good. Napoleon might have been a minor clerk under different circumstances.
And the Honorable Mr. Brockman may be a revolutionary genius disguised as a
bureaucrat. But that's not the point. We need nationwide unification more than
anything. It doesn't matter right now who the titular leader is. The theory of
derived authority may be shaky but it may be the only way to get everybody to
accept one leadership. Little bands like ours can never win back the country.
We've got to have unity ù and that's why we can't ignore Brockman."
"The thing that burns me," McCracken said savagely, "is that it need never have
happened at all! It could have been prevented."
"No use getting in a sweat about it," Morgan told him. "It's easy to see the
government's mistakes now, but just the same I think there was an honest effort
to prevent war right up to the last. It takes all nations to keep the peace, but
it only takes one to start a war."
"No, no, no ù I don't mean that, Captain," McCracken answered. "I don't mean the
War could have been prevented. I suppose it could have been ù once. But
everybody knew that another war could happen, and everybody ù everybody, I say,
knew that if it came, it would start with the blasting of American cities. Every
congressman, every senator knew that a war would destroy Washington and leave
the country with no government, flopping around like a chicken with its head
off. They knew ù why didn't they do something!"
"What could they do? Washington couldn't be protected."
''Do? Why, they could have made plans for their own deaths! They could have
slapped through a constitutional amendment calling for an alternate president
and alternate congressmen and made it illegal for the alternates to be in target
areas ù or any scheme to provide for orderly succession in case of disaster.
They could have set up secret and protected centers of government to use for
storm cellars. They could have planned the same way a father takes out life
insurance for his kids. Instead they went stumbling along, fat dumb, and happy,
and let themselves get killed, with no provision to carry out their sworn duties
after they were dead. Theory of 'derived authority', pfui! It's not just
disastrous; it's ridiculous! We used to be the greatest country in the world ù
now look at us!"
"Take it easy, Doc," Morgan suggested. "Hindsight is easier than foresight."
"Hmm! I saw it coming. I quit my Washington job and took a country practice,
five years ahead of time. Why couldn't a congressman be as bright as I am?"
"Hmm . . . well ù you're right, but we might just as well worry over the Dred
Scott Decision. Let's get on with the problem. How about Brockman? Ideas?"
"What do you propose, boss?"
"I'd rather have it come from the floor."
"Oh, quit scraping your foot, boss," urged Ted. "We elected you to lead."
"Okay. I propose to send somebody to backtrack on the message and locate
Brockman ù smell him out and see what he's got. I'll consult with as many groups
as we can reach, in this state and across the river, and well try to manage
unanimous action. I was thinking of sending Dad and Morrie."
Cathleen shook her head. "Even with faked registration cards and travel permits
they'd be grabbed for the Reconstruction Battalions. I'll go."
"In a pig's eye," Morgan answered. "You'd be grabbed for something a danged
sight worse. It's got to be a man."
"I am afraid Cathleen is right," McCracken commented. "They shipped
twelve-year-old boys and old men who could hardly walk for the Detroit project.
They don't care how soon the radiation gets them ù it's a plan to thin us out."
"Are the cities still that bad?"
"From what I hear, yes. Detroit is still 'hot' and she was one of the first to
get it."
"I'm going to go." The voice was high and thin, and rarely heard in conference.
"Now, Mother ù " said Dad Carter.
"You keep out of this, Dad. The men and young women would be grabbed, but they
won't bother with me. All I need is a paper saying I have a permit to rejoin my
grandson, or something."
McCracken nodded. "I can supply that."
Morgan paused, then said suddenly, "Mrs. Carter will contact Brockman. It is so
ordered. Next order of business," he went on briskly. "You've all seen the news
about St. Joe ù this is what they posted in Barclay last night." He hauled out
and held up the paper McCracken had given him. It was a printed notice, placing
the City of Barclay on probation, subject to the ability of "local authorities"
to suppress "bands of roving criminals".
There was a stir, but no comment. Most of them had lived in Barclay; all had
ties there.
"I guess you're waiting for me," McCracken began. "We held a meeting as soon as
this was posted. We weren't all there ù it's getting harder to cover up even the
smallest gathering ù but there was no disagreement. We're behind you but we want
you to go a little easy. We suggest that you cut out pulling raids within oh,
say twenty miles of Barclay, and that you stop all killing unless absolutely
necessary to avoid capture. It's the killings they get excited about ù it was
killing of the district director that touched off St. Joe."
Benz sniffed. "So we don't do anything. We just give up ù and stay here in the
hills and starve."
"Let me finish, Benz. We don't propose to let them scare us out and keep us
enslaved forever. But casual raids don't do them any real harm. They're mostly
for food for the Underground and for minor retaliations. We've got to conserve
our strength and increase it and organize, until we can hit hard enough to make
it stick. We won't let you starve. I can do more organizing among the farmers
and some animals can be hidden out and unregistered. We can get you meat ù some,
anyhow. And we'll split our rations with you. They've got us on 1800 calories
now, but we can share it. Something can be done through the black market, too.
There are ways."
Benz made a contemptuous sound. Morgan looked at him.
"Speak up, Joe. What's on your mind?"
"I will. It's not a plan; it's a disorderly retreat. A year from now we'll be
twice as hungry and no further along ù and they'll be better dug in and
stronger. Where does it get us?"
Morgan shook his head. "You've got it wrong. Even if we hadn't had it forced on
us, we would have been moving into this stage anyhow. The Free Companies have
got to quit drawing attention to themselves. Once the food problem is solved
we've got to build up our strength and weapons. We've got to have organization
and weapons ù nationwide organization and guns, knives, and hand grenades. We've
got to turn this mine into a factory. There are people down in Barclay who can
use the stuff we can make here ù but we can't risk letting Barclay be blasted in
the meantime. Easy does it."
"Ed Morgan, you're kidding yourself and you know it."
"How?"
"How? Look, you sold me the idea of staying on the dodge and joining up ù "
"You volunteered."
"Okay, I volunteered. It was all because you were so filled with fire and
vinegar about how we would throw the enemy back into the ocean. You talked about
France and Poland and how the Filipinos kept on fighting after they were
occupied. You sold me a bill of goods. But there was something you didn't tell
me ù "
"Go on."
"There never was an underground that freed its own country. All of them had to
be pulled out of the soup by an invasion from outside. Nobody is going to pull
us out.
There was silence after this remark. The statement had too much truth in it, but
it was truth that no member of the Company could afford to think about. Young
Morrie broke it. "Captain?"
"Yes, Morrie." Being a fighting man, Morrie was therefore a citizen and a voter.
"How can Joe be so sure he knows what he's talking about? History doesn't
repeat. Anyhow, maybe we will get some help. England, maybe ù or even the
Russians."
Benz snorted. "Listen to the punk! Look, kid, England was smashed like we were,
only worse ù and Russia, too. Grow up; quit daydreaming."
The boy looked at him doggedly. "You don't know that. We only know what they
chose to tell us. And there aren't enough of them to hold down the whole world,
everybody, everywhere. We never managed to lick the Yaquis, or the Moros. And
they can't lick us unless we let them. I've read some history too."
Benz shrugged. "Okay, okay. Now we can all sing My Country 'Tis of Thee and
recite the Scout oath. That ought to make Morrie happy-"
"Take it easy, Joe!"
"We have free speech here, don't we? What I want to know is, How long does this
go on? I'm getting tired of competing with coyotes for the privilege of eating
jackrabbits. You know I've fought with the best of them. I've gone on the raids.
Well, haven't I? Haven't I? You can't call me yellow."
"You've been on some raids," Morgan conceded.
"All right. I'd go along indefinitely if I could see some sensible plan. That's
why I ask, 'How long does this go on?" When do we move? Next spring? Next year?"
Morgan gestured impatiently. "How do I know? It may be next spring; it may be
ten years. The Poles waited three hundred years."
"That tears it," Benz said slowly. "I was hoping you could offer some reasonable
plan. Wait and arm ourselves ù that's a pretty picture! Homemade hand grenades
against atom bombs! Why don't you quit kidding yourselves? We're licked!" He
hitched at his belt. "The rest of you can do as you please ù I'm through."
Morgan shrugged. "If a man won't fight, I can't make him. You're assigned
noncombatant duties. Turn in your gun. Report to Cathleen."
"You don't get me, Ed. I'm through."
"You don't get me, Joe. You don't resign from an Underground."
"There's no risk. I'll leave quietly, and let myself be registered as a
straggler. It doesn't mean anything to the rest of you. I'll keep my mouth shut
ù that goes without saying."
Morgan took a long breath, then answered, "Joe, I've learned by bitter
experience not to trust statements set off by 'naturally', 'of course', or 'that
goes without saying'."
"Oh, so you don't trust me?"
"As Captain of this Company I can't afford to. Unless you can get the Company to
recall me from office, my rulings stand. You're under arrest. Hand over your
gun.
Benz glanced around, at blank, unfriendly faces. He reached for his waist. "With
your left hand, Joe!"
Instead of complying, Benz drew suddenly, backed away. "Keep clear!" he said
shrilly. "I don't want to hurt anybody ù but keep clear!"
Morgan was unarmed. There might have been a knife or two in the assembly, but
most of them had come directly from the dinner table. It was not their custom to
be armed inside the mine.
Young Morrie was armed with a rifle, having come from lookout duty. He did not
have room to bring it into play, but Morgan could see that he intended to try.
So could Benz.
"Stop it, Morrie!" Morgan assumed obedience and turned instantly to the others.
"Let him go. Nobody move. Get going, Joe."
"That's better." Benz backed down the main tunnel, toward the main entrance,
weed and drift choked for years. Its unused condition was their principal
camouflage, but it could be negotiated.
He backed away into the gloom, still covering them. The tunnel curved; shortly
he was concealed by the bend.
Dad Carter went scurrying in the other direction as soon as Benz no longer
covered them. He reappeared at once, carrying something. "Heads down!" he
shouted, as he passed through them and took out after Benz.
"Dad!" shouted Morgan. But Carter was gone.
Seconds later a concussion tore at their ears and noses.
Morgan picked himself up and brushed at his clothes, saying in annoyed tones, "I
never did like explosives in cramped quarters. Cleve ù Art. Go check on it.
Move!"
"Right, boss!" They were gone.
"The rest of you get ready to carry out withdrawal plan ù full plan, with
provisions and supplies. Jerry, don't disconnect either the receiver or the
line-of-sight till I give the word. Margie will help you. Cathleen, get ready to
serve anything that can't be carried. We'll have one big meal. 'The condemned
ate hearty.' "
"Just a moment, Captain." McCracken touched his sleeve. "I had better get a
message into Barclay."
"Soon as the boys report. You better get back into town.
"I wonder. Benz knows me. I think I'm here to stay."
"Hm . . . well, you know best. How about your family?"
McCracken shrugged. "They can't be worse off than they would be if I'm picked
up. I'd like to have them warned and then arrangements made for them to rejoin
me if possible."
"We'll do it. You'll have to give me a new contact."
"Planned for. This message will go through and my number-two man will step into
my shoes. The name is Hobart ù runs a feed store on Pelham Street."
Morgan nodded. "Should have known you had it worked out. Well, what we don't
know ù " He was interrupted by Cleve, reporting.
"He got away, Boss."
"Why didn't you go after him?"
"Half the roof came down when Dad chucked the grenade. Tunnel's choked with
rock. Found a place where I could see but couldn't crawl through. He's not
in the tunnel."
"How about Dad?"
"He's all right. Got clipped on the head with a splinter but not really hurt."
Morgan stopped two of the women hurrying past, intent on preparations for
withdrawal. "Here ù Jean, and you, Mrs. Bowen. Go take care of Dad Carter and
tell Art to get back here fast. Shake a leg!"
When Art reported Morgan said, "You and Cleve go out and find Benz. Assume that
he is heading for Barclay. Stop him and bring him in if you can. Otherwise kill
him. Art is in charge. Get going." He turned to McCracken. "Now for a message."
He fumbled in his pocket for paper, found the poster notice that McCracken had
given him, tore off a piece, and started to write. He showed it to McCracken.
"How's that?" he asked.
The message warned Hobart of Benz and asked him to try to head him off. It did
not tell him that the Barclay Free Company was moving but did designate the
"post office" through which next contact would be expected ù the men's rest room
of the bus station.
"Better cut out the post office," McCracken advised. "Hobart knows it and we may
contact him half a dozen other ways. But I'd like to ask him to get my family
out of sight. Just tell him that we are sorry to hear that Aunt Dinah is dead."
"Is that enough?"
"Yes."
"Okay." Morgan made the changes, then called, "Margie! Put this in code and tell
Jerry to get it out fast. Tell him it's the strike-out edition. He can knock
down his sets as soon as it's out."
"Okay, boss." Margie had no knowledge of cryptography. Instead she had command
of jive talk, adolescent slang, and high school double-talk which would be
meaningless to any but another American bobbysoxer. At the other end a
fifteen-year-old interpreted her butchered English by methods which impressed
her foster parents as being telepathy ù but it worked.
The fifteen-year-old could be trusted. Her entire family, save herself, had been
in Los Angeles on Final Sunday.
Art and Cleve had no trouble picking up Benz's trail. His tracks were on the
tailings spilling down from main entrance to the mine. The earth and rock had
been undisturbed since the last heavy rain; Benz's flight left clear traces.
But trail was cold by more than twenty minutes; they had left the mine by the
secret entrance a quarter of a mile from where Benz had made his exit.
Art picked it up where Benz had left the tailings and followed it through brush
with the woodsmanship of the Eagle Scout he had been. From the careless signs he
left behind Benz was evidently in a hurry and heading by the shortest route for
the highway. The two followed him as fast as they could cover ground, discarding
caution for speed.
They checked just before entering the highway. "See anything?" asked Cleve.
"No."
"Which way would he go?"
"The Old Man said to head him off from Barclay."
"Yeah, but suppose he headed south instead? He used to work in Wickamton. He
might head that way."
"The Boss said to cover Barclay. Let's go."
They had to cache their guns; from here on it would be their wits and their
knives. An armed American on a highway would be as conspicuous as a nudist at a
garden party.
Their object now was speed; they must catch up with him, or get ahead of him and
waylay him.
Nine miles and two and a half hours later ù one hundred and fifty minutes of dog
trot, with time lost lying in the roadside brush when convoys thundered past ù
they were in the outskirts of Barclay. Around a bend, out of sight, was the
roadblock of the Invaders' check station. The point was a bottleneck; Benz must
come this way if he were heading for Barclay.
"Is he ahead or behind us?" asked Cleve, peering out through bushes.
"Behind, unless he was picked up by a convoy ù or sprouted wings. We'll give him
an hour."
A horse-drawn hayrack lumbered up the road. Cleve studied it. Americans were
permitted no power vehicles except under supervision, but this farmer and his
load could go into town with only routine check at the road block. "Maybe we
ought to hide in that and look for him in town."
"And get a bayonet in your ribs? Don't be silly."
"Okay. Don't blow your top." Cleve continued to watch the rig. "Hey," he said
presently. "Get a load of that!"
"That" was a figure which dropped from the tail of the wagon as it started
around the bend, rolled to the ditch on the far side, and slithered out of
sight.
"That was Joe!"
"Are you sure?"
"Sure! Here we go."
"How?" Art objected. "Take it easy. Follow me." They faded back two hundred
yards, to where they could cross the road on hands and knees through a drainage
pipe. Then they worked up the other side to where Benz had disappeared in weeds.
They found the place where he had been; grass and weeds were still straightening
up. The route he must have taken was evident ù down toward the river bank, then
up-stream to the city. There were drops of blood. "Dad must have missed stopping
him by a gnat's whisker," Cleve commented.
"Bad job he didn't."
"Another thing ù he said he was going to give himself up. I don't think he is,
or he would have stayed with the wagon and turned himself in at the check
station. He's heading for some hideout. Who does he know in Barclay?"
"I don't know. We'd better get going."
'Wait a minute. If he touches off an alarm, they'll shoot him for us. If he gets
by the 'eyes', we've lost him and we'll have to pick him up inside. Either way,
we don't gain anything by blundering ahead. We've got to go in by the chute."
Like all cities the Invader had consolidated, Barclay was girdled by
electric-eye circuits. The enemy had trimmed the town to fit, dynamiting and
burning where necessary to achieve unbroken sequence of automatic sentries. But
the "chute" ù an abandoned and forgotten aqueduct ù passed under the alarms. Art
knew how to use it; he had been in town twice since Final Sunday.
They worked back up the highway, crossed over, and took to the hills. Thirty
minutes later they were on the streets of Barclay, reasonably safe as long as
they were quick to step off the sidewalk for the occasional Invader.
The first "post office," a clothesline near their exit, told them nothing ù the
line was bare. They went to the bus station. Cleve studied the notices posted
for inhabitants while Art went into the men's rest room. On the wall, defaced by
scrawlings of every sort, mostly vulgar, he found what he sought: "Killroy was
here." The misspelling of Kilroy was the clue ù exactly eighteen inches below it
and six to the right was an address; "1745 Spruce ù ask for Mabel."
He read it as 2856 Pine ù one block beyond Spruce.
Art passed the address to Cleve, then they set out separately, hurrying to beat
the curfew but proceeding with caution ù at least one of them must get through.
They met in the back yard of the translated address. Art knocked on the kitchen
door. It was opened a crack by a middle-aged man who did not seem glad to see
them. "Well?"
'We're looking for Mabel."
"Nobody here by that name."
"Sorry," said Art. "We must have made a mistake." He shivered. "Chilly out," he
remarked. "The nights are getting longer."
"They'll get shorter by and by," the man answered.
"We've got to think so, anyhow," Art countered.
"Come in," the man said. "The patrol may see you." He opened the door and
stepped aside. "My name's Hobart. What's your business?"
'We're looking for a man named Benz. He may have sneaked into town this
afternoon and found someplace to ù
"Yes, yes," Hobart said impatiently. "He got in about an hour ago and he's holed
up with a character named Moyland." As he spoke he removed a half loaf of bread
from a cupboard, cut four slices, and added cold sausage, producing two
sandwiches. He did not ask if they were hungry; he simply handed them to Art and
Cleve.
"Thanks, pal. So he's holed up. Haven't you done anything about it? He has got
to be shut up at once or he'll spill his guts."
'We've got a tap in on the telephone line. We had to wait for dark. You can't
expect me to sacrifice good boys just to shut his mouth unless it's absolutely
necessary."
"Well, it's dark now, and we'll be the boys you mentioned. You can call yours
off."
"Okay." Hobart started pulling on shoes.
"No need for you to stick your neck out," Art told him. "Just tell us where this
Moyland lives."
"And get your throat cut, too. I'll take you."
"What sort of a guy is this Moyland? Is he safe?"
"You can't prove it by me. He's a black market broker, but that doesn't prove
anything. He's not part of the organization but we haven't anything against
him."
Hobart took them over his back fence, across a dark side street, through a
playground, where they lay for several minutes under bushes because of a false
alarm, then through many more backyards, back alleys, and dark byways. The man
seemed to have a nose for the enemy; there were no more alarms. At last he
brought them through a cellar door into a private home. They went upstairs and
through a room where a woman was nursing a baby. She looked up, but otherwise
ignored them. They ended up in a dark attic. "Hi, Jim," Hobart called out
softly. "What's new?"
The man addressed lay propped on his elbows, peering out into the night through
opera glasses held to slots of a ventilating louvre. He rolled over and lowered
the glasses, pushing one of a pair of earphones from his head as he did so.
"Hello, Chief. Nothing much. Benz is getting drunk, it looks like."
"I'd like to know where Moyland gets it," Hobart said. "Has he telephoned?"
"Would I be doing nothing if he had? A couple of calls came in, but they didn't
amount to anything, so I let him talk."
"How do you know they didn't amount to anything?"
Jim shrugged, turned back to the louvre. "Moyland just pulled down the shade,"
he announced.
Art turned to Hobart. 'We can't wait. We're going in."

Benz arrived at Moyland's house in bad condition. The wound in his shoulder,
caused by Carter's grenade, was bleeding. He had pushed a handkerchief up
against it as a compress, but his activity started the blood again; he was
shaking for fear his condition would attract attention before he could get under
cover.
Moyland answered the door. "Is that you, Zack?" Benz demanded, shrinking back as
he spoke.
"Yes. Who is it?"
"It's me ù Joe Benz. Let me in, Zack ù quick!"
Moyland seemed about to close the door, then suddenly opened it. "Get inside."
When the door was bolted, he demanded, "Now ù what's your trouble? Why come to
me?"
"I had to go someplace, Zack. I had to get off the street. They'd pick me up."
Moyland studied him. "You're not registered. Why not?"
Benz did not answer. Moyland waited, then went on, "You know what I can get for
harboring a fugitive. You're in the Underground ù aren't you?"
"Oh, no, Zack! I wouldn't do that to you. I'm just a ù a straggler. I gotta get
registered, Zack."
"That's blood on your coat. How?"
"Uh . . . just an accident. Maybe you could let me have clean rags and some
iodine."
Moyland stared at him, his bland face expressionless, then smiled. "You've got
no troubles we can't fix. Sit down." He stepped to a cabinet and took out a
bottle of bourbon, poured three fingers in a water glass, and handed it to Benz.
"Work on that and I'll fix you up.
He returned with some torn toweling and a bottle. "Sit here with your back to
the window, and open your shirt. Have another drink. You'll need it before I'm
through."
Benz glanced nervously at the window. "Why don't you draw the shade?"
"It would attract attention. Honest people leave their shades up these days.
Hold still. This is going to hurt."
Three drinks later Benz was feeling better. Moyland seemed willing to sit and
drink with him and to soothe his nerves. "You did well to come in," Moyland told
him. "There's no sense hiding like a scared rabbit. It's just butting your head
against a stone wall. Stupid."
Benz nodded. "That's what I told them."
"Told who?"
"Huh? Oh, nobody. Just some guys I was talking to. Tramps."
Moyland poured him another drink. "As a matter of fact you were in the
Underground."
"Me? Don't be silly, Zack."
"Look, Joe, you don't have to kid me. I'm your friend. Even if you did tell me
it wouldn't matter. In the first place, I wouldn't have any proof. In the second
place, I'm sympathetic to the Underground ù any American is. I just think
they're wrong-headed and foolish. Otherwise I'd join 'em myself."
"They're foolish all right! You can say that again."
"So you were in it?"
"Huh? You're trying to trap me. I gave my word of honor ù "
"Oh, relax!" Moyland said hastily. "Forget it. I didn't hear anything; I can't
tell anything. Hear no evil, see no evil ù that's me." He changed the subject.
The level of the bottle dropped while Moyland explained current events as he saw
them. "It's a shame we had to take such a shellacking to learn our lesson but
the fact of the matter is, we were standing in the way of the natural logic of
progress. There was a time back in '45 when we could have pulled the same stunt
ourselves, only we weren't bright enough to do it. World organization, world
government. We stood in the way, so we got smeared. It had to come. A smart man
can see that."
Benz was bleary but he did not find this comment easy to take. "Look, Zack-you
don't mean you like what happened to us?"
"Like it? Of course not. But it was necessary. You don't have to like having a
tooth pulled ù but it has to be done. Anyhow," he went on, "it's not all bad.
The big cities were economically unsound anyway. We should have blown them up
ourselves. Slum clearance, you might call it."
Benz banged his empty glass down. "Maybe so ù but they made slaves out of us!"
"Take it easy, Joe," Moyland said, filling his glass, "you're talking
abstractions. The cop on the corner could push you around whenever he wanted to.
Is that freedom? Does it matter whether the cop talks with an Irish accent or
some other accent? No, chum, there's a lot of guff talked about freedom. No man
is free. There is no such thing as freedom. There are only various privileges.
Free speech ù we're talking freely now, aren't we? After all, you don't want to
get up on a platform and shoot off your face. Free press? When did you ever own
a newspaper? Don't be a chump. Now that you've shown sense and come in, you are
going to find that things aren't so very different. A little more orderly and no
more fear of war, that's all. Girls make love just like they used to, the smart
guys get along, and the suckers still get the short end of the deal."
Benz nodded. "You're right, Zack. I've been a fool."
"I'm glad you see it. Now take those wild men you were with. What freedom have
they got? Freedom to starve, freedom to sleep on the cold ground, freedom to be
hunted."
"That was it," Benz agreed. "Did you ever sleep in a mine, Zack? Cold. That
ain't half of it. Damp, too."
"I can imagine," Moyland agreed. "The Capehart Lode always was wet."
"It wasn't the Capehart; it was the Harkn ù " He caught himself and looked
puzzled.
"The Harkness, eh? That's the headquarters?"
"I didn't say that! You're putting words in my mouth! You ù "
"Calm yourself, Joe. Forget it." Moyland got up and drew down the shade. "You
didn't say anything."
"Of course I didn't." Benz stared at his glass. "Say, Zack, where do I sleep? I
don't feel good."
"You'll have a nice place to sleep any minute now."
"Huh? Well, show me. I gotta fold up."
"Any minute. You've got to check in first."
"Huh? Oh, I can't do that tonight, Zack. I'm in no shape."
"I'm afraid you'll have to. See me pull that shade down? They'll be along any
moment."
Benz stood up, swaying a little. "You framed me!" he yelled, and lunged at his
host.
Moyland sidestepped, put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down into the
chair. "Sit down, sucker," he said pleasantly. "You don't expect me to get
A-bombed just for you and your pals, do you?"
Benz shook his head, then began to sob.

Hobart escorted them out of the house, saying to Art as they left, "If you get
back, tell McCracken that Aunt Dinah is resting peacefully."
"Okay."
"Give us two minutes, then go in. Good luck."
Cleve took the outside; Art went in. The back door was locked, but the upper
panel was glass. He broke it with the hilt of his knife, reached in and unbolted
the door. He was inside when Moyland showed up to investigate the noise.
Art kicked him in the belly, then let him have the point in the neck as he went
down. Art stopped just long enough to insure that Moyland would stay dead, then
went looking for the room where Benz had been when the shade was drawn.
He found Benz in it. The man blinked his eyes and tried to focus them, as if he
found it impossible to believe what he saw. "Art!" he got out at last. "Jeez
boy! Am I glad to see you! Let's get out of here ù this place is 'hot'."
Art advanced, knife out.
Benz looked amazed. "Hey, Art! Art! You're making a mistake, Art. You can't do
this ù " Art let him have the first one in the soft tissues under the breast
bone, then cut his throat to be sure. After that he got out quickly.
Thirty-five minutes later he was emerging from the country end of the chute. His
throat was burning from exertion and his left arm was useless ù he could not
tell whether it was broken or simply wounded.
Cleve lay dead in the alley behind Moyland's house, having done a good job of
covering Art's rear.

It took Art all night and part of the next morning to get back near the mine. He
had to go through the hills the entire way; the highway was, he judged, too warm
at the moment.
He did not expect that the Company would still be there. He was reasonably sure
that Morgan would have carried out the evacuation pending certain evidence that
Benz's mouth had been shut. He hurried.
But he did not expect what he did find ù a helicopter hovering over the
neighborhood of the mine.
He stopped to consider the matter. If Morgan had got them out safely, he knew
where to rejoin. If they were still inside, he had to figure out some way to
help them. The futility of his position depressed him ù one man, with a knife
and a bad arm, against a helicopter.
Somewhere a bluejay screamed and cursed. Without much hope he chirped his own
identification. The bluejay shut up and a mockingbird answered him ù Ted.
Art signaled that he would wait where he was. He considered himself well hidden;
he expected to have to signal again when Ted got closer, but he underestimated
Ted's ability. A hand was laid on his shoulder.
He rolled over, knife out, and hurt his shoulder as he did so. "Ted! Man, do you
look good to me!"
"Same here. Did you get him?"
"Benz? Yes, but maybe not in time. Where's the gang?"
"A quarter mile north of back door. We're pinned down. Were's Cleve?"
"Cleve's not coming back. What do you mean 'pinned down'?"
"That damned 'copter can see right down the draw we're in. Dad's got 'em under
an overhang and they're safe enough for the moment, but we can't move."
"What do you mean 'Dad's got 'em'?" demanded Art. "Where's the Boss?"
"He ain't in such good shape, Art. Got a machine gun slug in the ribs. We had a
dust up. Cathleen's dead."
"The hell you say!"
"That's right. Margie and Maw Carter have got her baby. But that's one reason
why we're pinned down ù the Boss and the kid, I mean."
A mockingbird's call sounded far away. "There's Dad," Ted announced. "We got to
get back."
"Can we?"
"Sure. Just keep behind me. I'll watch out that I don't get too far ahead."
Art followed Ted in, by a circuitous and, at one point, almost perpendicular
route. He found the Company huddled under a shelf of rock which had been
undercut by a stream, now dry. Against the wall Morgan was on his back, with Dad
Carter and Dr. McCracken squatting beside him. Art went up and made his report.
Morgan nodded, his face gray with pain. His shirt had been cut away; bandaging
was wrapped around his ribs, covering a thick pad. "You did well, Art. Too bad
about Cleve. Ted, we're getting out of here and you're going first, because
you're taking the kid."
"The baby? How ù "
"Doc'll dope it so that it won't let out a peep. Then you strap it to your back,
papoose fashion."
Ted thought about it. "No, to my front. There's some knee-and-shoulder work on
the best way out."
"Okay. It's your job."
"How do you get out, boss?"
"Don't be silly."
"Look here, boss, if you think we're going to walk off and leave you, you've got
another ù "
"Shut up and scram!" The exertion hurt Morgan; he coughed and wiped his mouth.
"Yes, sir." Ted and Art backed away.
"Now, Ed ù " said Carter.
"You shut up, too. You still sure you don't want to be Captain?"
"You know better than that, Ed. They took things from me while I was your
deppity, but they wouldn't have me for Captain."
"That puts it up to you, Doc."
McCracken looked troubled. "They don't know me that well, Captain."
"They'll take you. People have an instinct for such things."
"Anyhow, if I am Captain, I won't agree to your plan of staying here by
yourself. We'll stay till dark and carry you out.
"And get picked up by an infra-red spotter, like sitting ducks? That's supposing
they let you alone until sundown ù that other 'copter will be back with more
troops before long."
"I don't think they'd let me walk off on you."
"It's up to you to make them. Oh, I appreciate your kindly thoughts, Doc, but
you'll think differently as soon as you're Captain. You'll know you have to cut
your losses."
McCracken did not answer. Morgan turned his head to Carter. "Gather them around,
Dad."
They crowded in, shoulder to shoulder. Morgan looked from one troubled face to
another and smiled. "The Barclay Free Company, a provisional unit of the United
States of America, is now in session," he announced, his voice suddenly firm.
"I'm resigning the captaincy for reasons of physical disability. Any
nominations?"
The silence was disturbed only by calls of birds, the sounds of insects.
Morgan caught Carter's eyes. Dad cleared his throat. "I nominate Doc McCracken."
"Any other nominations?" He waited, then continued, "All right, all in favor of
Doc make it known by raising your right hand. Okay ù opposed the same sign. Dr.
McCracken is unanimously elected. It's all yours, Captain. Good luck to you."
McCracken stood up, stooping to avoid the rock overhead "We're evacuating at
once. Mrs. Carter, give the baby about another tablespoon of the syrup, then
help Ted. He knows what to do. You'll follow Ted. Then Jerry, Margie, you are
next. I'll assign the others presently. Once out of the canyon, spread out and
go it alone. Rendezvous at dusk, same place as under Captain Morgan's withdrawal
plan ù the cave." He paused. Morgan caught his eye and motioned him over.
"That's all until Ted and the baby are ready to leave. Now back away and give
Captain Morgan a little air."
When they had withdrawn McCracken leaned over Morgan the better to hear his weak
words. "Don't be too sure ,you've seen the last of me, Captain. I might join up
in a few days."
"You might at that. I'm going to leave you bundled up warm and plenty of water
within reach. I'll leave you some pills, too ù that'll give you some comfort and
ease. Only half a pill for you ù they're intended for cows." He grinned at his
patient.
"Half a pill it is. Why not let Dad handle the evacuation? He'll make you a good
deputy ù and I'd like to talk with you until you leave."
"Right." He called Carter over, instructed him, and turned back to Morgan.
"After you join up with Powell's outfit," whispered Morgan, "your first job is
to get into touch with Brockman. Better get Mrs. Carter started right away, once
you've talked it over with Powell."
"I will."
"That's the most important thing we've got to worry about, Doc. We've got to
have unity, and one plan, from coast to coast. I look forward to a day when
there will be an American assigned, by name, to each and every one of them. Then
at a set time-zzzt!" He drew a thumb across his throat.
McCracken nodded. "Could be. It will be. How long do you think it will take us?"
"I don't know. I don't think about 'how long'. Two years, five years, ten years
ù maybe a century. That's not the point. The only question is whether or not
there are any guts left in America." He glanced out where the fifth person to
leave was awaiting a signal from Carter, who in turn was awaiting a signal from
Art, hidden out where he could watch for the helicopter. "Those people will
stick."
"I'm sure of that."
Presently Morgan added, "There's one thing this has taught me: You can't enslave
a free man. Only person can do that to a man is himself. No, sir ù you can't
enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him."
"That's a fact, Ed."
"It is. Got a cigarette, Doc?"
"It won't do you any good, Ed."
"It won't do me any harm, either ù now, will it?"
"Well, not much" McCracken unregretfully gave him his last and watched him smoke
it.
Later, Morgan said, Dad's ready for you, Captain. So long."
"So long. Don't forget. Half a pill at a time. Drink all the water you want, but
don't take your blankets off, no matter how hot you get."
"Half a pill it is. Good luck."
"I'll have Ted check on you tomorrow."
Morgan shook his head. "That's too soon. Not for a couple of days at least."
McCracken smiled. "I'll decide that, Ed. You just keep yourself wrapped up. Good
luck." He withdrew to where Carter waited for him. "You go ahead, Dad. I'll
bring up the rear. Signal Art to start."
Carter hesitated. "Tell me straight, Doc. What kind of shape is he in?"
McCracken studied Carter's face, then said in a low voice, "I give him about two
hours."
"I'll stay behind with him."
"No, Dad, you'll carry out your orders." Seeing the distress in the old man's
eyes, he added, "Don't you Worry about Morgan. A free man can take care of
himself. Now get moving."
"Yes, sir."



Blowups Happen

"PUT DOWN that wrench!"
The man addressed turned slowly around and faced the speaker. His expression was
hidden by a grotesque helmet, part of a heavy, leaden armor which shielded his
entire body, but the tone of voice in which he answered showed nervous
exasperation.
"What the hell's eating you, Doc?" He made no move to replace the tool in
question.
They faced each other like two helmeted, arrayed fencers, watching for an
opening. The first speaker's voice came from behind his mask a shade higher in
key and more peremptory in tone. "You heard me, Harper. Put down that wrench at
once, and come away from that 'trigger.' Erickson!"
A third armored figure came around the shield which separated the uranium bomb
proper from the control room in which the first two stood. "Whatcha want, Doc?"
"Harper is relieved from watch. You take over as engineer-of-the-watch. Send for
the stand-by engineer."
"Very well." His voice and manner were phlegmatic, as he accepted the situation
without comment. The atomic engineer, whom he had just relieved, glanced from
one to the other, then carefully replaced the wrench in its rack.
"Just as you say, Dr. Silard ù but send for your relief too. I shall demand an
immediate hearing!" Harper swept indignantly out, his lead-sheathed boots
clumping on the floor plates.
Dr. Silard waited unhappily for the ensuing twenty minutes until his own relief
arrived. Perhaps he had been hasty. Maybe he was wrong in thinking that Harper
had at last broken under the strain of tending the most dangerous machine in the
world ù an atomic power plant. But if he had made a mistake, it had to be on the
safe side ù slips must not happen in this business; not when a slip might result
in the atomic detonation of two and a half tons of uranium.
He tried to visualize what that would mean, and failed. He had been told that
uranium was potentially forty million times as explosive as TNT. The figure was
meaningless that way. He thought of it, instead, as a hundred million tons of
high explosive, two hundred million aircraft bombs as big as the biggest ever
used. It still did not mean anything. He had once seen such a bomb dropped, when
he had been serving as a temperament analyst for army aircraft pilots. The bomb
had left a hole big enough to hide an apartment house. He could not imagine the
explosion of a thousand such bombs, much, much less a hundred million of them.
Perhaps these atomic engineers could. Perhaps, with their greater mathematical
ability and closer comprehension of what actually went on inside the nuclear
fission chamber ù the "bomb" ù they had some vivid glimpse of the
mind-shattering horror locked up beyond that shield. If so, ho wonder they
tended to blow up ù
He sighed. Erickson looked up from the linear resonant accelerator on which he
had been making some adjustment. "What's the trouble, Doc?"
"Nothing. I'm sorry I had to relieve Harper."
Silard could feel the shrewd glance of the big Scandinavian. "Not getting the
jitters yourself, are you, Doc? Sometimes you squirrel sleuths blow up, too ù "
"Me? I don't think so. I'm scared of that thing in there ù I'd be crazy if I
weren't."
"So am I," Erickson told him soberly, and went back to his work.

The accelerator's snout disappeared in the shield between them and the bomb,
where it fed a steady stream of terrifically speeded up subatomic bullets to the
beryllium target located within the bomb itself. The tortured beryllium yielded
up neutrons, which shot out in all directions through the uranium mass. Some of
these neutrons struck uranium atoms squarely on their nuclei and split them in
two. The fragments were new elements, barium, xenon, rubidium ù depending on the
proportions in which each atom split. The new elements were usually unstable
isotopes and broke down into a dozen more elements by radioactive disintegration
in a progressive chain reaction.
But these chain-reactions were comparatively unimportant; it was the original
splitting of the uranium nucleus, with the release of the awe-inspiring energy
that bound it together ù an incredible two hundred million electron-volts ù that
was important ù and perilous.
For, while uranium isotope 235 may be split by bombarding it with neutrons from
an outside source, the splitting itself gives up more neutrons which, in turn,
may land in other uranium nuclei and split them. If conditions are favorable to
a progressively increasing reaction of this sort, it may get out of hand, build
up in an unmeasurable fraction of a micro-second into a complete atomic
explosion ù an explosion which would dwarf the eruption of Krakatoa to popgun
size; an explosion so far beyond all human experience as to be as completely
incomprehensible as the idea of personal death. It could be feared, but not
understood.
But a self-perpetuating sequence of nuclear splitting, just under the level of
complete explosion, was necessary to the operation of the power plant. To split
the first uranium nucleus by bombarding it with neutrons from the beryllium
target took more power than the death of the atom gave up. In order that the
output of power from the system should exceed the power input in useful
proportion it was imperative that each atom split by a neutron from the
beryllium target should cause the splitting of many more.
It was equally imperative that this chain of reactions should always tend to
dampen, to die out. It must not build up, or the entire mass would explode
within a time interval too short to be measured by any means whatsoever.
Nor would there be anyone left to measure it.

The atomic engineer on duty at the bomb could control this reaction by means of
the "trigger," a term the engineers used to include the linear resonant
accelerator, the beryllium target, and the adjacent controls, 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 ù or,
rather, that it had been dampened the split second before. He could not possibly
know what was actually happening now within the bomb ù 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 ù
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 ù 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 ù 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 ù 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 ù 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. ù 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 strapped himself in, sealed
the gasketed door, and settled the back of his head into the rest against the
expected surge of acceleration.
Five minutes later he knocked at the door of the office of the general
superintendent, twenty miles away.
The power plant proper was located in a bowl of desert hills on the Arizona
plateau. Everything not necessary to the immediate operation of the plant ù
administrative offices, television station and so forth ù lay beyond the hills.
The buildings housing these auxiliary functions were of the most durable
construction technical ingenuity could devise. It was hoped that, if der tag
ever came, occupants would stand approximately the chance of survival of a man
going over Niagara Falls in barrel.
Silard knocked again. He was greeted by a male secretary, Steinke. Silard
recalled reading his case history. Formerly one of the most brilliant of the
young engineers, he had suffered a blanking out of the ability to handle
mathematical operations. A plain case of fugue, but there had been nothing that
the poor devil could do about it ù he had been anxious enough with his conscious
mind to stay on duty. He had been rehabilitated as an office worker.
Steinke ushered him into the .superintendent's private office. Harper was there
before him, and returned his greeting with icy politeness. The superintendent
was cordial, but Silard thought he looked tired, as if the
twenty-four-hour-a-day strain was too much for him.
"Come in, Doctor, come in. Sit down. Now tell me about this. I'm a little
surprised. I thought Harper was one of my steadiest men."
"I don't say he isn't, sir."
"Well?"
"He may be perfectly all right, but your instruction to me are not to take any
chances."
"Quite right." The superintendent gave the engineer silent and tense in his
chair, a troubled glance, then returned his attention to Silard. "Suppose you
tell me about it."
Silard took a deep breath. "While on watch as psychological observer at the
control station I noticed that the engineer of the watch seemed preoccupied and
less responsive to stimuli than usual. During my off-watch observation of this
case, over a period of the past seven days, I have suspected an increasing lack
of attention. For example, while playing contract bridge, he now occasionally
asks for a review of the bidding, which is contrary to his former behavior
pattern.
"Other similar data are available. To cut it short, at 3:11 today, while on
watch, I saw Harper, with no apparent reasonable purpose in mind, pick up a
wrench used only for operating the valves of the water shield and approach the
trigger. I relieved him of duty and sent him out of the control room."
"Chief!" Harper calmed himself somewhat and continued: "If this witch doctor
knew a wrench from an oscillator, he'd know what I was doing. The wrench was on
the wrong rack. I noticed it, and picked it up to return it to its proper place.
On the way, I stopped to check the readings!"
The superintendent turned inquiringly to Dr. Silard.
"That may be true. Granting that it is true," answered the psychiatrist
doggedly, "my diagnosis still stands. Your behavior pattern has altered; your
present actions are unpredictable, and I can't approve you for responsible work
without a complete checkup."
General Superintendent King drummed on the desk top and sighed. Then he spoke
slowly to Harper "Cal, you're a good boy, and, believe me, I know how you feel.
But there is no way to avoid it ù you've got to go up for the psychometricals,
and accept whatever disposition the board makes of you." He paused, but Harper
maintained an expressionless silence. "Tell you what, son ù why don't you take a
few days leave? Then, when you come back, you can go up before the board, or
transfer to another department away from the bomb, whichever you prefer." He
looked to Silard for approval, and received a nod.
But Harper was not mollified. "No, chief," he protested. "It won't do. Can't you
see what's wrong? It's this constant supervision. Somebody always watching the
back of your neck, expecting you to go crazy. A man can't even shave in private.
We're jumpy about the most innocent acts, for fear some head doctor, half batty
himself, will see it and decide it's a sign we're slipping. Good grief, what do
you expect?" His outburst having run its course, he subsided into a flippant
cynicism that did not quite jell. "O.K. ù never mind of it, chief," he added,
"and I'm glad to have worked under you. Good-bye."
King kept the pain in his eyes out of his voice. "Wait a minute, Cal ù you're
not through here. Let's forget about the vacation. I'm transferring you to the
radiation laboratory. You belong in research, anyhow; I'd never have spared you
from it to stand watches if I hadn't been short on No. 1 men.
"As for the constant psychological observation, I hate it as much as you do. I
don't suppose you know that they watch me about twice as hard as they watch you
duty engineers." Harper showed his surprise, but Silard nodded in sober
confirmation. "But we have to have this supervision. Do you remember Manning?
No, he was before your time. We didn't have psychological observers then.
Manning was able and brilliant. Furthermore, he was always cheerful; nothing
seemed to bother him.
"I was glad to have him on the bomb, for he was always alert, and never seemed
nervous about working with it ù in fact, he grew more buoyant and cheerful the
longer he stood control watches. I should have known that was a very bad sign,
but I didn't, and there was no observer to tell me so.
"His technician had to slug him one night. He found him dismounting the safety
interlocks on the trigger. Poor old Manning never pulled out of it ù he's been
violently insane ever since. After Manning cracked up, we worked out the present
system of two qualified engineers and an observer for every watch. It seemed the
only thing to do."
"I suppose so, chief," Harper mused, his face no longer sullen, but still
unhappy. "It's a hell of a situation just the same."
"That's putting it mildly." King rose and put out his hand. "Cal, unless you're
dead set on leaving us, I'll expect to see you at the radiation laboratory
tomorrow. Another thing ù I don't often recommend this, but it might do you good
to get drunk tonight."

King had signed to Silard to remain after the young man left. Once the door was
closed he turned back to the psychiatrist. "There goes another one ù and one of
the best. Doctor, what am I going to do?"
Silard pulled at his cheek. "I don't know," he admitted. "The hell of it is,
Harper's absolutely right. It does increase the strain on them to know that they
are being watched ù and yet they have to be watched. Your psychiatric staff
isn't doing too well, either. It makes us nervous to be around the bomb ù the
more so because we don't understand it. And it's a strain on us to be hated and
despised as we are. Scientific detachment is difficult under such conditions;
I'm getting jumpy myself."
King ceased pacing the floor and faced the doctor. "But there must be some
solution ù " he insisted.
Silard shook his head. "It's beyond me, Superintendent. I see no solution from
the standpoint of psychology."
"No? Hm-m-m. Doctor, who is the top man in your field?"
"Eh?"
"Who is the recognized No. 1 man in handling this sort of thing?"
"Why, that's hard to say. Naturally, there isn't any one leading psychiatrist in
the world; we specialize too much. I know what you mean, though. You don't want
the best industrial-temperament psychometrician; you want the best all-around
man for psychoses nonlesional and situational. That would be Lentz."
"Go on."
"Well ù he covers the whole field of environmental adjustment. He's the man who
correlated the theory of optimum tonicity with the relaxation technique that
Korzybski had developed empirically. He actually worked under Korzybski himself,
when he was a young student ù it's the only thing he's vain about."
"He did? Then he must be pretty old; Korzybski died in ù What year did he die?"
"I started to say that you must know his work in symbology ù theory of
abstraction and calculus of statement, all that sort of thing ù because of its
applications to engineering and mathematical physics."
"That Lentz ù yes, of course. But I had never thought of him as a psychiatrist."
"No, you wouldn't, in your field. Nevertheless, we are inclined to credit him
with having done as much to check and reduce the pandemic neuroses of the Crazy
Years as any other man, and more than any man left alive."
"Where is he?"
"Why, Chicago, I suppose. At the Institute."
"Get him here."
"Eh?"
"Get him down here. Get on that visiphone and locate him. Then have Steinke call
the Port of Chicago, and hire a stratocar to stand by for him. I want to see him
as soon as possible ù before the day is out." King sat up in his chair with the
air of a man who is once more master of himself and the situation. His spirit
knew that warming replenishment that comes only with reaching a decision. The
harassed expression was gone.
Silard looked dumfounded. "But, Superintendent," he expostulated, "you can't
ring for Dr. Lentz as if he were a junior clerk. He's . . . he's Lentz."
"Certainly ù that's why I want him. But I'm not a neurotic club-woman looking
for sympathy, either. He'll come. If necessary, turn on the heat from
Washington. Have the White House call him. But get him here at once. Move!" King
strode out of the office.
When Erickson came off watch he inquired around and found that Harper had left
for town. Accordingly, he dispensed with dinner at the base, shifted into
"drinkin' clothes," and allowed himself to be dispatched via tube to Paradise.
Paradise, Arizona, was a hard little boom town, which owed its existence to the
power plant. It was dedicated exclusively to the serious business of detaching
the personnel of the plant from their inordinate salaries. In this worthy
project they received much cooperation from the plant personnel themselves, each
of whom was receiving from twice to ten times as much money each pay day as he
had ever received in any other job, and none of whom was certain of living long
enough to justify saving for old age. Besides, the company carried a sinking
fund in Manhattan for their dependents; why be stingy?
It was said, with some truth, that any entertainment or luxury obtainable in New
York City could be purchased in Paradise. The local chamber of commerce had
appropriated the slogan of Reno, Nevada, "Biggest Little City in the World." The
Reno boosters retaliated by claiming that, while any town that close to the
atomic power plant undeniably brought thoughts of death and the hereafter,
Hell's Gates would be a more appropriate name than Paradise.
Erickson started making the rounds. There were twenty-seven places licensed to
sell liquor in the six blocks of the main street of Paradise. He expected to
find Harper in one of them, and, knowing the man's habits and tastes, he
expected to find him in the first two or three he tried.
He was not mistaken. He found Harper sitting alone at a table in the rear of
DeLancey's Sans Souci Bar. DeLancey's was a favorite of both of them. There was
an old-fashioned comfort about its chrome-plated bar and red leather furniture
that appealed to them more than did the spectacular fittings of the up-to-the
minute places. DeLancey was conservative; he stuck to indirect lighting and soft
music; his hostesses were required to be fully clothed, even in the evening.
The fifth of Scotch in front of Harper was about two thirds full. Erickson
shoved three fingers in front of Harper's face and demanded, "Count!"
"Three," announced Harper. "Sit down, Gus."
"That's correct," Erickson agreed, sliding his big frame into a low-slung chair.
"You'll do ù for now. What was the outcome?"
"Have a drink. Not," he went on, "that this Scotch is any good. I think Lance
has taken to watering it. I surrendered, horse and foot."
"Lance wouldn't do that ù stick to that theory and you'll sink in the sidewalk
up to your knees. How come you capitulated? I thought you planned to beat 'em
about the head and shoulders, at least."
"I did," mourned Harper, "but, cripes, Gus, the chief is right. If a brain
mechanic says you're punchy, he has got to back him up and take you off the
bomb. The chief can't afford to take a chance."
"Yeah, the chief's all right, but I can't learn to love our dear psychiatrists.
Tell you what ù let's find us one, and see if he can feel pain. I'll hold him
while you slug 'im."
"Oh, forget it, Gus. Have a drink."
"A pious thought ù but not Scotch. I'm going to have a martini; we ought to eat
pretty soon."
"I'll have one, too."
"Do you good." Erickson lifted his blond head and bellowed, "Israfell"
A large, black person appeared at his elbow. "Mistuh Erickson! Yes, suh!"
"Izzy, fetch two martinis. Make mine with Italian." He turned back to Harper.
"What are you going to do now, Cal?"
"Radiation laboratory."
"Well, that's not so bad. I'd like to have a go at the matter or rocket fuels
myself. I've got some ideas."
Harper looked mildly amused. "You mean atomic fuel for interplanetary flight?
The problem's pretty well exhausted. No, son, the stratosphere is the ceiling
until we think up something better than rockets. Of course, you could mount the
bomb in a ship, and figure out some jury rig to convert its radiant output into
push, but where does that get you? One bomb, one ship ù and twenty years of
mining in Little America has only produced enough pitchblende to make one bomb.
That's disregarding the question of getting the company to lend you their one
bomb for anything that doesn't pay dividends."
Erickson looked balky. "I don't concede that you've covered all the
alternatives. What have we got? The early rocket boys went right ahead trying to
build better rockets, serene in the belief that, by the time they could build
rockets good enough to fly to the Moon, a fuel would be perfected that would do
the trick. And they did build ships that were good enough ù you could take any
ship that makes the antipodes run, and refit it for the Moon ù if you had a fuel
that was sufficiently concentrated to maintain the necessary push for the whole
run. But they haven't got it.
"And why not? Because we let 'em down, that's why. Because they're still
depending on molecular energy, on chemical reactions, with atomic power sitting
right here in our laps. It's not their fault ù old D. D. Harriman had Rockets
Consolidated underwrite the whole first issue of Antarctic Pitchblende, and took
a big slice of it himself, in the expectation that we would produce something
usable in the way of a concentrated rocket fuel. Did we do it? Like hell! The
company went hog-wild for immediate commercial exploitation, and there's no fuel
yet."
"But you haven't stated it properly," Harper objected. "There are just two forms
of atomic power available ù radioactivity and atomic disintegration. The first
is too slow; the energy is there, but you can't wait years for it to come out ù
not in a rocketship. The second we can only manage in a large mass of uranium.
There has only been enough uranium mined for one bomb. There you are ù stymied."
Erickson's Scandinavian stubbornness was just gathering for another try at the
argument when the waiter arrived with the drinks. He set them down with a
triumphant flourish. "There you are, suh!"
"Want to roll for them, Izzy?" Harper inquired.
"Don' mind if I do."
The Negro produced a leather dice cup, and Harper rolled. He selected his
combinations with care and managed to get four aces and jack in three rolls.
Israfel took the cup. He rolled in the grand manner with a backward twist to his
wrist. His score finished at five kings, and he courteously accepted the price
of six drinks. Harper stirred the engraved cubes with his forefinger.
"Izzy," he asked, "are these the same dice I rolled with?"
"Why, Mistuh Harper!" The Negro's expression was pained.
"Skip it," Harper conceded. "I should know better than to gamble with you. I
haven't won a roll from you in six weeks. What did you start to say, Gus?"
"I was just going to say that there ought to be a better way to get energy out
of ù "
But they were joined again, this time by something very seductive in an evening
gown that appeared to have been sprayed on her lush figure. She was young,
perhaps nineteen or twenty. "You boys lonely?" she asked as she flowed into a
chair.
"Nice of you to ask but were not," Erickson denied with patient politeness. He
jerked a thumb at a solitary figure seated across the room. "Go talk to
Hanningan;
he's not busy."
She followed his gesture with her eyes, and answered with faint scorn: "Him?
He's no use. He's been like that for three weeks ù hasn't spoken to a soul. If
you ask me, I'd say that he was cracking up."
"That so?" he observed noncommittally. "Here" ù he fished out a five-dollar bill
and handed it to her ù "buy yourself a drink. Maybe we'll look you up later."
"Thanks, boys." The money disappeared under her clothing, and she stood up.
"Just ask for Edith."
"Hannigan does look bad," Harper considered, noting the brooding stare and
apathetic attitude, "and he has been awfully standoffish lately, for him. Do you
suppose we're obliged to report him?"
"Don't let it worry you," advised Erickson. "There's a spotter on the job now.
Look." Harper followed his companion's eyes and recognized Dr. Mott of the
psychological staff. He was leaning against the far end of the bar, and nursing
a tall glass, which gave him protective coloration. But his stance was such that
his field of vision included not only Hannigan, but Erickson and Harper as well.
"Yeah, and he's studying us as well," Harper added. "Damn it to hell, why does
it make my back hair rise just to lay eyes on one of them?"
The question was rhetorical; Erickson ignored it. "Let's get out of here," he
suggested, "and have dinner somewhere else."
"O.K."
DeLancey himself waited on them as they left. "Going so soon, gentlemen?" he
asked, in a voice that implied that their departure would leave him no reason to
stay open. "Beautiful lobster thermidor tonight. If you do not like it, you need
not pay." He smiled brightly.
"Not sea food, Lance," Harper told him, "not tonight. Tell me ù why do you stick
around here when you know that the bomb is bound to get you in the long run?
Aren't you afraid of it?"
The tavern keeper's eyebrows shot up. "Afraid of the bomb? But it is my friend!"
"Makes you money, eh?"
"Oh, I do not mean that." He leaned toward them confidentially. "Five years ago
I come here to make some money quickly for my family before my cancer of the
stomach, it kills me. At the clinic, with the wonderful new radiants you
gentlemen make with the aid of the bomb, I am cured ù I live again. No, I am not
afraid of the bomb; it is my good friend."
"Suppose it blows up?"
"When the good Lord needs me, He will take me." He crossed himself quickly.
As they turned away, Erickson commented in a low voice to Harper, "There's your
answer, Cal ù if all us engineers had his faith, the bomb wouldn't get us down."
Harper was unconvinced. "I don't know," he mused. "I don't think it's faith; I
think it's lack of imagination ù and knowledge."

Notwithstanding King's confidence, Lentz did not show up until the next day. The
superintendent was subconsciously a little surprised at his visitor's
appearance. He had pictured a master psychologist as wearing flowing hair, an
imperial, and having piercing black eyes. But this man was not very tall, was
heavy in his framework, and fat ù almost gross. He might have been a butcher.
Little, piggy, faded-blue eyes peered merrily out from beneath shaggy blond
brows. There was no hair anywhere else on the enormous skull, and the apelike
jaw was smooth and pink. He was dressed in mussed pajamas of unbleached linen. A
long cigarette holder jutted permanently from one corner of a wide mouth widened
still more by a smile which 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 ù
was demanded.
But theoretical atomic physics predicted that a uranium mass sufficiently large
to assist in its own disintegration might assist too well ù 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 ù about the equivalent
of a hundred and forty thousand tons of TNT ù 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 ù I couldn't. If I had refused, they would have gotten someone else ù 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 ù 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 up."
The inauguration of the system of constant psychological observation had greatly
reduced the probability of acute danger resulting from a watch engineer cracking
up, but King was forced to admit that the system was not a success; there had
actually been a marked increase in psychoneuroses, dating from that time.
"And that's the picture, Dr. Lentz. It gets worse all the time. It's getting me
now. The strain is telling on me; I can't sleep, and I don't think my judgment
is as good as it used to be ù I have trouble making up my mind, of coming to a
decision. Do you think you can do anything for us?"
But Lentz had no immediate relief for his anxiety. "Not so fast,
superintendent," he countered. "You have given me the background, but I have no
real data as yet. I must look around for a while, smell out the situation for
myself, talk to your engineers, perhaps have a few drinks with them, and get
acquainted. That is possible, is it not? Then in a few days, maybe, we'll know
where we stand."
King had no alternative but to agree.
"And it is well that your young men do not know what I am here for. Suppose I am
your old friend, a visiting physicist, eh?"
"Why, yes ù of course. I can see to it that that idea gets around. But say ù "
King was reminded again of something that had bothered him from the time Silard
had first suggested Lentz's name ù "may I ask a personal question?"
The merry eyes were undisturbed.
"Go ahead."
"I can't help but be surprised that one man should attain eminence in two such
widely differing fields as psychology and mathematics. And right now I'm
perfectly convinced of your ability to pass yourself off as a physicist. I don't
understand it."
The smile was more amused, without being in the least patronizing, nor
offensive. "Same subject," he answered.
"Eh? How's that ù "
"Or rather, both mathematical physics and psychology are branches of the same
subject, symbology. You are a specialist; it would not necessarily come to your
attention."
"I still don't follow you."
"No? Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot
possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given
phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a
mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols, and
only negligibly to phenomena. As a matter of fact," he continued, removing the
cigarette holder from his mouth and settling into his subject, "it can be
demonstrated that the human mind can think only in terms of symbols.
When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions
ù rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted
so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if
the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of
phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our
word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we do not think sanely.
"In mathematical physics you are concerned with making your symbology fit
physical phenomena. In psychiatry I am concerned with precisely the same thing,
except that I am more immediately concerned with the man who does the thinking
than with the phenomena he is thinking about. But the same subject, always the
same subject."

'We're not getting anyplace, Gus." Harper put down his slide rule and frowned.
"Seems like it, Cal'' Erickson grudgingly admitted. "Damn it, though ù there
ought to be some reasonable way of tackling the problem. What do we need? Some
form of concentrated, controllable power for rocket fuel. What have we got?
Power galore in the bomb. There must be some way to bottle that power, and serve
it out when we need it ù and the answer is someplace in one of the radioactive
series. I know it." He stared glumly around the laboratory as if expecting to
find the answer written somewhere on the lead-sheathed walls.
"Don't be so down in the mouth about it. You've got me convinced there is an
answer; let's figure out how to find it. In the first place the three natural
radioactive series are out, aren't they?"
"Yes ù at least we had agreed that all that ground had been fully covered
before."
"O. K.; we have to assume that previous investigators have done what their notes
show they have done ù otherwise we might as well not believe anything, and start
checking on everybody from Archimedes to date. Maybe that is indicated, but
Methuselah himself couldn't carry out such an assignment. What have we got
left?"
"Artificial radioactives."
"All right. Let's set up a list of them, both those that have been made up to
now, and those that might possibly be made in the future. Call that our group ù
or rather, field, if you want to be pedantic about definitions. There are a
limited number of operations that can be performed on each member of the group,
and on the members taken in combination. Set it up."
Erickson did so, using the curious curlicues of the calculus of statement.
Harper nodded. "All right ù expand it."
Erickson looked up after a few moments, and asked, "Cal, have you any idea how
many terms there are in the expansion?"
"No ù hundreds, maybe thousands, I suppose."
"You're conservative. It reaches four figures without considering possible new
radioactives. We couldn't finish such a research in a century." He chucked his
pencil down and looked morose.
Cal Harper looked at him curiously, but with sympathy. "Gus," he said gently,
"the bomb isn't getting you, too, is it?"
"I don't think so. Why?"
"I never saw you so willing to give up anything before. Naturally you and I will
never finish any such job, but at the very worst we will have eliminated a lot
of wrong answers for somebody else. Look at Edison ù sixty years of
experimenting, twenty hours a day, yet he never found out the one thing he was
most interested in knowing. I guess if he could take it, we can."
Erickson pulled out of his funk to some extent. "I suppose so," he agreed.
"Anyhow, maybe we could work out some techniques for carrying a lot of
experiments simultaneously."
Harper slapped him on the shoulder. "That's the ol' fight. Besides-we may not
need to finish the research, or anything like it, to find a satisfactory fuel.
The way I see it, there are probably a dozen, maybe a hundred, right answers. We
may run across one of them any day. Anyhow, since you're willing to give me a
hand with it in your off watch time, I'm game to peck away at it till hell
freezes."

Lentz puttered around the plant and the administration center for several days,
until he was known to everyone by sight. He made himself pleasant and asked
questions. He was soon regarded as a harmless nuisance, to be tolerated because
he was a friend of the superintendent. He even poked his nose into the
commercial power end of the plant, and had the mercury-steam-turbogenerator
sequence explained to him in detail. This alone would have been sufficient to
disarm any suspicion that he might be a psychiatrist, for the staff
psychiatrists paid no attention to the hard-bitten technicians of the
power-conversion unit. There was no need to; mental instability on their part
could not affect the bomb, nor were they subject to the man-killing strain of
social responsibility. Theirs was simply a job personally dangerous, a type of
strain strong men have been inured to since the jungle.
In due course he got around to the unit of the radiation laboratory set aside
for Calvin Harper's use. He rang the bell and waited. Harper answered the door,
his anti-radiation helmet shoved back from his face like a grotesque sunbonnet.
"What is it?" he asked. "Oh ù it's you, Dr. Lentz. Did you want to see me?"
"Why, yes and no," the older man answered. "I was just looking around the
experimental station, and wondered what you do in here. Will I be in the way?"
"Not at all. Come in. Gus!"
Erickson got up from where he had been fussing over the power leads to their
trigger ù a modified cyclotron rather than a resonant accelerator. "Hello."
"Gus, this is Dr. Lentz ù 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 ù 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
ù 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 ù 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 Harper did,
for I saw him do it ù with Isotope V. I'm sorry."
Understanding broke over Harper's face, and he slapped the older man on the
shoulder. "Don't be sorry," he laughed; "you can come around to our lab and help
us make mistakes any time you feel in the mood. Can't he, Gus? This is the
answer, Dr. Lentz; this is it!"
"But," the psychiatrist pointed out, "you don't know which isotope blew up."
"Nor care," Harper supplemented. "Maybe it was both, taken together. But we will
know ù this business is cracked now; we'll soon have it open." He gazed happily
around at the wreckage.

In spite of Superintendent King's anxiety, Lentz refused to be hurried in
passing judgment on the situation. Consequently, when he did present himself at
King's office, and announced that he was ready to report, King was pleasantly
surprised as well as relieved. "Well, I'm delighted," he said. "Sit down,
Doctor, sit down. Have a cigar. What do we do about it?"
But Lentz stuck to his perennial cigarette and refused to be hurried. "I must
have some information first. How important," he demanded, "is the power from
your plant?"
King understood the implication at once. If you are thinking about shutting down
the bomb for more than a limited period, it can't be done."
"Why not? If the figures supplied me are correct, your output is less than
thirteen percent of the total power used in the country."
"Yes, that is true, but you haven't considered the items that go into making up
the total. A lot of it is domestic power, which householders get from sunscreens
located on their own roofs. Another big slice is power for the moving roadways ù
that's sunpower again. The portion we provide here is the main power source for
most of the heavy industries ù steel, plastics, lithics, all kinds of
manufacturing and processing. You might as well cut the heart out of a man ù "
"But the food industry isn't basically dependent on you?" Lentz persisted.
"No. Food isn't basically a power industry ù although we do supply a certain
percentage of the power used in processing. I see your point, and will go on and
concede that transportation ù that is to say, distribution of food ù could get
along without us. But, good heavens, Doctor, you can't stop atomic power without
causing the biggest panic this country has ever seen. It's the keystone of our
whole industrial system."
"The country has lived through panics before, and we got past the oil shortage
safely."
"Yes ù because atomic power came along to take the place of oil. You don't
realize what this would mean, Doctor. It would be worse than a war; in a system
like ours, one thing depends on another. If you cut off the heavy industries all
at once, everything else stops, too."
"Nevertheless, you had better dump the bomb." The uranium in the bomb was
molten, its temperature being greater than twenty-four hundred degrees
centigrade. The bomb could be dumped into a group of small containers, when it
was desired to shut it down. The mass in any one container was too small to
maintain progressive atomic disintegration.
King glanced involuntarily at the glass-inclosed relay mounted on his office
wall, by which he, as well as the engineer on duty, could dump the bomb, if need
be. "But I couldn't do that ù or rather, if I did, the plant wouldn't stay shut
down. The Directors would simply replace me with someone who would operate the
bomb.''
"You're right, of course." Lentz silently considered the situation for some
time, then said, "Superintendent, will you order a car to fly me back to
Chicago?"
"You're going, Doctor?"
"Yes." He took the cigarette holder from his face, and, for once, the smile of
Olympian detachment was gone completely. His entire manner was sober, even
tragic. "Short of shutting down the bomb, there is no solution to your
problem-none whatsoever!
"I owe you a full explanation," Lentz continued, at length. "You are confronted
here with recurring; instances of situational psychoneurosis. Roughly, the
symptoms manifest themselves as anxiety neurosis or some form of hysteria. The
partial amnesia of your secretary, Steinke, is a good example of the latter. He
might be cured with shock technique, but it would hardly be a kindness, as he
has achieved a stable adjustment which puts him beyond the reach of the strain
he could not stand.
"That other young fellow, Harper, whose blowup was the immediate cause of your
sending for me, is an anxiety case. When the cause of the anxiety was eliminated
from his matrix, he at once regained full sanity. But keep a close watch on his
friend, Erickson ù
"However, it is the cause, and prevention, of situational psychoneurosis we are
concerned with here, rather than the forms in which it is manifested. In plain
language, psychoneurosis situational simply refers to the common fact that, if
you put a man in a situation that worries him more than he can stand, in time he
blows up, one way or another.
"That is precisely the situation here. You take sensitive, intelligent young
men, impress them with the fact that a single slip on their part, or even some
fortuitous circumstance beyond their control, will result in the death of God
knows how many other people, and then expect them to remain sane. It's
ridiculous ù impossible!"
"But good heavens, Doctor, there must be some answer! There must!" He got up and
paced around the room. Lentz noted, with pity, that King himself was riding the
ragged edge of the very condition they were discussing.
"No," he said slowly. "No. Let me explain. You don't dare intrust the bomb to
less sensitive, less socially conscious men. You might as well turn the controls
over to a mindless idiot. And to psychoneurosis situational there are but two
cures. The first obtains when the psychosis results from a misevaluation of
environment. That cure calls for semantic readjustment. One assists the patient
to evaluate correctly his environment. The worry disappears because there never
was a real reason for worry in the situation itself, but simply in the wrong
meaning the patient's mind had assigned to it.
"The second case is when the patient has correctly evaluated the situation, and
rightly finds in it cause for extreme worry. His worry is perfectly sane and
proper, but he can not stand up under it indefinitely; it drives him crazy. The
only possible cure is to change the situation. I have stayed here long enough to
assure myself that such is the condition here. Your engineers have correctly
evaluated the public danger of this bomb, and it will, with dreadful certainty,
drive all of you crazy!
"The only possible solution is to dump the bomb ù and leave it dumped."
King had continued his nervous pacing of the floor, as if the walls of the room
itself were the cage of his dilemma. Now he stopped and appealed once more to
the psychiatrist. "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"Nothing to cure. To alleviate ù well, possibly."
"How?"
"Situational psychosis results from adrenaline exhaustion. When a man is placed
under a nervous strain, his adrenal glands increase their secretion to help
compensate for the strain. If the strain is too great and lasts too long, the
adrenals aren't equal to the task, and he cracks. That is what you have here.
Adrenaline therapy might stave off a mental breakdown, but it most assuredly
would hasten a physical breakdown. But that would be safer from a viewpoint of
public welfare ù even though it assumes that physicists are expendable!
"Another thing occurs to me: If you selected any new watch engineers from the
membership of churches that practice the confessional, it would increase the
length of their usefulness."
King was plainly surprised. "I don't follow you."
"The patient unloads most of his worry on his confessor, who is not himself
actually confronted by the situation, and can stand it. That is simply an
ameliorative, however. I am convinced that, in this situation, eventual insanity
is inevitable. But there is a lot of good sense in the confessional," he added.
"It fills a basic human need. I think that is why the early psychoanalysts were
so surprisingly successful, for all their limited knowledge." He fell silent for
a while, then added, "If you will be so kind as to order a stratocab for me ù "
"You've nothing more to suggest?"
"No. You had better turn your psychological staff loose on means of alleviation;
they're able men, all of them."
King pressed a switch and spoke briefly to Steinke. Turning back to Lentz, he
said, "You'll wait here until your car is ready?"
Lentz judged correctly that King desired it And agreed.
Presently the tube delivery on King's desk went ping! The Superintendent removed
a small white pasteboard, a calling card. he studied it with surprise and passed
it over to Lentz. "I can't imagine why he should be calling on me," he observed,
and added, "Would you like to meet him?"
Lentz read:

THOMAS P. HARRINGTON
CAPTAIN (MATHEMATICS)
UNITED STATES NAVY

DIRECTOR,
U.S. NAVAL OBSERVATORY

"But I do know him," he said. "I'd be very pleased to see him."
Harrington was a man with something on his mind. He seemed relieved when Steinke
had finished ushering him in, and had returned to the outer office. He commenced
to speak at once, turning to Lentz, who was nearer to him than King. "You're
King? . . . Why, Dr. Lentz! What are you doing here?"
"Visiting," answered Lentz, accurately but incompletely, as he shook hands.
"This is Superintendent King over here. Superintendent King ù Captain
Harrington."
"How do you do, Captain ù it's a pleasure to have you here.
"It's an honor to be here, sir."
"Sit down?"
"Thanks." He accepted a chair and laid a briefcase on a corner of King's desk.
"Superintendent, you are entitled to an explanation as to why I have broken in
on you like this ù "
"Glad to have you." In fact, the routine of formal politeness was an anodyne to
Kings frayed nerves.
"That's kind of you, but ù That secretary chap, the one that brought me in here,
would it be too much to
ask you to tell him to forget my name? I know it seems strange ù "
"Not at all." King was mystified, but willing to grant any reasonable request of
a distinguished colleague in science. He summoned Steinke to the interoffice
visiphone and gave him his orders.
Lentz stood up and indicated that he was about to leave. He caught Harrington's
eye. "I think you want a private palaver, Captain"
King looked from Harrington to Lentz and back to Harrington. The astronomer
showed momentary indecision, then protested: "I have no objection at all myself;
it's up to Dr. King. As a matter of fact," he added, "It might be a very good
thing if you did sit in on it."
"I don't know what it is, Captain," observed King, "that you want to see me
about, but Dr. Lentz is already here in a confidential capacity."
"Good! Then that's settled. I'll get right down to business. Dr. King, you know
Destry's mechanics of infinitesimals?"
"Naturally." Lentz cocked a brow at King, who chose to ignore it.
"Yes, of course. Do you remember theorem six and the transformation between
equations thirteen and fourteen?"
"I think so, but I'd want to see them." King got up and went over to a bookcase.
Harrington stayed him with a hand.
"Don't bother. I have them here." He hauled out a key, unlocked his briefcase,
and drew out a large, much-thumbed, loose-leaf notebook. "Here. You, too, Dr.
Lentz. Are you familiar with this development?"
Lentz nodded. "I've had occasion to look into them"
"Good ù I think it's agreed that the step between thirteen and fourteen is the
key to the whole matter. Now, the change from thirteen to fourteen looks
perfectly valid ù and would be, in some fields. But suppose we expand it to show
every possible phase of the matter, every link in the chain of reasoning."
He turned a page and showed them the same two equations broken down into nine
intermediate equations. He placed a finger under an associated group of
mathematical symbols. "Do you see that? Do you see what that implies?" He peered
anxiously at their faces.
King studied it, his lips moving. "Yes . . . I believe I do see. Odd . . . I
never looked at it just that way before ù yet I've studied those equations until
I've dreamed about them." He turned to Lentz. "Do you agree, Doctor?"
Lentz nodded slowly. "I believe so . . . Yes, I think I may say so."
Harrington should have been pleased; he wasn't. "I had hoped you could tell me I
was wrong," he said, almost petulantly, "but I'm afraid there is no further
doubt about it. Dr. Destry included an assumption valid in molar physics, but
for which we have absolutely no assurance in atomic physics. I suppose you
realize what this means to you, Dr. King?"
King's voice was dry whisper. "Yes," he said, "yes ù It means that if that bomb
out there ever blows up, we must assume that it will go up all at once, rather
than the way Destry predicted ù and God help the human race!"
Captain Harrington cleared his throat to break the silence that followed.
"Superintendent," he said, "I would not have ventured to call had it been simply
a matter of disagreement as to interpretation of theoretical predictions ù "
"You have something more to go on?"
"Yes and no. Probably you gentlemen think of the Naval Observatory as being
exclusively preoccupied with ephemerides and tide tables. In a way you would be
right ù but we still have some time to devote to research as long as it doesn't
cut into the appropriation. My special interest has always been lunar theory.
"I don't mean lunar ballistics," he continued. "I mean the much more interesting
problem of its origin and history, the problem the younger Darwin struggled
with, as well as my illustrious predecessor, Captain T.J.J. See. I think that it
is obvious that any theory of lunar origin and history must take into account
the surface features of the Moon ù especially the mountains, the craters, that
mark its face so prominently."
He paused momentarily, and Superintendent King put in: "Just a minute, Captain ù
I may be stupid, or perhaps I missed something, but ù is there a connection
between what we were discussing before and lunar theory?"
"Bear with me for a few moments, Dr. King," Harrington apologized. "There is a
connection ù at least, I'm afraid there is a connection ù but I would rather
present my points in their proper order before making my conclusions." They
granted him an alert silence; he went on:
"Although we are in the habit of referring to the craters of the Moon, we know
they are not volcanic craters. Superficially, they follow none of the rules of
terrestrial volcanoes in appearance or distribution, but when Rutter came out in
1952 with his monograph on the dynamics of vulcanology, he proved rather
conclusively that the lunar craters could not be caused by anything that we know
as volcanic action.
"That left the bombardment theory as the simplest hypothesis. It looks good, on
the face of it, and a few minutes spent throwing pebbles into a patch of mud
will convince anyone that the lunar craters could have been formed by falling
meteors.
"But there are difficulties. If the Moon was struck so repeatedly, why not the
Earth? It hardly seems necessary to mention that the Earth's atmosphere would be
no protection against masses big enough to form craters like Endymion or Plato.
And if they fell after the Moon was a dead world while the Earth was still young
enough to change its face and erase the marks of bombardment, why did the
meteors avoid so nearly completely the great dry basins we call lunar seas?
"I want to cut this short; you'll find the data and the mathematical
investigations from the data here in my notes. There is one other major
objection to the meteor-bombardment theory: the great rays that spread from
Tycho across almost the entire surface of the Moon. It makes the Moon look like
a crystal ball that had been struck with a hammer, and impact from outside seems
evident, but there are difficulties. The striking mass, our hypothetical meteor,
must be small enough to have formed the crater of Tycho, but it must have the
mass and speed to crack an entire planet.
"Work it out for yourself ù you must either postulate a chunk out of the core of
a dwarf star, or speeds such as we have never observed within the system. It's
conceivable but a farfetched explanation."
He turned to King. "Doctor, does anything occur to you that might account for a
phenomenon like Tycho?"
The Superintendent grasped the arms of his chair, then glanced at his palms. He
fumbled for a handkerchief, and wiped them. "Go ahead," he said, almost
inaudibly.
"Very well then." Harrington drew out of his briefcase a large photograph of the
Moon ù a beautiful full-Moon portrait made at Lick. "I want you to imagine the
Moon as she might have been sometime in the past. The dark areas we call the
'seas' are actual oceans. It has an atmosphere, perhaps a heavier gas than
oxygen and nitrogen, but an active gas, capable of supporting some conceivable
form of life.
"For this is an inhabited planet, inhabited by intelligent beings, beings
capable of discovering atomic power and exploiting it!"
He pointed out on the photograph, near the southern limb, the lime-white circle
of Tycho, with its shining, incredible, thousand-mile-long rays spreading,
thrusting, jutting out from it. "Here . . . here at Tycho was located their main
power plant." He moved his fingers to a point near the equator and somewhat east
of meridian ù the point where three great dark areas merged, Mare Nubium, Mare
Imbrium, Oceanus Procellarun ù and picked out two bright splotches surrounded,
also, by rays, but shorter, less distinct, and wavy. "And here at Copernicus and
at Kepler, on islands at the middle of a great ocean, were secondary power
stations."
He paused, and interpolated soberly: "Perhaps they knew the danger they ran, but
wanted power so badly that they were willing to gamble the life of their race.
Perhaps they were ignorant of the ruinous possibilities of their little
machines, or perhaps their mathematicians assured them that it could not happen.
"But we will never know ù no one can ever know. For it blew up and killed them ù
and it killed their planet.
"It whisked off the gassy envelope and blew it into outer space. It blasted
great chunks off the planet's crust. Perhaps some of that escaped completely,
too, but all that did not reach the speed of escape fell back down in time and
splashed great ring-shaped craters in the land.
"The oceans cushioned the shock; only the more massive fragments formed craters
through the water. Perhaps some life still remained in those ocean depths. If
so, it was doomed to die ù for the water, unprotected by atmospheric pressure,
could not remain liquid and must inevitably escape in time to outer space. Its
life-blood drained away. The planet was dead ù dead by suicide!"
He met the grave eyes of his two silent listeners with an expression almost of
appeal. "Gentlemen . . . this is only a theory, I realize . . . only a theory, a
dream, a nightmare . . . but it has kept me awake so many nights that I had to
come tell you about it, and see if you saw it the same way I do. As for the
mechanics of it, it's all in there in my notes. You can check it ù and I pray
that you find some error! But it is the only lunar theory I have examined which
included all of the known data and accounted for all of them."
He appeared to have finished. Lentz spoke up. "Suppose, Captain, suppose we
check your mathematics and find no flaw ù what then?"
Harrington flung out his hands. "That's what I came here to find out!"
Although Lentz had asked the question, Harrington directed the appeal to King.
The Superintendent looked up; his eyes met the astronomer's, wavered and dropped
again. "There's nothing to be done," he said dully, "nothing at all."
Harrington stared at him in open amazement. "But good God, man!" he burst out.
"Don't you see it? That bomb has got to be disassembled ù at once!"
"Take it easy, Captain." Lentz's calm voice was a spray of cold water. "And
don't be too harsh on poor King ù this worries him even more than it does you.
What he means is this: we're not faced with a problem in physics, but with a
political and economic situation. Let's put it this way: King can no more dump
the bomb than a peasant with a vineyard on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius can
abandon his holdings and pauperize his family simply because there will be an
eruption some day.
"King doesn't own that bomb out there; he's only the custodian. If he dumps it
against the wishes of the legal owners, they'll simply oust him and put in
someone more amenable. No, we have to convince the owners."
"The President could do it," suggested Harrington. "I could get to the President
ù "
"No doubt you could, through the Navy Department. And you might even convince
him. But could he help much?"
"Why, of course he could. He's the President!"
"Wait a minute. You're Director of the Naval Observatory; suppose you took a
sledge hammer and tried to smash the big telescope ù how far would you get?"
"Not very far," Harrington conceded. "We guard the big fellow pretty closely."
"Nor can the President act in an arbitrary manner," Lentz persisted. "He's not
an unlimited monarch. If he shuts down this plant without due process of law,
the Federal courts will tie him in knots. I admit that Congress isn't helpless,
but ù would you like to try to give a congressional committee a course in the
mechanics of infinitesimals?"
Harrington readily stipulated the point. "But there is another way," he pointed
out. "Congress is responsive to public opinion. What we need to do is to
convince the public that the bomb is a menace to everybody. That could be done
without ever trying to explain things in terms of higher mathematics."
"Certainly it could," Lentz agreed. "You could go on the air with it and scare
everybody half to death. You could create the damnedest panic this slightly
slug-nutty country has ever seen. No, thank you. I, for one, would rather have
us all take the chance of being quietly killed than bring on a mass psychosis
that would destroy the culture we are building up. I think one taste of the
Crazy Years is enough."
"Well, then, what do you suggest?"
Lentz considered shortly, then answered: "All I see is a forlorn hope. We've got
to work on the Board of Directors and try to beat some sense into their heads."
King, who had been following the discussion with attention in spite of his tired
despondency, interjected a remark: "How would you go about that?"
"I don't know," Lentz admitted. "It will take some thinking. But it seems the
most fruitful line of approach. If it doesn't work, we can always fall back on
Harrington's notion of publicity ù I don't insist that the world commit suicide
to satisfy my criteria of evaluation."
Harrington glanced at his wristwatch ù a bulky affair ù and whistled. "Good
heavens!" he exclaimed. "I forgot the time! I'm supposed officially to be at the
Flagstaff Observatory."
King had automatically noted the time shown by the Captain's watch as it was
displayed. "But it can't be that late." he had objected. Harrington looked
puzzled, then laughed.
"It isn't ù not by two hours. We are in zone plus-seven; this shows zone
plus-five ù it's radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington."
"Did you say radio-synchronized?"
"Yes. Clever, isn't it?" He held it out for inspection. "I call it a
telechronometer; it's the only one of its sort to date. My nephew designed it
for me. He's a bright one, that boy. He'll go far. That is ù " his face clouded,
as if the little interlude had only served to emphasize the tragedy that hung
over them ù "if any of us live that long!"
A signal light glowed at King's desk, and Steinke's face showed on the
communicator screen. King answered him, then said, "Your car is ready, Dr.
Lentz."
"Let Captain Harrington have it."
"Then you're not going back to Chicago?"
"No. The situation has changed. If you want me, I'm stringing along."

The following Friday, Steinke ushered Lentz into Kings office. King looked
almost happy as he shook hands. "When did you ground, Doctor? I didn't expect
you back for another hour or so."
"Just now. I hired a cab instead of waiting for the shuttle."
"Any luck?"
"None. The same answer they gave you: "The Company is assured by independent
experts that Destry's mechanics is valid, and sees no reason to encourage an
hysterical attitude among its employees.' "
King tapped on his desk top, his eyes unfocused. Then, hitching himself around
to face Lentz directly, he said, "Do you suppose the Chairman is right?"
"How?"
"Could the three of us ù you, me and Harrington ù have gone off the deep end ù
slipped mentally?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"Certain. I looked up some independent experts of my own, not retained by the
Company, and had them check Harrington's work. It checks." Lentz purposely
neglected to mention that he had done so partly because he was none too sure of
King's present mental stability.
King sat up briskly, reached out and stabbed a push button. "I am going to make
one more try," he explained, "to see if I can't throw a scare into Dixon's thick
head. Steinke," he said to the communicator, "get me Mr. Dixon on the screen."
"Yes, sir."
In about two minutes the visiphone screen came to life and showed the features
of Chairman Dixon. He was transmitting, not from his office, but from the board
room of the Company in Jersey City. "Yes?" he said. "What is it,
Superintendent?" His manner was somehow both querulous and affable.
"Mr. Dixon," King began, "I've called to try to impress on you the seriousness
of the Company's action. I stake my scientific reputation that Harrington has
proved completely that ù "
"Oh, that? Mr. King, I thought you understood that that was a closed matter."
"But, Mr. Dixon ù "
"Superintendent, please! If there were any possible legitimate cause to fear, do
you think I would hesitate? I have children, you know, and grandchildren."
"That is just why ù "
"We try to conduct the affairs of the company with reasonable wisdom and in the
public interest. But we have other responsibilities, too. There are hundreds of
thousands of little stockholders who expect us to show a reasonable return on
their investment. You must not expect us to jettison a billion-dollar
corporation just because you've taken up astrology! Moon theory!" He sniffed.
"Very well, Mr. Chairman." King's tone was stiff.
"Don't take it that way, Mr. King. I'm glad you called ù the Board has just
adjourned a special meeting. They have decided to accept you for retirement ù
with full pay, of course."
"I did not apply for retirement!"
"I know, Mr. King, but the Board feels that ù "
"I understand. Good-by!"
"Mr. King ù "
"Good-by!" He switched him off, and turned to Lentz. " ' ù with full pay,' " he
quoted, "which I can enjoy in any way that I like for the rest of my life ù just
as happy as a man in the death house!"
"Exactly," Lentz agreed. "Well, we've tried our way. I suppose we should call up
Harrington now and let him try the political and publicity method."
"I suppose so," King seconded absentmindedly. "Will you be leaving for Chicago
now?"
"No," said Lentz. "No.... I think I will catch the shuttle for Los Angeles and
take the evening rocket for the antipodes."
King looked surprised, but said nothing. Lentz answered the unspoken comment.
"Perhaps some of us on the other side of the Earth will survive. I've done all
that I can here. I would rather be a live sheepherder in Australia than a dead
psychiatrist in Chicago."
King nodded vigorously. "That shows horse sense. For two cents, I'd dump the
bomb now and go with you."
"Not horse sense, my friend ù a horse will run back into a burning barn, which
is exactly not what I plan to do. Why don't you do it and come along? If you
did, it would help Harrington to scare 'em to death."
'I believe I will!"
Steinke's face appeared again on the screen. "Harper and Erickson are here,
chief."
"I'm busy."
"They are pretty urgent about seeing you."
"Oh . . . all right," King said in a tired voice, "show them in. It doesn't
matter."
They breezed in, Harper in the van. He commenced talking at once, oblivious to
the Superintendent's morose preoccupation. 'We've got it, chief, we've got it ù
and it all checks out to the umpteenth decimal!"
"You've got what? Speak English."
Harper grinned. He was enjoying his moment of triumph, and was stretching it out
to savor it. "Chief, do you remember a few weeks back when I asked for an
additional allotment ù a special one without specifying how I was going to spend
it?"
"Yes. Come on ù get to the point."
"You kicked at first, but finally granted it. Remember? Well, we've got
something to show for it, all tied up in pink ribbon. It's the greatest advance
in radioactivity since Hahn split the nucleus. Atomic fuel, chief, atomic fuel,
safe, concentrated, and controllable. Suitable for rockets, for power plants,
for any damn thing you care to use it for."
King showed alert interest for the first time. "You mean a power source that
doesn't require the bomb?"
"The bomb? Oh, no, I didn't say that. You use the bomb to make the fuel, then
you use the fuel anywhere and anyhow you like, with something like ninety-two
percent recovery of the energy of the bomb. But you could junk the mercury-steam
sequence, if you wanted to.
King's first wild hope of a way out of his dilemma was dashed; he subsided. "Go
ahead. Tell me about it."
"Well ù It's a matter of artificial radioactives. Just before I asked for that
special research allotment, Erickson and I ù Dr. Lentz had a finger in it, too ù
found two isotopes of a radioactive that seemed to be mutually antagonistic.
That is, when we goosed 'em in the presence of each other they gave up their
latent energy all at once ù blew all to hell. The important point is, we were
using just a gnat's whisker of mass of each ù the reaction didn't require a big
mass like the bomb to maintain it."
"I don't see," objected King, "how that could ù "
"Neither do we, quite ù but it works. We've kept it quiet until we were sure. We
checked on what we had, and we found a dozen other fuels. Probably we'll be able
to tailor-make fuels for any desired purpose. But here it is." Harper handed
King a bound sheaf of typewritten notes which he had been carrying under the
arm. "That's your copy. Look it over."
King started to do so. Lentz joined him, after a look that was a silent request
for permission, which Erickson had answered with his only verbal contribution,
"Sure Doc."
As King read, the troubled feeling of an acutely harassed executive left him.
His dominant personality took charge, that of the scientist. He enjoyed the
controlled and cerebral ecstasy of the impersonal seeker for the elusive truth.
The emotions felt in the throbbing thalamus were permitted only to form a
sensuous obbligato for the cold flame of cortical activity. For the time being,
he was sane, more nearly completely sane than most men ever achieve at any time.
For a long period there was only an occasional grunt, the clatter of turned
pages, a nod of approval. At last he put it down.
"It's the stuff," he said. "You've done it, boys. It's great; I'm proud of you."
Erickson glowed a bright pink and swallowed. Harper's small, tense figure gave
the ghost of a wriggle, reminiscent of a wire-haired terrier receiving approval.
"That fine, chief. We'd rather hear you say that than get the Nobel Prize."
"I think you'll probably get it. However ù " the proud light in his eyes died
down ù "I'm not going to take any action in this matter."
"Why not, chief?" Harper's tone was bewildered.
"I'm being retired. My successor will take over in the near future; this is too
big a matter to start just before a change in administration."
"You being retire! Blazes!"
"About the same reason I took you off the bomb ù at least, the Directors think
so."
"But that's nonsense! You were right to take me off the bomb; I was getting
jumpy. But you're another matter ù we all depend on you."
"Thanks, Cal ù but that's how it is; there's nothing to be done about it." He
turned to Lentz. "I think this is the last ironical touch needed to make the
whole thing pure farce," he observed bitterly. "This thing is big, bigger than
we can guess at this stage ù and I have to give it a miss.
"Well," Harper burst out, "I can think of something to do about it!" He strode
over to King's desk and snatched up the manuscript. "Either you superintend the
exploitation or the company will damn well get along without our discovery!"
Erickson concurred belligerently.
"Wait a minute." Lentz had the floor. "Dr. Harper, have you already achieved a
practical rocket fuel?"
"I said so. We've got it on hand now."
"An escape-speed fuel?" They understood his verbal shorthand-a fuel that would
lift a rocket free of the Earth's gravitational pull.
"Sure. Why, you could take any of the Clipper rockets, refit them a trifle, and
have breakfast on the Moon."
"Very well. Bear with me ù " He obtained a sheet of paper from King and
commenced to write. They watched in mystified impatience. He continued briskly
for some minutes, hesitating only momentarily. Presently he stopped and spun the
paper over to King. "Solve it!" he demanded.
King studied the paper. Lentz had assigned symbols to a great number of factors,
some social, some psychological, some physical, some economical. He had thrown
them together into a structural relationship, using the symbols of calculus of
statement. King understood the paramathematical operations indicated by the
symbols, but he was not as used to them as he was to the symbols and operations
of mathematical physics. He plowed through the equations, moving his lips
slightly in unconscious subvocalization.
He accepted a pencil from Lentz and completed the solution. It required several
more lines, a few more equations, before the elements canceled out, or
rearranged themselves, into a definite answer.
He stared at this answer while puzzlement gave way to dawning comprehension and
delight.
He looked up. "Erickson! Harper!" he rapped out. "We will take your new fuel,
refit a large rocket, install the bomb in it, and throw it into an orbit around
the Earth, far out in space. There we will use it to make more fuel, safe fuel,
for use on Earth, with the danger from the bomb itself limited to the operators
actually on watch!"
There was no applause. It was not that sort of an idea; their minds were still
struggling with the complex implications.
"But, chief," Harper finally managed, "how about your retirement? We're still
not going to stand for it."
"Don't worry," King assured him "It's all in there, implicit in those equations,
you two, me, Lentz, the Board of Directors ù and just what we all have to do to
accomplish it."
"All except the matter of time," Lentz cautioned.
"Eh?"
"You'll note that elapsed time appears in your answer as an undetermined
unknown."
"Yes . . . yes, of course. That's the chance we have to take. Let's get busy!"

Chairman Dixon called the Board of Directors to order. "This being a special
meeting, we'll dispense with minutes and reports," he announced. "As set forth
in the call we have agreed to give the retiring superintendent three hours of
our time."
"Mr. Chairman ù "
"Yes, Mr. Thornton?"
"I thought we had settled that matter."
"We have, Mr. Thornton, but in view of Superintendent King's long and
distinguished service, if he asks a hearing, we are honor bound to grant it. You
have the floor, Dr. King."
King got up and stated briefly, "Dr. Lentz will speak for me." He sat down.
Lentz had to wait till coughing, throat clearing and scraping of chairs
subsided. It was evident that the board resented the outsider.
Lentz ran quickly over the main points in the argument which contended that the
bomb presented an intolerable danger anywhere on the face of the Earth. He moved
on at once to the alternative proposal that the bomb should be located in a
rocketship, an artificial moonlet flying in a free orbit around the Earth at a
convenient distance ù say, fifteen thousand miles ù while secondary power
stations on Earth burned a safe fuel manufactured by the bomb.
He announced the discovery of the Harper-Erickson technique and dwelt on what it
meant to them commercially. Each point was presented as persuasively as
possible, with the full power of his engaging personality. Then he paused and
waited for them to blow off steam.
They did. "Visionary ù " "Unproved ù " No essential change in the situation ù "
The substance of it was that they were very happy to hear of the new fuel, but
not particularly impressed by it. Perhaps in another twenty years, after it had
been thoroughly tested and proved commercially, and provided enough uranium had
been mined to build another bomb, they might consider setting up another power
station outside the atmosphere. In the meantime there was no hurry.
Lentz patiently and politely dealt with their objections. He emphasized the
increasing incidence of occupational psychoneurosis among the engineers and
grave danger to everyone near the bomb even under the orthodox theory. He
reminded them of their insurance and indemnity-bond costs, and of the "squeeze"
they paid State politicians.
Then he changed his tone and let them have it directly and brutally.
"Gentlemen," he said, "we believe that we are fighting for our lives ù our own
lives, our families and every life on the globe. If you refuse this compromise,
we will fight as fiercely and with as little regard for fair play as any
cornered animal." With that he made his first move in attack.
It was quite simple. He offered for their inspection the outline of a propaganda
campaign on a national scale, such as any major advertising firm could carry out
as matter of routine. It was complete to the last detail, television broadcasts,
spot plugs, newspaper and magazine coverage and ù most important ù a supporting
whispering campaign and a letters-to-Congress organization. Every businessman
there knew from experience how such things worked.
But its object was to stir up fear of the bomb and to direct that fear, not into
panic, but into rage against the Board of Directors personally, and into a
demand that the government take action to have the bomb removed to outer space.
"This is blackmail! We'll stop you!"
"I think not," Lentz replied gently. "You may be able to keep us out of some of
the newspapers, but you can't stop the rest of it. You can't even keep us off
the air ù ask the Federal Communications Commission." It was true Harrington had
handled the political end and had performed his assignment well; the President
was convinced.
Tempers were snapping on all sides; Dixon had to pound for order. "Dr. Lentz,"
he said, his own temper under taut control, "you plan to make every one of us
appear a black-hearted scoundrel with no other thought than personal profit,
even at the expense of the lives of others. You know that is not true; this is a
simple difference of opinion as to what is wise."
"I did not say it was true," Lentz admitted blandly, "but you will admit that I
can convince the public that you are deliberate villains. As to it being a
difference of opinion ù you are none of you atomic physicists; you are not
entitled to hold opinions in this matter.
"As a matter of fact," he went on callously, "the only doubt in my mind is
whether or not an enraged public will destroy your precious power plant before
Congress has time to exercise eminent domain and take it away from you!"
Before they had time to think up arguments in answer and ways of circumventing
him, before their hot indignation had cooled and set as stubborn resistance, he
offered his gambit. He produced another layout for a propaganda campaign ù an
entirely different sort.
This time the Board of Directors was to be built up, not torn down. All of the
same techniques were to be used; behind-the-scenes feature articles with plenty
of human interest would describe the functions of the company, describe it as a
great public trust, administered by patriotic, unselfish statesmen of the
business world. At the proper point in the campaign, the Harper-Erickson fuel
would be announced not as a semiaccidental result of the initiative of two
employees, but as the long-expected end product of years of systematic research
conducted under a fixed policy growing naturally out of their humane
determination to remove forever the menace of explosion from even the sparsely
settled Arizona desert.
No mention was to be made of the danger of complete, planet-embracing
catastrophe.
Lentz discussed it. He dwelt on the appreciation that would be due them from a
grateful world. He invited them to make a noble sacrifice and, with subtle
misdirection, tempted them to think of themselves as heroes. He deliberately
played on one of the most deep-rooted of simian instincts, the desire for
approval from one's kind, deserved or not.
All the while he was playing for time, as he directed his attention from one
hard case, one resistant mind, to another. He soothed and he tickled and he
played on personal foibles. For the benefit of the timorous and the devoted
family men, he again painted a picture of the suffering, death and destruction
that might result from their well-meant reliance on the unproved and highly
questionable predictions of Destry's mathematics. Then he described in glowing
detail a picture of a world free from worry but granted almost unlimited power,
safe power from an invention which was theirs for this one small concession.
It worked. They did not reverse themselves all at once, but a committee was
appointed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed spaceship power plant.
By sheer brass Lentz suggested names for the committee and Dixon confirmed his
nominations, not because he wished to, particularly, but because he was caught
off guard and could not think of a reason to refuse without affronting those
colleagues.
The impending retirement of King was not mentioned by either side. Privately,
Lentz felt sure that it never would be mentioned.

It worked, but there was left much to do. For the first few days after the
victory in committee, King felt much elated by the prospect of an early release
from the soul-killing worry. He was buoyed up by pleasant demands of manifold
new administrative duties. Harper and Erickson were detached to Goddard Field to
collaborate with the rocket engineers there in design of firing chambers,
nozzles, fuel stowage, fuel metering and the like. A schedule had to be worked
out with the business office to permit as much power of the bomb as possible to
ù be diverted to making atomic fuel, and a giant combustion chamber for atomic
fuel had to be designed and ordered to replace the bomb itself during the
interim between the time it was shut down on Earth and the later time when
sufficient local, smaller plants could be built to carry the commercial load. He
was busy.
When the first activity had died down and they were settled in a new routine,
pending the shutting down of the bomb and its removal to outer space, King
suffered an emotional reaction. There was, by then, nothing to do but wait, and
tend the bomb, until the crew at Goddard Field smoothed out the bugs and
produced a space-worthy rocketship.
They ran into difficulties, overcame them, and came across more difficulties.
They had never used such high reaction velocities; it took many trials to find a
nozzle shape that would give reasonably high efficiency. When that was solved,
and success seemed in sight, the jets burned out on a time trial ground test.
They were stalemated for weeks over that hitch.
Back at the power plant Superintendent King could do nothing but chew his nails
and wait. He had not even the release of running over to Goddard Field to watch
the progress of the research, for, urgently as he desired to, he felt an even
stronger, an overpowering compulsion to watch over the bomb lest it ù
heartbreakingly! ù blow up at the last minute.
He took to hanging around the control room. He had to stop that; his unease
communicated itself to his watch engineers; two of them cracked up in a single
day ù one of them on watch.
He must face the fact ù there had been a grave upswing in psychoneurosis among
his engineers since the period of watchful waiting had commenced. At first, they
had tried to keep the essential facts of the plan a close secret, but it had
leaked out, perhaps through some member of the investigating committee. He
admitted to himself now that it had been a mistake ever to try to keep it secret
ù Lentz had advised against it, and the engineers not actually engaged in the
change-over were bound to know that something was up.
He took all of the engineers into confidence at last, under oath of secrecy.
That had helped for a week or more, a week in which they were all given a
spiritual lift by the knowledge, as he had been. Then it had worn off, the
reaction had set in, and the psychological observers had started disqualifying
engineers for duty almost daily. They were even reporting each other as mentally
unstable with great frequency; he might even be faced with a shortage of
psychiatrists if that kept up, he thought to himself with bitter amusement. His
engineers were already standing four hours in every sixteen. If one more dropped
out, he'd put himself on watch. That would be a relief, to tell himself the
truth.
Somehow, some of the civilians around about and the nontechnical employees were
catching onto the secret. That mustn't go on ù if it spread any farther there
might be a nation-wide panic. But how the hell could he stop it? He couldn't.
He turned over in bed, rearranged his pillow, and tried once more to get to
sleep. No soap. His head ached, his eyes were balls of pain, and his brain was a
ceaseless grind of useless, repetitive activity, like a disk recording stuck in
one groove.
God! This was unbearable! He wondered if he were cracking up ù if he already had
cracked up. This was worse, many times worse, than the old routine when he had
simply acknowledged the danger and tried to forget it as much as much as
possible. Not that the bomb was any different ù it was this
five-minutes-to-armistice feeling, this waiting for the curtain to go up, this
race against time with nothing to do to help.
He sat up, switched on his bed lamp, and looked at the clock. Three thirty. Not
so good. He got up, went into his bathroom, and dissolved a sleeping powder in a
glass of whiskey and water, half and half. He gulped it down and went back to
bed. Presently he dozed off.

He was running, fleeing down a long corridor. At the end lay safety ù he knew
that, but he was so utterly exhausted that he doubted his ability to finish the
race. The thing pursuing him was catching up; he forced his leaden, aching legs
into greater activity. The thing behind him increased its pace, and actually
touched him. His heart stopped, then pounded again. He became aware that he was
screaming, shrieking in mortal terror.
But he had to reach the end of that corridor; more depended on it than just
himself. He had to. He had to! He had to!
Then the sound hit him, and he realized that he had lost, realized it with utter
despair and utter, bitter defeat. He had failed, the bomb had blown up.

The sound was the alarm going off; it was seven o'clock. His pajamas were
soaked, dripping with sweat, and his heart still pounded. Every ragged nerve
throughout his body screamed for release. It would take more than a cold shower
to cure this case of the shakes.
He got to the office before the janitor was out of it. He sat there, doing
nothing, until Lentz walked in on him, two hours later. The psychiatrist came in
just as he was taking two small tablets from a box in his desk.
"Easy . . . easy, old man," Lentz said in a slow voice. "What have you there?"
He came around and gently took possession of the box.
"Just a sedative."
Lentz studied the inscription on the cover. "How many have you had today?"
"Just two, so far."
"You don't need a sedative; you need a walk in the fresh air. Come, take one
with me."
"You're a fine one to talk ù you're smoking a cigarette that isn't lighted!"
"Me? Why, so I am! We both need that walk. Come."
Harper arrived less than ten minutes after they had left the office. Steinke was
not in the outer office. He walked on through and pounded on the door of King's
private office, then waited with the man who accompanied him ù a hard young chap
with an easy confidence to his bearing. Steinke let them in.
Harper brushed on past him with a casual greeting, then checked himself when he
saw that there was no one else inside.
"Where's the chief?" he demanded.
"Gone out. Should be back soon."
"I'll wait. Oh ù Steinke, this is Greene. Greene ù Steinke."
The two shook hands. "What brings you back, Cal?" Steinke asked, turning back to
Harper.
"Well . . . I guess it's all right to tell you ù "
The communicator screen flashed into sudden activity, and cut him short. A face
filled most of the frame. It was apparently too close to the pickup, as it was
badly out of focus. "Superintendent!" it yelled in an agonized voice. "The bomb
ù "
A shadow flashed across the screen, they heard a dull smack, and the face slid
out of the screen. As it fell it revealed the control room behind it. Someone
was down on the floor plates, a nameless heap. Another figure ran across the
field of pickup and disappeared.
Harper snapped into action first. "That was Silard!" he shouted, "in the control
room! Come on, Steinke! He was already in motion himself.
Steinke went dead-white, but hesitated only an unmeasurable instant. He pounded
sharp on Harper's heels. Greene followed without invitation, in a steady run
that kept easy pace with them.
They had to wait for a capsule to unload at the tube station. Then all three of
them tried to crowd into a two-passenger capsule. It refused to start, and
moments were lost before Greene piled out and claimed another car.
The four-minute trip at heavy acceleration seemed an interminable crawl. Harper
was convinced that the system had broken down, when the familiar click and sigh
announced their arrival at the station under the bomb. They jammed each other
trying to get out at the same time.
The lift was up; they did not wait for it. That was unwise; they gained no time
by it, and arrived at the control level out of breath. Nevertheless, they
speeded up when they reached the top, zigzagged frantically around the outer
shield, and burst into the control room.
The limp figure was still on the floor, and another, also inert, was near it.
The second's helmet was missing.
The third figure was bending over the trigger. He looked up as they came in, and
charged them. They hit him together, and all three went down. It was two to one,
but they got in each other's way. The man's heavy armor protected him from the
force of their blows. He fought with senseless, savage violence.
Harper felt a bright, sharp pain; his right arm went limp and useless. The
armored figure was struggling free of them.
There was a shout from somewhere behind them, "Hold still!"
Harper saw a flash with the corner of one eye, a deafening crack hurried on top
of it, and re-echoed painfully in the restricted space.
The armored figure dropped back to his knees, balanced there, and then fell
heavily on his face. Greene stood in the entrance, a service pistol balanced in
his hand.
Harper got up and went over to the trigger. He tried to reduce the dampening
adjustment, but his right hand wouldn't carry out his orders, and his left was
too clumsy. Steinke," he called, "come here! Take over."
Steinke hurried up, nodded as he glanced at the readings, and set busily to
work.

It was thus that King found them when he bolted in a very few minutes later.
"Harper!" he shouted, while his quick glance was still taking in the situation.
"What's happened?"
Harper told him briefly. He nodded. "I saw the tail end of the fight from my
office ù Steinke!" He seemed to grasp for the first time who was on the trigger.
"He can't manage the controls ù " He hurried toward him.
Steinke looked up at his approach. "Chief!" he called out. "Chief! I've got my
mathematics back!"
King looked bewildered, then nodded vaguely, and let him be. He turned back to
Harper. "How does it happen you're here?"
"Me? I'm here to report ù we've done it, chief!"
"Eh?"
"We've finished; it's all done. Erickson stayed behind to complete the
power-plant installation on the big ship. I came over in the ship we'll use to
shuttle between Earth and the big ship, the power plant. Four minutes from
Goddard Field to here in her. That's the pilot over there." He pointed to the
door, where Greene's solid form partially hid Lentz.
"Wait a minute. You say that everything is ready to install the bomb in the
ship? You're sure?"
"Positive. The big ship has already flown with our fuel-longer and faster than
she will have to fly to reach station in her orbit; I was in it ù out in space,
chief! We're all set, six ways from zero."
King stared at the dumping switch, mounted behind glass at the top of the
instrument board. "There's fuel enough," he said softly, as if he were alone and
speaking only to himself; "there's been fuel enough for weeks."
He walked swiftly over to the switch, smashed the glass with his fist, and
pulled it.
The room rumbled and shivered as two and a half tons of molten, massive metal,
heavier than gold, coursed down channels, struck against baffles, split into a
dozen dozen streams, and plunged to rest in leaden receivers ù to rest, safe and
harmless, until it should be reassembled far out in space.



SEARCHLIGHT


"WILL SHE HEAR YOU?"
"If she's on this face of the Moon. If she was able to get out of the ship. If
her suit radio wasn't damaged. If she has it turned on. If she is alive. Since
the ship is silent and no radar beacon has been spotted, it is unlikely that she
or the pilot lived through it."
"She's got to be found! Stand by, Space Station. Tycho Base, acknowledge."
Reply lagged about three seconds, Washington to Moon and back. "Lunar Base,
Commanding General."
"General, put every man on the Moon out searching for Betsy!"
Speed-of-light lag made the answer sound grudging. "Sir, do you know how big the
Moon is?"
"No matter! Betsy Barnes is there somewhere ù so every man is to search until
she is found. If she's dead, your precious pilot would be better off dead, too!"
"Sir, the Moon is almost fifteen million square miles. If I used every man I
have, each would have over a thousand square miles to search. I gave Betsy my
best pilot. I won't listen to threats against him when he can't answer back. Not
from anyone, sir! I'm sick of being told what to do by people who don't know
Lunar conditions. My advice ù my official advice, sir ù is to let Meridian
Station try. Maybe they can work a miracle."
The answer rapped back, "Very well, General! I'll speak to you later. Meridian
Station! Report your plans."
Elizabeth Barnes, "Blind Betsy," child genius of the piano, had been making a
USO tour of the Moon. She "wowed 'em" at Tycho Base, then lifted by jeep rocket
for Farside Hardbase, to entertain our lonely missile men behind the Moon. She
should have been there in an hour. Her pilot was a safety pilot; such ships
shuttled unpiloted between Tycho and Farside daily.
After lift-off her ship departed from its programming, was lost by Tycho's
radars. It was . . . somewhere.
Not in space, else it would be radioing for help and its radar beacon would be
seen by other ships, space stations, surface bases. It had crashed ù or made
emergency landing ù somewhere on the vastness of Luna.

"Meridian Space Station, Director speaking ù " Lag was unnoticeable; radio
bounce between Washington and the station only 22,000 miles up was only a
quarter second. "We've patched Earthside stations to blanket the Moon with our
call. Another broadcast blankets the far side from Station Newton at the
three-body stable position. Ships from Tycho are orbiting the Moon's rim ù that
band around the edge which is in radio shadow from us and from the Newton. If we
hear ù "
"Yes, yes! How about radar search?"
"Sir, a rocket on the surface looks to radar like a million other features the
same size. Our one chance is to get them to answer . . . if they can.
Ultrahigh-resolution radar might spot them in months ù but suits worn in those
little rockets carry only six hours air. We are praying they will hear and
answer."
"When they answer, you'll slap a radio direction finder on them. Eh?"
"No, sir."
"In God's name, why not?"
"Sir, a direction finder is useless for this job. It would tell us only that the
signal came from the Moon ù which doesn't help."
"Doctor, you're saying that you might hear Betsy ù and not know where she is?"
"We're as blind as she is. We hope that she will be able to lead us to her . . .
if she hears us."
"How?"
"With a Laser. An intense, very tight beam of light. She'll hear it ù "
"Hear a beam of light?"
"Yes, sir. We are jury-rigging to scan like radar ù that won't show anything.
But we are modulating it to give a carrier wave in radio frequency, then
modulating that into audio frequency ù and controlling that by a piano. If she
hears us, we'll tell her to listen while we scan the Moon and run the scale on
the piano ù "
"All this while a little girl is dying?"
"Mister President ù shut up!"
"Who was THAT?"
"I'm Betsy's father. They've patched me from Omaha. Please, Mr. President, keep
quiet and let them work. I want my daughter back."
The President answered tightly, "Yes, Mr. Barnes. Go ahead, Director. Order
anything you need."

In Station Meridian the director wiped his face. "Getting anything?"
"No. Boss, can't something be done about that Rio station? It's sitting right on
the frequency!"
"We'll drop a brick on them. Or a bomb. Joe, tell the President."
"I heard, Director. They'll be silenced!"
"Sh! Quiet! Betsy ù do you hear me?" The operator looked intent, made an
adjustment.
From a speaker came a girl's light, sweet voice: " ù to hear somebody! Gee, I'm
glad! Better come quick ù the Major is hurt."
The Director jumped to the microphone. "Yes, Betsy, we'll hurry. You've got to
help us. Do you know where you are?"
"Somewhere on the Moon, I guess. We bumped hard and I was going to kid him about
it when the ship fell over. I got unstrapped and found Major Peters and he isn't
moving. Not dead ù I don't think so; his suit puffs out like mine and I hear
something when I push my helmet against him. I just now managed to get the door
open." She added, "This can't be Farside; it's supposed to be night there. I'm
in sunshine, I'm sure. This suit is pretty hot."
"Betsy, you must stay outside. You've got to be where you can see us."
She chuckled. "That's a good one. I see with my ears."
"Yes. You'll see us, with your ears. Listen, Betsy. We're going to scan the Moon
with a beam of light. You'll hear it as a piano note. We've got the Moon split
into the eighty-eight piano notes. When you hear one, yell, 'Now!' Then tell us
what note you heard. Can you do that?"
"Of course," she said confidently, "if the piano is in tune."
"It is. All right, we re starting ù "

"What note, Betsy?"
"Now!"
"E flat the first octave above middle C."
"This note, Betsy?"
"That's what I said."
The Director called out, "Where's that on the grid? In Mare Nubium? Tell the
General!" He said to the microphone, "We're finding you, Betsy honey! Now we
scan just that part you're on. We change setup. Want to talk to your Daddy
meanwhile?"
"Gosh! Could I?"
"Yes indeed!"
Twenty minutes later he cut in and heard: " ù of course not, Daddy. Oh, a teensy
bit scared when the ship fell. But people take care of me, always have."
"Betsy?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Be ready to tell us again."

"Now!" She added, "That's a bullfrog G, three octaves down."
"This note?"
"That's right."
"Get that on the grid and tell the General to get his ships up! That cuts it to
a square ten miles on a side! Now, Betsy ù we know almost where you are. We are
going to focus still closer. Want to go inside and cool off?"
"I'm not too hot. Just sweaty."

Forty minutes later the General's voice rang out: "They've spotted the ship!
They see her waving!"



LIFE-LINE

THE CHAIRMAN rapped loudly for order. Gradually the cat-calls and boos died away
as several self-appointed sergeant-at-arms persuaded a few hot-headed
individuals to sit down. The speaker on the rostrum by the chairman seemed
unaware of the disturbance. His bland, faintly insolent face was impassive. The
chairman turned to the speaker and addressed him in a voice in which anger and
annoyance were barely restrained.
"Dr. Pinero" ù the "Doctor" was faintly stressed ù "I must apologize to you for
the unseemly outburst during your remarks. I am surprised that my colleagues
should so far forget the dignity proper to men of science as to interrupt a
speaker, no matter" ù he paused and set his mouth ù "no matter how great the
provocation." Pinero smiled in his face, a smile that was in some way an open
insult. The chairman visibly controlled his temper and continued: "I am anxious
that the program be concluded decently and in order. I want you to finish your
remarks. Nevertheless, I must ask you to refrain from affronting our
intelligence with ideas that any educated man knows to be fallacious. Please
confine yourself to your discovery ù if you have made one."
Pinero spread his fat, white hands, palms down. "How can I possibly put a new
idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?"
The audience stirred and muttered. Someone shouted from the rear of the hall:
"Throw the charlatan out! We've had enough."
The chairman pounded his gavel.
"Gentlemen! Please!"
Then to Pinero, "Must I remind you that you are not a member of this body, and
that we did not invite you?"
Pinero's eyebrows lifted. "So? I seem to remember an invitation on the
letterhead of the Academy."
The chairman chewed his lower lip before replying. "True. I wrote that
invitation myself. But it was at the request of one of the trustees ù a fine,
public-spirited gentleman, but not a scientist, not a member of the Academy."
Pinero smiled his irritating smile. "So? I should have guessed. Old Bidwell, not
so, of Amalgamated Life Insurance? And he wanted his trained seals to expose me
as a fraud, yes? For if I can tell a man the day of his own death, no one will
buy his pretty policies. But how can you expose me, if you will not listen to me
first? Even supposing you had the wit to understand me? Bah! He has sent jackals
to tear down a lion." He deliberately turned his back on them.
The muttering of the crowd swelled and took on a vicious tone. The chairman
cried vainly for order. There arose a figure in the front row.
"Mr. Chairman!"
The chairman grasped the opening and shouted: "Gentlemen! Dr. van Rhein Smitt
has the floor." The commotion died away.
The doctor cleared his throat, smoothed the forelock of his beautiful white
hair, and thrust one hand into a side pocket, of his smartly tailored trousers.
He assumed his women's-club manner.
"Mr. Chairman, fellow members of the Academy of Science, let us have tolerance.
Even a murderer has the right to say his say before the State exacts its
tribute. Shall we do less? Even though one may be intellectually certain of the
verdict? I grant Dr. Pinero every consideration that should be given by this
august body to any unaffiliated colleague, even though" ù he bowed slightly in
Pinero's direction ù "we may not be familiar with the university which bestowed
his degree. If what he has to say is false, it cannot harm us. If what he has to
say is true, we should know it." His mellow, cultivated voice rolled on,
soothing and calming. "If the eminent doctor's manner appears a trifle inurbane
of our tastes, we must bear in mind that the doctor may be from a place, or a
stratum, not so meticulous in these matters. Now our good friend and benefactor
has asked us to hear this person and carefully assess the merit of his claims.
Let us do so with dignity and decorum."
He sat down to a tumble of applause, comfortably aware that he had enhanced his
reputation as an intellectual leader. Tomorrow the papers would again mention
the good sense and persuasive personality of "American's Handsomest University
President." Who knows; maybe now old Bidwell would come through with that
swimming-pool donation.
When the applause had ceased, the chairman turned to where the center of the
disturbance sat, hands folded over his little round belly, face serene.
'Will you continue, Dr. Pinero?"
"Why should I?"
The chairman shrugged his shoulders. "You came for that purpose."
Pinero arose. "So true. So very true. But was I wise to come? Is there anyone
here who has an open mind, who can stare a bare fact in the face without
blushing? I think not. Even that so-beautiful gentleman who asked you to hear me
out has already judged me and condemned me. He seeks order, not truth. Suppose
truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not. Still, if I do not
speak you will win your point by default. The little man in the street will
think that you little men have exposed me, Pinero, as a hoaxer, a pretender.
"I will repeat my discovery. In simple language, I have invented a technique to
tell how long a man will live. r
can give you advance billing of the Angel of Death. I can tell you when the
Black Camel will kneel at your door. In five minutes' time, with my apparatus, I
can tell any of you how many grains of sand are still left in your hour-glass."
He passed and folded his arms across his chest. For a moment no one spoke. The
audience grew restless.
Finally the chairman intervened. "You aren't finished, Dr. Pinero?"
"What more is there to say?"
"You haven't told us how your discovery works."
Pinero's eyebrows shot up. "You suggest that I should turn over the fruits of my
work for children to play with? This is dangerous knowledge, my friend. I keep
it for the man who understands it, myself." He tapped his chest.
"How are we to know that you have anything back of your wild claims?"
"So simple. You send a committee to watch me demonstrate. If it works, fine. You
admit it and tell the world so. If it does not work, I am discredited, and will
apologize. Even I, Pinero, will apologize."
A slender, stoop-shouldered man stood up in the back of the hall. The chair
recognized him and he spoke.
"Mr. Chairman, how can the eminent doctor seriously propose such a course? Does
he expect us to wait around for twenty or thirty years for someone to die and
prove his claims?"
Pinero ignored the chair and answered directly.
"Pfui! Such nonsense! Are you so ignorant of statistics that you do not know
that in any large group there is at least one who will die in the immediate
future? I make you a proposition. Let me test each one of you in this room, and
I will name the man who will die within the fortnight, yes, and the day and hour
of his death." He glanced fiercely around the room. "Do you accept?"
Another figure got to his feet, a portly man who spoke in measured syllables.
"I, for one, cannot countenance such an experiment. As a medical man, I have
noted with sorrow the plain marks of serious heart trouble in many of our elder
colleagues. If Dr. Pinero knows those symptoms, as he may, and were he to select
as his victim one of their number, the man so selected would be likely to die on
schedule, whether the distinguished speaker's mechanical egg timer works or
not."
Another speaker backed him up at once. "Dr. Shepard is right. Why should we
waste time on voodoo tricks? It is my belief that this person who calls himself
Dr. Pinero wants to use this body to give his statements authority. If we
participate in this farce, we play into his hands. I don't know what his racket
is, but you can bet that he has figured out some way to use us for advertising
his schemes. I move, Mr. Chairman, that we proceed with our regular business."
The motion carried by acclamation, but Pinero did not sit down. Amidst cries of
"Order! Order!" he shook his untidy head at them, and had his say.
"Barbarians! Imbeciles! Stupid dolts! Your kind have blocked the recognition of
every great discovery since time began. Such ignorant canaille are enough to
start Galileo spinning in his grave. That fat fool down there twiddling his
elk's tooth calls himself a medical man. Witch doctor would be a better term!
That little bald-headed runt over there ù You! You style yourself a philosopher,
and prate about life and time in your neat categories. What do you know of
either one? How can you ever learn when you won't examine the truth when you
have a chance? Bah!" He spat upon the stage. "You call this an Academy of
Science. I call it an undertakers' convention, interested only in embalming the
ideas of your red-blooded predecessors
He paused for breath and was grasped on each side by two members of the platform
committee and rushed out the wings. Several reporters arose hastily from the
press table and followed him. The chairman declared the meeting adjourned.

The newspapermen caught up with Pinero as he was going out by the stage door. He
walked with a light, springy step, and whistled a little tune. There was no
trace of the belligerence he had shown a moment before. They crowded about him.
"How about an interview, doc?" "What d'yuh think of modern education?" "You
certainly told 'em. What are your views on life after death?" "Take off your
hat, doc, and look at the birdie."
He grinned at them all. "One at a time, boys, and not so fast. I used to be a
newspaperman myself. How about coming up to my place?"
A few minutes later they were trying to find places to sit down in Pinero's
messy bed-living room, and lighting his cigars. Pinero looked around and beamed.
"What'll it be, boys? Scotch or Bourbon?" When that was taken care of he got
down to business. "Now boys, what do you want to know?"
"Lay it on the line, doc. Have you got something, or haven't you?"
"Most assuredly I have something, my young friend."
"Then tell us how it works. That guff you handed the profs won't get you
anywhere now."
"Please, my dear fellow. It is my invention. I expect to make some money with
it. Would you have me give it away to the first person who asks for it?"
"See here, doc, you've got to give us something if you expect to get a break in
the morning papers. What do you use? A crystal ball?"
"No, not quite. Would you like to see my apparatus?"
"Sure. Now we're getting somewhere."
He ushered them into an adjoining room, and waved his hand. "There it is, boys."
The mass equipment that met their eyes vaguely resembled a medico's office X-ray
gear. Beyond the obvious fact that it used electrical power, and that some of
the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a casual inspection gave no clue to
its actual use.
"What's the principle, doc?"
Pinero pursed his lips and considered. "No doubt you are all familiar with the
truism that life is electrical in nature. Well, that truism isn't worth a damn,
but it will help to give you an idea of the principle. You have also been told
that time is a fourth dimension. Maybe you believe it, perhaps not. It has been
said so many times that it has ceased to have any meaning. It is simply a cliche
that wind bags use to impress fools. But I want you to try to visualize it now,
and try to feel it emotionally."
He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Suppose we take you as an example. Your
name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having
duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches
wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of
this space-time event, reaching to, perhaps, 1905, of which we see a cross
section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At
the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its
bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man some place in the 1980s. Imagine
this space-time event, which we call Rogers, as a long pink worm, continuous
through the years. It stretches past us here in 1939, and the cross section we
see appears as a single, discreet body. But that is illusion. There is physical
continuity to this pink worm, enduring through the years. As a matter of fact,
there is physical continuity in this concept to the entire race, for these pink
worms branch off from other pink worms. In this fashion the race is like a vine
whose branches intertwine and send out shoots. Only by taking a cross section of
the vine would we fall into the error of believing that the shootlets were
discreet individuals."
He paused and looked around at their faces. One of them, a dour, hard-bitten
chap, put in a word.
"That's all very pretty, Pinero, if true, but where does that get you?"
Pinero favored him with an unresentful smile. "Patience, my friend. I asked you
to think of life as electrical. Now think of our long, pink worm as a conductor
of electricity. You have heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers
can, by certain measurements, predict the exact location of a break in a
transatlantic cable without ever leaving the shore. I do the same with our pink
worms. By applying my instruments to the cross section here in this room I can
tell where the break occurs; that is to say, where death takes place. Or, if you
like, I can reverse the connections and tell you the date of your birth. But
that is uninteresting; you already know it."
The dour individual sneered. "I've caught you, doc. If what you say about the
race being like a vine of pink worms is true, you can't tell birthdays, because
the connection with the race is continuous at birth. Your electrical conductor
reaches on back through the mother into a man's remotest ancestors."
Pinero beamed. "True, and clever, my friend. But you have pushed analogy too
far. It is not done in the precise manner in which one measures the length of an
electrical conductor. In some ways it is more like measuring the length of a
long corridor by bouncing an echo off the far end. At birth there is a sort of
twist in the corridor, and, by proper calibration, I can detect the echo from
that twist."
"Let's see you prove it!"
"Certainly, my dear friend. Will you be a subject?"
One of the others spoke up. "He's called your bluff, Luke. Put up or shut up."
"I'm game. What do I do?"
"First write the date of your birth on a sheet of paper, and hand it to one of
your colleagues."
Luke complied. "Now what?"
"Remove your outer clothing and step upon these scales. Now tell me, were you
ever very much thinner, or very much fatter, than you are now? No? What did you
weigh at birth? Ten pounds? A fine bouncing baby boy. They don't come so big
anymore."
"What is all this flubdubbery?"
"I am trying to approximate the average cross section of our long pink
conductor, my dear Luke. Now will you seat yourself here? Then place this
electrode in your mouth. No, it will not hurt you; the voltage is quite low,
less than one micro-volt, but I must have a good connection." The doctor left
him and went behind his apparatus, where he lowered a hood over his head before
touching his controls. Some of the exposed dials came to life and a low humming
came from the machine. It stopped and the doctor popped out of his little
hideway.
"I get sometime in February, 1902. Who has the piece of paper with the date?"
It was produced and unfolded. The custodian read, "February 22, 1902."
The stillness that followed was broken by a voice from the edge of the little
group, "Doc, can I have another drink?"
The tension relaxed, and several spoke at once: "Try it on me, doc." "Me first,
doc; I'm an orphan and really want to know." "How about it, doc? Give us all a
little loose play."
He smilingly complied, ducking in and out of the hood like a gopher from its
hole. When they all had twin slips of paper to prove the doctor's skill, Luke
broke a long silence.
"How about showing how you predict death, Pinero?"
No one answered. Several of them nudged Luke forward. "Go ahead, smart guy. You
asked for it." He allowed himself to be seated in the chair. Pinero changed some
of the switches, then entered the hood. When the humming ceased he came out,
rubbing his hands briskly together.
"Well, thats all there is to see, boys. Got enough for a story?"
"Hey, what about the prediction? When does Luke get his 'thirty'?"
Luke faced him. "Yes, how about it?"
Pinero looked pained. "Gentlemen, I am surprised at you. I give that information
for a fee. Besides, it is a professional confidence. I never tell anyone but the
client who consults me."
"I don't mind. Go ahead and tell them."
"I am very sorry. I really must refuse. I only agreed to show you how; not to
give the results."
Luke ground the butt of his cigarette into the floor. "It's a hoax, boys. He
probably looked up the age of every reporter in town just to be ready to pull
this. It won't wash, Pinero."
Pinero gazed at him sadly. "Are you married, my friend?"
"No."
"Do you have anyone dependent on you? Any close relatives?"
"No. Why? Do you want to adopt me?"
Pinero shook his head. "I am very sorry for you, my dear Luke. You will die
before tomorrow."

DEATH PUNCHES TIME CLOCK
. . . within twenty minutes of Pinero's strange pre-
diction, Timons was struck by a falling sign while
walking down Broadway toward the offices of the
Daily Herald where he was employed.
Dr. Pinero declined to comment but confirmed the
story that he had predicted Timons' death by means
of his so-called chronovitameter. Chief of Police
Roy. . . .

Does the FUTURE worry you??????
Don't waste money on fortune-tellers-
Consult
Dr. Hugo Pinero, Bio-Consultant
He will help you plan for the future
by infallible
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
No "Spirit' Messages
$10,000 Bond posted in forfeit to back
our predictions
Circular on request
SANDS of TIME, Inc.
Majestie Bldg., Suite 700
( adv. )


Legal Notice
To whom it may concern, greetings; I, John Cabot Winthrop III, of the firm of
Winthrop, Winthrop, Ditmars and Winthrop, Attorney-at-law, do affirm that Hugo
Pinero of this city did hand to me ten thousand dollars in lawful money of the
United States, and did instruct me to place it in escrow with a chartered bank
of my selection with escrow instructions as follows:
The entire bond shall be forfeit, and shall forthwith be paid to the first
client of Hugo Pinero and/or Sands of Time, Inc., who shall exceed his life
tenure as predicted by Hugo Pinero by one per centum, or the estate of the first
client who shall fail of such predicted tenure in a like amount, whichever
occurs first in point of time.


Subscribed and sworn,
John Cabot Winthrop III.
Subscribed and sworn to before
me this 2nd day of April, 1939.
Albert M. Swanson
Notary Public in and for this
county and State My commission
expires June 17, 1939.


"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Radio Audience, let's go to press! Flash! Hugo
Pinero, the Miracle Man from Nowhere, has made his thousandth death prediction
without anyone claiming the reward he offered to the first person who catches
him failing to call the turn. With thirteen of his clients already dead, it is
mathematically certain that he has a private line to the main office of the Old
Man with the Scythe. That is one piece of news I don't want to know about before
it happens. Your coast-to-coast correspondent will not be a client of Prophet
Pineroù"

The judge's watery baritone cut through the stale air of the courtroom. "Please,
Mr. Weems, let us return to our subject. This court granted your prayer for a
temporary restraining order, and now you ask that it be made permanent. In
rebuttal, Dr. Pinero claims that you have presented no cause and asks that the
injunction be lifted, and that I order your client to cease from attempts to
interfere with what Pinero describes as a simple, lawful business. As you are
not addressing a jury, please omit the rhetoric and tell me in plain language
why I should not grant his prayer."
Mr. Weems jerked his chin nervously, making his flabby gray dewlap drag across
his high stiff collar, and resumed:
"May it please the honorable court, I represent the publicù"
"Just a moment. I thought you were appearing for Amalgamated Life Insurance."
"I am, your honor, in a formal sense. In a wider sense I represent several other
of the major assurance, fiduciary and financial institutions, their stockholders
and policy holders, who constitute a majority of the citizenry. In addition we
feel that we protect the interests of the entire population, unorganized,
inarticulate and otherwise unprotected."
"I thought that I represented the public," observed the judge dryly. "I am
afraid I must regard you as appearing for your client of record. But continue.
What is your thesis?"
The elderly barrister attempted to swallow his Adam's apple, then began again:
"Your honor, we contend that there are two separate reasons why this injunction
should be made permanent, and, further, that each reason is sufficient alone.
"In the first place, this person is engaged in the practice of soothsaying, an
occupation proscribed both in common law and statute. He is a common
fortune-teller, a vagabond charlatan who preys on the gullibility of the public.
He is cleverer than the ordinary gypsy palm reader, astrologer or table tipper,
and to the same extent more dangerous. He makes false claims of modern
scientific methods to give a spurious dignity of the thaumaturgy. We have here
in court leading representatives of the Academy of Science to give expert
witness as to the absurdity of his claims.
"In the second place, even if this person's claims were trueùgranting for the
sake of argument such an absurdityù" Mr. Weems permitted himself a thin-lipped
smileù"we contend that his activities are contrary to the public interest in
general, and unlawfully injurious to the interests of my client in particular.
We are prepared to produce numerous exhibits with the legal custodians to prove
that this person did publish, or cause to have published, utterances urging the
public to dispense with the priceless boon of life insurance to the great
detriment of their welfare and to the financial damage of my client."
Pinero arose in his place. "Your honor, may I say a few words?"
"What is it?"
"I believe I can simplify the situation if permitted to make a brief analysis.
"Your honor," put in Weems, "this is most irregular."
"Patience, Mr. Weems. Your interests will be protected. It seems to me that we
need more light and less noise in this matter. If Dr. Pinero can shorten the
proceedings by speaking at this time, I am inclined to let him. Proceed, Dr.
Pinero."
"Thank you, your honor. Taking the last of Mr. Weems' point first, I am prepared
to stipulate that I published the utterances he speaks ofù"
"One moment, doctor. You have chosen to act as your own attorney. Are you sure
you are competent to protect your own interests?"
"I am prepared to chance it, your honor. Our friends here can easily prove what
I stipulate."
"Very well. You may proceed."
"I will stipulate that many persons have canceled life insurance policies as a
result there of, but I challenge them to show that anyone so doing has suffered
any loss or damage there from. It is true that the Amalgamated has lost business
through my activities, but that is the natural result of my discovery, which has
made their policies as obsolete as the bow and arrow. If an injunction is
granted on that ground, I shall set up a coal-oil-lamp factory, and then ask for
an injunction against the Edison and General Electric companies to forbid them
to manufacture incandescent bulbs.
"I will stipulate that I am engaged in the business of making predictions of
death, but I deny that I am practicing magic, black, white or rainbow-colored.
If to make predictions by methods of scientific accuracy is illegal, then the
actuaries of the Amalgamated have been guilty for years, in that they predict
the exact percentage that will die each year in any given large group. I predict
death retail; the Amalgamated predicts it wholesale. If their actions are legal,
how can mine be illegal?
"I admit that it makes a difference whether I can do what I claim, or not; and I
will stipulate that the so-called expert witnesses from the Academy of Science
will testify that I cannot. But they know nothing of my method and cannot give
truly expert testimony on itù"
"Just a moment, doctor. Mr. Weems, is it true that your expert witnesses are not
conversant with Dr. Pinero's theory and methods?"
Mr. Weems looked worried. He drummed on the table top, then answered. "Will the
court grant me a few moments' indulgence?"
"Certainly."
Mr. Weems held a hurried whispered consultation with his cohorts, then faced the
bench. "We have a procedure to suggest, your honor. If Dr. Pinero will take the
stand and explain the theory and practice of his alleged method, then these
distinguished scientists will be able to advise the court as to the validity of
his claims."
The judge looked inquiringly at Pinero, who responded: "I will not willingly
agree to that. Whether my process is true or false, it would be dangerous to let
it fall into the hands of fools and quacksù" he waved his hand at the group of
professors seated in the front row, paused and smiled maliciouslyù"as these
gentlemen know quite well. Furthermore, it is not necessary to know the process
in order to prove that it will work. Is it necessary for me to re-educate this
entire body of self-appointed custodians of wisdomùcure them of their ingrown
superstitionsùin order to prove that my predictions are correct?
"There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific
method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can
blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is
allùimportant, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked
when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts
are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.
"It is this point of viewùacademic minds clinging like oysters to disprove
theoriesùthat has blocked every advance of knowledge in history. I am prepared
to prove my method by experiment, and, like Galileo in another court, I insist,
"It still moves!"
"Once before I offered such proof to this Some body of self-styled experts, and
they rejected it. I renew my offer; let me measure the life length of the
members of the Academy of Science. Let them appoint a committee to judge the
results. I will seal my findings in two sets of envelopes; on the outside of
each envelope in one set will appear the name of a member; on the inside, the
date of his death. In the other envelopes I will place names; on the outside I
will place dates. Let the committee place the envelopes in a vault, then meet
from time to time to open the appropriate envelopes. In such a large body of men
some deaths may be expected, if Amalgamated actuaries can be trusted, every week
or two. In such a fashion they will accumulate data very rapidly to prove that
Pinero is a liar, or no."
He stopped, and thrust out his chest until it almost caught up with his little
round belly. He glared at the sweating servants. "Well?"
The judge raised his eyebrows, and caught Mr. Weems' eye. "Do you accept?"
"Your honor, I think the proposal highly improperù"
The judge cut him short. "I warn you that I shall rule against you if you do not
accept, or propose an equally reasonable method of arriving at the truth."
Weems opened his mouth, changed his mind, looked up and down the faces of the
learned witnesses, and faced the bench. "We accept, your honor."
"Very well. Arrange the details between you. The temporary injunction is lifted,
and Dr. Pinero must not be molested in the pursuit of his business. "Decision on
the petition for permanent injunction is reserved without prejudice pending the
accumulation of evidence. Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the
theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There
has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that
because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of
years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing
such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and
contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute
nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into
court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

Bidwell grunted in annoyance. "Weems, if you can't think up anything better than
that, Amalgamated is going to need a new chief attorney. It's been ten weeks
since you lost the injunction, and that little wart is coining money hand over
fist. Meantime, every insurance firm in the country's going broke. Hoskins,
what's our loss ratio?"
"It's hard to say, Mr. Bidwell. It gets worse every day. We've paid off thirteen
big policies this week; all of them taken out since Pinero started operations."
A spare little man spoke up. "I say, Bidwell, we aren't accepting any new
applicants for United, until we have time to check and be sure that they have
not consulted Pinero. Can't we afford to wait until the scientists show him up?"
Bidwell snorted. "You blasted optimist! They won't show him up. Aldrich, can't
you face a fact? The fat little pest has something; how, I don't know. This is a
fight to the finish. If we wait, we're licked." He threw his cigar into a
cuspidor, and bit savagely into a fresh one. "Clear out of here, all of you!
I'll handle this my own way. You, too, Aldrich. United may wait, but Amalgamated
won't."
Weems cleared his throat apprehensively. "Mr. Bidwell, I trust you will consult
me before embarking on any major change in policy?"
Bidwell grunted. They filed out. When they were all gone and the door closed,
Bidwell snapped the switch of the inter-office announcer. "O.K.; send him in."
The outer door opened. A slight, dapper figure stood for a moment at the
threshold. His small, dark eyes glanced quickly about the room before he
entered, then he moved up to Bidwell with a quick, soft tread. He spoke to
Bidwell in a flat, emotionless voice. His face remained impassive except for the
live, animal eyes. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Yes."
"What's the proposition?"
"Sit down, and we'll talk."
Pinero met the young couple at the door of his inner office.
"Come in, my dears, come in. Sit down. Make yourselves at home. Now tell me,
what do you want of Pinero? Surely such young people are not anxious about the
final roll call?"
The boy's pleasant young face showed slight confusion. "Well, you see, Dr.
Pinero, I'm Ed Hartley and this is my wife, Betty. We're going to have . . .
that is, Betty is expecting a baby and, wellù"
Pinero smiled benignly. "I understand. You want to know how long you will live
in order to make the best possible provision for the youngster. Quite wise. Do
you both want readings, or just yourself?"
The girl answered, "Both of us, we think."
Pinero beamed at her. "Quite so. I agree. Your reading presents certain
technical difficulties at this time, but I can give you some information now.
Now come into my laboratory, my dears, and we'll commence."
He rang for their case histories, then showed them into his workshop. "Mrs.
Hartley first, please. If you will go behind that screen and remove your shoes
and your outer clothing, please."
He turned away and made some minor adjustments of his apparatus. Ed nodded to
his wife, she slipped behind the screen and reappeared almost at once, dressed
in a slip. Pinero glanced up.
"This way, my dear. First we must weigh you. There. Now take you place on the
stand. This electrode in your mouth. No, Ed, you mustn't touch her while she is
in the circuit. It won't take a minute. Remain quiet."
He dove under the machine's hood and the dials sprang into life. Very shortly he
came out, with a perturbed look on his face. "Ed, did you touch her?"
"No, doctor." Pinero ducked back again and remained a little longer. When he
came out this time, he told the girl to get down and dress. He turned to her
husband.
"Ed, make yourself ready."
"What's Betty's reading, doctor?"
"There is a little difficulty. I want to test you first."
When he came out from taking the youth's reading, his face was more troubled
than ever. Ed inquired as to his trouble. Pinero shrugged his shoulders and
brought a smile to his lips.
"Nothing to concern you, my boy. A little mechanical misadjustment, I think. But
I shan't be able to give you two your readings today. I shall need to overhaul
my machine. Can you come back tomorrow?"
"Why, I think so. Say, I'm sorry about your machine. I hope it isn't serious."
"It isn't, I'm sure. Will you come back into my office and visit for a bit?"
"Thank you, doctor. You are very kind.
"But, Ed, I've got to meet Ellen."
Pinero turned the full force of his personality on her. "Won't you grant me a
few moments, my dear young lady? I am old, and like the sparkle of young folks'
company. I get very little of it. Please." He nudged them gently into his office
and seated them. Then he ordered lemonade and cookies sent in, offered them
cigarettes and lit a cigar.
Forty minutes later Ed listened entranced, while Betty was quite evidently
acutely nervous and anxious to leave as the doctor spun out a story concerning
his adventures as a young man in Terra del Fuego. When the doctor stopped to
relight his cigar, she stood up.
"Doctor, we really must leave. Couldn't we hear the rest tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow? There will not be time tomorrow."
"But you haven't time today, either. Your secretary has rung five times."
"Couldn't you spare me just a few more minutes?"
"I really can't today, doctor. I have an appointment. There is someone waiting
for me."
"There is no way to induce you?"
"I'm afraid not. Come, Ed."
After they had gone, the doctor stepped to the window and stared out over the
city. Presently he picked out two tiny figures as they left the office building.
He watched them hurry to the corner, wait for the lights to change, then start
across the street. When they were part way across, there came the scream of a
siren. The two little figures hesitated, started back, stopped and turned. Then
a car was upon them. As the car slammed to a stop, they showed up from beneath
it, no longer two figures, but simply a limp, unorganized heap of clothing.
Presently the doctor turned away from the window. Then he picked up his phone
and spoke to his secretary.
"Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day. . . .
No. . . . No one. . . . I don't care; cancel them."
Then he sat down in his chair. His cigar went out.
Long after dark he held it, still unlighted.

Pinero sat down at his dining table and contemplated the gourmet's luncheon
spread before him. He had ordered this meal with particular care, and had come
home a little early in order to enjoy it fully.
Somewhat later he let a few drops of fiori d'Alpini roll down his throat. The
heavy, fragrant syrup warmed his mouth and reminded him of the little mountain
flowers for which it was named. He sighed. It had been a good meal, an exquisite
meal and had justified the exotic liqueur.
His musing was interrupted by a disturbance at the front door. The voice of his
elderly maidservant was raised in remonstrance. A heavy male voice interrupted
her. The commotion moved down the hall and the dining room door was pushed open.
"Mia Madonna! Non si puo entrare! The master is eating!"
"Never mind, Angela. I have time to see these gentlemen. You may go."
Pinero faced the surly-faced spokesman of the intruders. "You have business with
me; yes?"
"You bet we have. Decent people have had enough of your damned nonsense."
"And so?"
The caller did not answer at once. A smaller, dapper individual moved out from
behind him and faced Pinero.

"We might as well begin." The chairman of the committee placed a key in the lock
box and opened it.
"Wenzell will you help me pick out today's envelopes?"
He was interrupted by a touch on his arm.
"Dr. Baird, you are wanted on the telephone."
"Very well. Bring the instrument here."
When it was fetched he placed the receiver to his ear. "Hello. . . . Yes;
speaking. . . . What? . . . No, we have heard nothing. . . Destroyed the
machine, you say . . . Dead! How? . . . No! No statement. None at all. . . Call
me later."
He slammed the instrument down and pushed it from him.
"What's up?"
"Who's dead now?"
Baird held up one hand. "Quiet, gentlemen, please! Pinero was murdered a few
moments ago at his home."
"Murdered?"
"That isn't all. About the same time vandals broke into his office and smashed
his apparatus."
No one spoke at first. The committee members glanced around at each other. No
one seemed anxious to be the first to comment.
Finally one spoke up. "Get it out."
"Get what out?"
"Pinero's envelope. It's in there, too. "I've seen it."
Baird located it, and slowly tore it opened. He unfolded the single sheet of
paper and scanned it.
"Well? Out with it!"
"One thirteen P.M. . . . today."
They took this in silence.
Their dynamic calm was broken by a member across the table from Baird reaching
for the lock box. Baird interposed a hand.
"What do you want?"
"My prediction. It's in thereùwe're all in there."
"Yes, yes,"
"We're all in there."
"Let's have them."
Baird placed both hands over the box. He held the eye of the man opposite him,
but did not speak. He licked his lips. The corner of his mouth twitched. His
hands shook. Still he did not speak. The man opposite relaxed back into his
chair.
"You're right, of course," he said.
"Bring me that wastebasket." Baird's voice was low and strained, but steady.
He accepted it and dumped the litter on the rug. He placed the tin basket on the
table before him. He tore half a dozen envelopes across, set a match to them,
and dropped them in the basket. Then he started tearing a double handful at a
time, and fed the fire steadily. The smoke made him cough, and tears ran out of
his smarting eyes. Someone got up and opened a window. When Baird was through,
he pushed the basket away from him, looked down and spoke.
"I'm afraid I've ruined this table top."



SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY

IN 19O3 THE Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
In December, 1938, in Berlin, Dr. Hahn split the uranium atom.
In April, 1943, Dr. Estelle Karst, working under the Federal Emergency Defense
Authority, perfected the Karst-Obre technique for producing artificial
radioactives.
So American foreign policy had to change.
Had to. Had to. It is very difficult to tuck a bugle call back into a bugle.
Pandora's Box is a one-way proposition. You can turn pig into sausage, but not
sausage into pig. Broken eggs stay broken. "All the King's horses and all the
King's men can't put Humpty together again.
I ought to knowùI was one of the King's men.
By rights I should not have been. I was not a professional military man when
World War II broke out, and when Congress passed the draft law I drew high
number, high enough to keep me out of the army long enough to die of old age.
Not that very many died of old age that generation!
But I was the newly appointed secretary to a freshman congressman; I had been
his campaign manager and my former job had left me. By profession, I was a high
school teacher of economics and sociologyùschool boards don't like teachers of
social subjects actually to deal with social problemsùand my contract was not
renewed. I jumped at the chance to go to Washington.
My congressman was named Manning. Yes, the Manning, Colonel Clyde C. Manning.
U.S. Army retiredùMr. Commissioner Manning. What you may not know about him is
that he was one of the army's No. 1 experts in chemical warfare before a leaky
heart put him on the shelf. I had picked him, with the help of a group of my
political associates, to run against the two-bit chiseler who was the incumbent
in our district. We needed a strong liberal candidate and Manning was
tailor-made for the job. He had served one term in the grand jury, which cut his
political eye teeth, and had stayed active in civic matters there after.
Being a retired army officer was a political advantage in vote-getting among the
more conservative and well-to-do citizens, and his record was O. K. for the
other side of the fence. I'm not primarily concerned with vote-getting; what I
liked about him was that, though he was liberal, he was tough-minded, which most
liberals aren't. Most liberals believe that water runs downhill, but, praise
God, it'll never reach the bottom.
Manning was not like that. He could see a logical necessity and act on it, no
matter how unpleasant it might be.

We were in Manning's suite in the House Office Building, taking a little blow
from that stormy first session of the Seventy-eighth Congress and trying to
catch up on a mountain of correspondence, when the war department called.
Manning answered it himself.
I had to overhear, but then I was his secretary. "Yes," he said, "speaking. Very
well, put him on. Oh . . . hello, General. . . . Fine, thanks. Yourself?" Then
there was a long silence. Presently, Manning said, "But I can't do that,
General, I've got this job to take care of. . . . What's that? . . . Yes, who is
to do my committee work and represent my district? . . . I think so." He glanced
at his wrist watch. "I'll be right over."
He put down the phone, turned to me, and said, "Get your hat, John. We are going
over to the war department."
"So?" I said, complying.
"Yes," he said with a worried look, "the Chief of Staff thinks I ought to go
back to duty." He set off at a brisk walk, with me hanging back to try to force
him not to strain his bum heart. "It's impossible, of course," we grabbed a taxi
from the stand in front of the office building, swung around the Capitol, and
started down Constitution Boulevard.
But it was possible, and Manning agreed to it, after the Chief of Staff
presented his case. Manning had to be convinced, for there is no way on earth
for anyone, even the President himself, to order a congressman to leave his
post, even though he happens to be a member of the military service, too.
The Chief of Staff had anticipated the political difficulty and had been
forehanded enough to have already dug up an opposition congressman with whom to
pair Manning's vote for the duration of the emergency. This other congressman,
the Honorable Joseph T. Brigham, was a reserve officer who wanted to go to duty
himselfùor was willing to; I never found out which. Being from the opposite
political party, his vote in the House of Representatives could be permanently
paired against Mannings and neither party would lose by the arrangement.
There was talk of leaving me in Washington to handle the political details of
Manning's office, but Manning decided against it, judging that his other
secretary could do that, and announced that I must go along as his adjutant. The
Chief of Staff demurred, but Manning was in a position to insist, and the Chief
had to give in.
A chief of staff can get things done in a hurry if he wants to. I was sworn in
as a temporary officer before we left the building; before the day was out I was
at the bank, signing a note to pay for the sloppy service uniforms the Army had
adopted and to buy a dress uniform with a beautiful shiny beltùa dress outfit
which, as it turned out, I was never to need.

We drove over into Maryland the next day and Manning took charge of the Federal
nuclear research laboratory, known officially by the hush-hush title of War
Department Special Defense Project No. 347. I didn't know a lot about physics
and nothing about modern atomic physics, aside from the stuff you read in the
Sunday supplements. Later, I picked up a smattering, mostly wrong, I suppose,
from associating with the heavy-weights with which the laboratory was staffed.
Colonel Manning had taken an Army p. g. course at Massachusetts Tech and had
received a master of science degree for a brilliant thesis on the mathematical
theories of atomic structure. That was why the Army had to have him for this
job. But that had been some years before; atomic theory had turned several
cartwheels in the mean-time; he admitted to me that he had to bone like the very
devil to try to catch up to the point where he could begin to understand what
his highbrow charges were talking about in their reports.
I think he over stated the degree of his ignorance; there was certainly no one
else in the United States who could have done the job. It required a man who
could direct and suggest research in a highly esoteric field, but who saw the
problem from the standpoint of urgent military necessity. Left to themselves,
the physicists would have reveled in the intellectual luxury of an unlimited
research expense account, but, while they undoubtedly would have made major
advances in human knowledge, they might never have developed anything of
military usefulness, or the military possibilities of a discovery might be
missed for years.
It's like this: It takes a smart dog to hunt birds, but it takes a hunter behind
him to keep him from wasting time chasing rabbits. And the hunter needs to know
nearly as much as the dog.
No derogatory reference to the scientists is intendedùby no means! We had all
the genius in the field that the United States could produce, men from Chicago,
Columbia, Cornell, M. I. T., Cal Tech, Berkley, every radiation laboratory in
the country, as well as a couple of broad-A boys lent to us by the British. And
they had every facility that ingenuity could think up and money could build. The
five-hundred-ton cyclotron which had originally been intended for the University
of California was there, and was already obsolete in the face of the new gadgets
these brains had thought up, asked for, and been given. Canada supplied us with
all the uranium we asked forùtons of the treacherous stuffùfrom Great Bear Lake,
up near the Yukon, and the fractional-residues technique of separating uranium
isotope 235 from the commoner isotope 238 had already been worked out, by the
same team from Chicago that had worked up the earlier expensive mass
spectrograph method.
Someone in the United States government had realized the terrific potentialities
of uranium 235 quite early and, as far back as the summer of l940, had rounded
up every atomic research man in the country and had sworn them to silence.
Atomic power, if ever developed, was planned to be a government monopoly, at
least till the war was over. It might turn out to be the most incredibly
powerful explosive ever dreamed of, and it might be the source of equally
incredible power. In any case, with Hitler talking about secret weapons and
shouting hoarse insults at democracies, the government planned to keep any new
discoveries very close to the vest.
Hitler had lost the advantage of a first crack at the secret of uranium through
not taking precautions. Dr. Hahn, the first man to break open the uranium atom,
was a German. But one of his laboratory assistants had fled Germany to escape a
program. She came to this country, and told us about it.
We were searching, there in the laboratory in Maryland, for a way to use U235 in
a controlled explosion. We had a vision of a one-ton bomb that would be a whole
air raid in itself, a single explosion that would flatten out an entire
industrial center. Dr. Ridpath, of Continental Tech, claimed that he could build
such a bomb, but that he could not guarantee that it would not explode as soon
as it was loaded and as for the force of the explosionùwell, he did not believe
his own figures; they ran out to too many ciphers.
The problem was, strangely enough, to find an explosive which would be weak
enough to blow up only one country at a time, and stable enough to blow up only
on request. If we could devise a really practical rocket fuel at the same time,
one capable of driving a war rocket at a thousand miles an hour, or more, then
we would be in a position to make most anybody say "uncle" to Uncle Sam.
We fiddled around with it all the rest of 1943 and well into 1944. The war in
Europe and the troubles in Asia dragged on. After Italy folded up, England was
able to release enough ships from her Mediterranean fleet to ease the blockade
of the British Isles. With the help of the planes we could now send her
regularly and with the additional over-age destroyers we let her have, England
hung on somehow, digging in and taking more and more of her essential defense
industries underground. Russia shifted her weight from side to side as usual,
apparently with the policy of preventing either side from getting a sufficient
advantage to bring the war to a successful conclusion. People were beginning to
speak of "permanent
war."

I was killing time in the administrative office, trying to improve my typingùa
lot of Mannings reports had to be typed by me personallyùwhen the orderly on
duty stepped in and announced Dr. Karst. I flipped the inter-office
communicator. "Dr. Karst is here, chief. Can you see her?"
"Yes," he answered, through his end.
I told the orderly to show her in.
Estelle Karst was quite a remarkable old girl and, I suppose, the first woman
ever to hold a commission in the corps of engineers. She was an M. D. as well as
an Sc.D. and reminded me of the teacher I had had in fourth grade. I guess that
was why I always stood up instinctively when she came in the roomùI was afraid
she might look at me and sniff. It couldn't have been her rank; we didn't bother
much with rank.
She was dressed in white coveralls and a shop apron and had simply thrown a
hooded cape over herself to come through the snow. I said, "Good morning, maam,"
and led her into Mannings office.
The Colonel greeted her with the urbanity that had made him such a success with
women's clubs, seated her, and offered her a cigarette.
"I'm glad to see you, Major," he said. "I've been intending to drop around to
your shop."
I knew what he was getting at Dr. Karst's work had been primarily physiomedical;
he wanted her to change the direction of her research to something more
productive in a military sense.
"Don't call me 'major,' " she said tartly.
"Sorry, Doctorù"
"I came on business, and must get right back. And I presume you are a busy man,
too. Colonel Manning, I need some help."
"That's what we are here for."
"Good. I've run into some snags in my research. I think that one of the men in
Dr. Ridpath's department could help me, but Dr. Ridpath doesn't seem disposed to
be cooperative."
"So? Well, I hardly like to go over the head of a departmental chief, but tell
me about it; perhaps we can arrange it. Whom do you want?"
"I need Dr. Obre."
"The spectroscopistùhm-m-m. I can understand Dr. Ridpath's reluctance, Dr.
Karst, and I'm disposed to agree with him. After all, the high-explosives
research is really our main show around here."
She bristled and I thought she was going to make him stay in after school at the
very least. "Colonel Manning, do you realize the importance of artificial
radioactives to modern medicine?"
"Why, I believe I do. Nevertheless, doctor, our primary mission is to perfect a
weapon which will serve as a safe-guard to the whole country in time of warù"
She sniffed and went into action. "Weaponsùfiddle-sticks! Isn't there a medical
corps in the Army? Isn't it more important to know how to heal men than to know
how to blow them to bits? Colonel Manning, you're not a fit man to have charge
of this project! You're a . . . you're a, a warmonger, that's what you are!"
I felt my ears turning red, but Manning never budged. He could have raised Cain
with her, confined her to her quarters, maybe even have court-martialed her, but
Manning isn't like that. He told me once that every time a man is
court-martialed, it is a sure sign that some senior officer hasn't measured up
to his job.
"I am sorry you feel that way, Doctor," he said mildly, "and I agree that my
technical knowledge isn't what it might be. And, believe me, I do wish that
healing were all we had to worry about. In any case, I have not refused your
request. Let's walk over to your laboratory and see what the problem is. Likely
there is some arrangement that can be made which will satisfy everybody."
He was already up and getting out his greatcoat. Her set mouth relaxed a trifle
and she answered, "Very well. I'm sorry I spoke as I did."
"Not at all," he replied. "These are worrying times. Come along, John."
I trailed after them, stopping in the outer office to get my own coat and to
stuff my notebook in a pocket.
By the time we had trudged through mushy snow the eighth of a mile to her lab
they were talking about gardening!
Manning acknowledged the sentry's challenge with a wave of his hand and we
entered the building. He started casually on into the inner lab, but Karst
stopped him. "Armor first, Colonel."
We had trouble finding overshoes that would fit over Manning's boots, which he
persisted in wearing, despite the new uniform regulations, and he wanted to omit
the foot protection, but Karst would not hear of it. She called in a couple of
her assistants who made jury-rigged moccasins out of some soft-lead sheeting.
The helmets were different from those used in the explosives lab, being fitted
with inhalers. "What's this?" inquired Manning.
"Radioactive dust guard," she said. "It's absolutely essential."
We threaded a lead-lined meander and arrived at the workroom door which she
opened by combination. I blinked at the sudden bright illumination and noticed
the air was filled with little shiny motes.
"Hm-m-mùit is dusty," agreed Manning. "Isn't there some way of controlling
that?" His voice sounded muffled from behind the dust mask.
"The last stage has to be exposed to air," explained Karst. "The hood gets most
of it. We could control it, but it would mean a quite expensive new
installation."
"No trouble about that. We're not on a budget, you know. It must be very
annoying to have to work in a mask like this."
"It is," acknowledged Karst. "The kind of gear it would take would enable us to
work without body armor, too. That would be a comfort."
I suddenly had a picture of the kind of thing these researchers put up with. I
am a fair-sized man, yet I found that armor heavy to carry around. Estelle Karst
was a small woman, yet she was willing to work maybe fourteen hours, day after
day, in an outfit which was about as comfortable as a diving suit. But she had
not complained.
Not all the heroes are in the headlines. These radiation experts not only ran
the chance of cancer and nasty radio-action burns, but the men stood a chance of
damaging their germ plasm and then having their wives present them with
something horrid in the way of offspringùno chin, for example, and long hairy
ears. Nevertheless, they went right ahead and never seemed to get irritated
unless something held up their work.
Dr. Karst was past the age when she would be likely to be concerned personally
about progeny, but the principle applies.
I wandered around, looking at the unlikely apparatus she used to get her
results, fascinated as always by my failure to recognize much that reminded me
of the physics laboratory I had known when I was an undergraduate, and being
careful not to touch anything. Karst started explaining to Manning what she was
doing and why, but I knew that it was useless for me to try to follow that
technical stuff. If Manning wanted notes, he would dictate them. My attention
was caught by a big box-like contraption in one corner of the room. It had a
hopper-like gadget on one side and I could hear a sound from it like the
whirring of a fan with a background of running water. It intrigued me.
I moved back to the neighborhood of Dr. Karst and the Colonel and heard her
saying, "The problem amounts to this, Colonel: I am getting a much more highly
radio-active end-product than I want, but there is considerable variation in the
half-life of otherwise equivalent samples. That suggests to me that I am using a
mixture of isotopes but I haven't been able to prove it. And frankly, I do not
know enough about that end of the field to be sure of sufficient refinement in
my methods. I need Dr. Obre's help on that."
I think those were her words, but I may not be doing her justice, not being a
physicist I understood the part about "half-life." All radioactive materials
keep right on radiating until they turn into something else, which takes
theoretically forever. As a matter of practice their periods, or "lives," are
described in terms of how long it takes the original radiation to drop to
one-half strength. That time is called a "half-life" and each radioactive
isotope of an element has its own specific characteristic half-lifetime.
One of the staffùI forget which oneùtold me once that any form of matter can be
considered as radioactive in some degree; it's a question of intensity and
period, or half-life.
"I'll talk to Dr. Ridpath," Manning answered her, "and see what can be arranged.
In the meantime you might draw up plans for what you want to re-equip your
laboratory."
"Thank you, Colonel."
I could see that Manning was about ready to leave, having pacified her; I was
still curious about the big box that gave out the odd noises.
"May I ask what that is, Doctor?"
"Oh, that? That's an air-conditioner."
"Odd-looking one. I've never seen one like it."
"It's not to condition the air of this room. It's to remove the radioactive dust
before the exhaust air goes outdoors. We wash the dust out of the foul air."
"Where does the water go?"
"Down the drain. Out into the bay eventually, I suppose. '
I tried to snap my fingers, which was impossible because of the lead mittens.
"That accounts for it, Colonel!"
"Accounts for what?"
"Accounts for those accusing notes we've been getting from the Bureau of
Fisheries. This poisonous dust is being carried out into Chesapeake Bay and is
killing the fish."
Manning turned to Karst. "Do you think that possible, Doctor?"
I could see her brows draw together through the window in her helmet. "I hadn't
thought about it," she admitted. "I'd have to do some figuring on the possible
concentrations before I could give you a definite answer. But it is
possibleùyes. However," she added anxiously, "it would be simple enough to
divert this drain to a sink hole of some sort."
"Hm-m-mùyes." He did not say anything for some minutes, simply stood there,
looking at the box.
Presently he said, "This dust is pretty lethal?"
"Quite lethal, Colonel." There was another long silence.
At last I gathered he had made up his mind about something for he said
decisively, "I am going to see to it that you get Obre's assistance, Doctor."
"Oh, good!"
"ùbut I want you to help me in return. I am very much interested in this
research of yours, but I want it carried on with a little broader scope. I want
you to investigate for maxima both in period and intensity as well as for
minima. I want you to drop the strictly utilitarian approach and make an
exhaustive research along lines which we will work out in greater detail later."
She started to say something but he cut in ahead of her. "A really thorough
program of research should prove more helpful in the long run to your original
purpose than a more narrow one. And I shall make it my business to expedite
every possible facility for such a research. I think we may turn up a number of
interesting things."
He left immediately, giving her no time to discuss it. He did not seem to want
to talk on the way back and I held my peace. 1 think he had already gotten a
glimmering of the bold and drastic strategy this was to lead to, but even
Manning could not have thought out that early the inescapable consequences of a
few dead fishùotherwise he would never have ordered the research.
No, I don't really believe that. He would have gone right ahead, knowing that if
he did not do it, someone else would. He would have accepted the responsibility
while bitterly aware of its weight.

1944 wore along with no great excitement on the surface. Karst got her new
laboratory equipment and so much additional help that her department rapidly
became the largest on the grounds. The explosives research was suspended after a
conference between Manning and Ridpath, of which I heard only the end, but the
meat of it was that there existed not even a remote possibility at that time of
utilizing U235 as an explosive. As a source of power, yes, sometime in the
distant future when there had been more opportunity to deal with the extremely
ticklish problem of controlling the nuclear reaction. Even then it seemed likely
that it would not be a source of power in prime movers such as rocket motors or
mobiles, but would be used in vast power plants at least as large as the Boulder
Dam installation.
After that Ridpath became a sort of co-chairman of Karst's department and the
equipment formerly used by the explosives department was adapted or replaced to
carry on research on the deadly artificial radioactives. Manning arranged a
division of labor and Karst stuck to her original problem of developing
techniques for tailor-making radioactives. I think she was perfectly happy,
sticking with a one-track mind to the problem at hand. I don't know to this day
whether or not Manning and Ridpath ever saw fit to discuss with her what they
intended to do.
As a matter of fact, I was too busy myself to think much about it. The general
elections were coming up and I was determined that Manning should have a
constituency to return to, when the emergency was over. He was not much
interested, but agreed to let his name be filed as a candidate for re-election.
I was trying to work up a campaign by remote control and cursing because I could
not be in the field to deal with the thousand and one emergencies as they arose.
I did the next best thing and had a private line installed to permit the
campaign chairman to reach me easily. I don't think I violated the Hatch Act,
but I guess I stretched it a little. Anyhow, it turned out all right; Manning
was elected, as were several other members of the citizen-military that year. An
attempt was made to smear him by claiming that he was taking two salaries for
one job, but we squelched that with a pamphlet entitled "For Shame!" which
explained that he got one salary for two jobs. That's the Federal law in such
cases and people are entitled to know it.

It was just before Christmas that Manning first admitted to me how much the
implications of the Karst-Obre process were preying on his mind. He called me
into his office over some inconsequential matter, then did not let me go. I saw
that he wanted to talk.
"How much of the K-O dust do we now have on hand?" he asked suddenly.
"Just short of ten thousand units," I replied. "I can look up the exact figures
in half a moment." A unit would take care of a thousand men, at normal
dispersion. He knew the figure as well as I did, and I knew he was stalling.
We had shifted almost imperceptibly from research to manufacture, entirely on
Mannings initiative and authority. Manning had never made a specific report to
the department about it, unless he had done so verbally to the chief of staff.
"Never mind," he answered to my suggestion, then added, "Did you see those
horses?"
"Yes," I said briefly.
I did not want to talk about it. I like horses. We had requisitioned six
broken-down old nags, ready for the bone yard, and had used them experimentally.
We knew now what the dust would do. After they had died, any part of their
carcasses would register on a photographic plate and tissue from the apices of
their lungs and from the bronchia glowed with a light of its own.
Manning stood at the window, staring out at the dreary Maryland winter for a
minute or two before replying, "John, I wish that radioactivity had never been
discovered. Do you realize what that devilish stuff amounts to?"
"Well," I said, "it's a weapon, about like poison gasùmaybe more efficient."
"Rats!" he said, and for a moment I thought he was annoyed with me personally.
"That's about like comparing a sixteen-inch gun with a bow and arrow. We've got
here the first weapon the world has ever seen against which there is no defense,
none whatsoever. It's death itself, C. O. D.
"Have you seen Ridpath's report?" he went on.
I had not. Ridpath had taken to delivering his reports by hand to Manning
personally.
"Well," he said, "ever since we started production I've had all the talent we
could spare working on the problem of a defense against the dust. Ridpath tells
me and I agree with him that there is no means whatsoever to combat the stuff,
once it's used."
"How about armor," I asked, "and protective clothing?"
"Sure, sure," he agreed irritatedly, "provided you never take it off to eat, or
to drink or for any purpose whatever, until the radioaction has ceased, or you
are out of the danger zone. That is all right for laboratory work; I'm talking
about war."
I considered the matter. "I still don't see what you are fretting about,
Colonel. If the stuff is as good as you say it is, you've done just exactly what
you set out to doùdevelop a weapon which would give the United States protection
against aggression."
He swung around. "John, there are times when I think you are downright stupid!"
I said nothing. I knew him and I knew how to discount his moods. The fact that
he permitted me to see his feelings is the finest compliment I have ever had.
"Look at it this way," he went on more patiently; "this dust, as a weapon, is
not just simply sufficient to safe guard the United States, it amounts to a
loaded gun held at the head of every man, woman, and child on the globe!"
"Well," I answered, "what of that? It's our secret, and we've got the upper
hand. The United States can put a stop to this war, and any other war. We can
declare a Pax Americana, and enforce it."
"Hm-m-mùI wish it were that easy. But it won't remain our secret; you can count
on that. It doesn't matter how successfully we guard it; all that anyone needs
is the hint given by the dust itself and then it is just a matter of time until
some other nation develops a technique to produce it. You can't stop brains from
working, John; the reinvention of the method is a mathematical certainty, once
they know what it is they are looking for. And uranium is a common enough
substance, widely distributed over the globeùdon't forget that!
"It's like this: Once the secret is outùand it will be out if we ever use the
stuff!ùthe whole world will be comparable to a room full of men, each armed with
a loaded .45. They can't get out of the room and each one is dependent on the
good will of every other one to stay alive. All offense and no defense. See what
I mean?"
I thought about it, but I still didn't guess at the difficulties. It seemed to
me that a peace enforced by us was the only way out, with precautions taken to
see that we controlled the sources of uranium. I had the usual American
subconscious conviction that our country would never use power in sheer
aggression. Later, I thought about the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War
and some of the things we did in Central America, and I was not so sureù

It was a couple of weeks later, shortly after inauguration day, that Manning
told me to get the Chief of Staff's office on the telephone. I heard only the
tail end of the conversation. "No, General, I won't." Manning was saying, "I
won't discuss it with you, or the Secretary, either." This is a matter the
Commander in Chief is going to have to decide in the long run. If he turns it
down, it is imperative that no one else ever knows about it. That's my
considered opinion. . . . What's that? . . . I took this job under the condition
that I was to have a free hand. You've got to give me a little leeway this time.
. . . Don't go brass hat on me. I knew you when you were a plebe. . . . O. K.,
O. K., sorry. . . . If the Secretary of War won't listen to reason, you tell him
I'll be in my seat in the House of Representatives tomorrow, and that I'll get
the favor I want from the majority leader. . . All right. Good-bye."
Washington rang up again about an hour later. It was the Secretary of War. This
time Manning listened more than he talked. Toward the end, he said, "All I want
is thirty minutes alone with the President. If nothing comes of it, no harm has
been done. If I convince him, then you will know all about it. . . . No, sir, I
have no desire to embarrass you. If you prefer, I can have myself announced as a
congressman, then you won't be responsible. . . . No, sir, I did not mean that
you would avoid responsibility. I intended to be helpful. . . . Fine! Thank you,
Mr. Secretary."
The White House rang up later in the day and set a time.

We drove down to the District the next day through a nasty cold rain that
threatened to turn to sleet. The usual congestion in Washington was made worse
by the weather; it very nearly caused us to be late in arriving. I could hear
Manning swearing under his breath all the way down Rhode Island Avenue. But we
were dropped at the west wing entrance to the White House with two minutes to
spare. Manning was ushered into the oval office almost at once and I was left
cooling my heels and trying to get comfortable in civilian clothes. After so
many months of uniform they itched in the wrong places.
The thirty minutes went by.
The President's reception secretary went in, and came out very promptly indeed.
He stepped on out into the outer reception room and I heard something that began
with, I'm sorry, Senator, butù" He came back in, made a penciled notation, and
passed it out to an usher.
Two more hours went by.
Manning appeared at the door and the secretary looked relieved. But he did not
come out, saying instead, "Come in, John, The President wants to take a look at
you."
I fell over my feet getting up.
Manning said, "Mr. President, this is Captain deFries." The President nodded,
and I bowed, unable to say anything. He was standing on the hearth rug, his fine
head turned toward us, and looking just like his picturesùbut it seemed strange
for the President of the United States not to be a tall man.
I had never seen him before, though, of course, I knew something of his record
the two years he had been in the Senate and while he was Mayor before that.
The President said, "Sit down, deFries. Care to smoke?" Then to Manning. "You
think he can do it?"
"I think he'll have to. It's Hobson's choice."
"And you are sure of him?"
"He was my campaign manager."
"I see"
The President said nothing more for a while and God knows I didn't!ùthough I was
bursting to know what they were talking about. He commenced again with, "Colonel
Manning, I intend to follow the procedure you have suggested, with the changes
we discussed. But I will be down tomorrow to see for myself that the dust will
do what you say it will. Can you prepare a demonstration?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Very well, We will use Captain deFries unless I think of a better procedure." I
thought for a moment that they planned to use me for a guinea pig! But he turned
to me and continued, "Captain, I expect to send you to England as my
representative."
I gulped. "Yes, Mr. President." And that is every word I had to say in calling
on the President of the United States.

After that, Manning had to tell me a lot of things he had on his mind. I am
going to try to relate them as carefully as possible, even at the risk of being
dull and obvious and of repeating things that are common knowledge.
We had a weapon that could not be stopped. Any type of K-O dust scattered over
an area rendered that area uninhabitable for a length of time that depended on
the half-life of the radioactivity.
Period. Full stop.
Once an area was dusted there was nothing that could be done about it until the
radioactivity had fallen off to the point where it was no longer harmful. The
dust could not be cleaned out; it was everywhere. There was no possible way to
counteract itùburn it, combine it chemically; the radioactive isotope was still
there, still radio-active, still deadly. Once used on a stretch of land, for a
predetermined length of time that piece of earth would not tolerate life.
It was extremely simple to use. No complicated bomb sights were needed, no care
need be taken to hit "military objectives." Take it aloft in any sort of
aircraft, attain a position more or less over the area you wish to sterilize,
and drop the stuff. Those on the ground in the contaminated area are dead men,
dead in an hour, a day, a week, a month, depending on the degree of the
infectionùbut dead.
Manning told me that he had once seriously considered, in the middle of the
night, recommending that every single person, including himself, who knew the
Karst-Obre technique be put to death, in the interests of all civilization. But
he had realized the next day that it had been sheer funk; the technique was
certain in time to be rediscovered by someone else.
Furthermore, it would not do to wait, to refrain from using the grisly power,
until someone else perfected it and used it. The only possible chance to keep
the world from being turned into one huge morgue was for us to use the power
first and drasticallyùget the upper hand and keep it.
We were not at war, legally, yet we had been in the war up to our necks with our
weight on the side of democracy since 1940. Manning had proposed to the
President that we turn a supply of the dust over to Great Britain, under
conditions we specified, and enable them thereby to force a peace. But the terms
of the peace would be dictated by the United Statesùfor we were not turning over
the secret.
After that, the Pax Americana.
The United States was having power thrust on it, willy-nilly. We had to accept
it and enforce a world-wide peace, ruthlessly and drastically, or it would be
seized by some other nation. There could not be coequals in the possession of
this weapon. The factor of time predominated.
I was selected to handle the details in England because Manning insisted, and
the President agreed with him, that every person technically acquainted with the
Karst-Obre process should remain on the laboratory reservation in what amounted
to protective custodyùimprisonment. That included Manning himself. I could go
because I did not have the secretùI could not even have acquired it without
years of schoolingùand what I did not know I could not tell, even under, well,
drugs. We were determined to keep the secret as long as we could to consolidate
the Pax; we did not distrust our English cousins, but they were Britishers, with
a first loyalty to the British Empire. No need to tempt them.
I was picked because I understood the background if not the science, and because
Manning trusted me. I don't know why the President trusted me, too, but then my
job was not complicated.

We took off from the new field outside Baltimore on a cold, raw afternoon which
matched my own feelings. I had an all-gone feeling in my stomach, a runny nose,
and, buttoned inside my clothes, papers appointing me a special agent of the
President of the United States. They were odd papers, papers without precedent;
they did not simply give me the usual diplomatic immunity; they made my person
very nearly as sacred as that of the President himself.
At Nova Scotia we touched ground to refuel the F. B. I. men left us, we took off
again, and the Canadian transfighters took their stations around us. All the
dust we were sending was in my plane; if the President's representative were
shot down, the dust would go to the bottom with him.
No need to tell of the crossing. I was airsick and miserable, in spite of the
steadiness of the new six-engined jobs. I felt like a hangman on the way to an
execution, and wished to God that I were a boy again, with nothing more
momentous than a debate contest, or a track meet, to worry me.
There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I could not
see it, the cabin being shuttered. Our pilotùcaptain ignored it and brought his
ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, I suppose, though I did not
know nor care. I would have welcomed a crash. Then the lights outside went on
and I saw that we had come to rest in an underground hangar.
I stayed in the ship. The commandant came to see me to his quarters as his
guest. I shook my head. "I stay here," I said. "Orders. You are to treat this
ship as United States soil, you know."
He seemed miffed, but compromised by having dinner served for both of us in my
ship.
There was a really embarrassing situation the next day. I was commanded to
appear for a royal audience. But I had my instructions and I stuck to them. I
was sitting on that cargo of dust until the President told me what to do with
it. Late in the day I was called on by a member of Parliamentùnobody admitted
out loud that it was the Prime Ministerùand a Mr. Windsor. The M. P. did most of
the talking and I answered his questions. My other guest said very little and
spoke slowly with some difficulty. But I got a very favorable impression of him.
He seemed to be a man who was carrying a load beyond human strength and carrying
it heroically.

There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little
longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split-second intensity of
imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was using
the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two face-to-face
television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President spoke German
fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to the warring peoples
themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the continent were able to
listen, the police regulations there being what they were.
The Ambassador for the Reich was given a special demonstration of the effect of
the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western prairie and
allowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of steers. It should
have impressed him and I think that it didùnobody could ignore a visual
demonstration!ùbut what report he made to his leader we never knew.
The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing attacks as
heavy as any of the war. I was safe enough but I heard about them, and I could
see the effect on the morale of the officers with whom I associated. Not that it
frightened themùit made them coldly angry. The raids were not directed primarily
at dockyards or factories, but were ruthless destruction of anything,
particularly villages.
"I don't see what you chaps are waiting for," a flight commander complained to
me. "What the Jerries need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a lesson in
their own Aryan culture."
I shook my head. "We'll have to do it our own way."
He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and his brother officers felt. They had
a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: "Remember Coventry!"
Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. was not to bomb during the period
of negotiation, but their bombers were busy nevertheless. The continent was
showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared by our own
propaganda agents. The first of these called on the people of the Reich to stop
a useless war and promised that the terms of peace would not be vindictive. The
second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that herd of steers. The third
was a simple direct warning to get out of cities and to stay out. As Manning put
it, we were calling "Halt!" three times before firing. I do not think that he or
the President expected it to work, but we were morally obligated to try.
The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds-Yarley
nonintercept type, the sort whereby the receiver must "trigger" the transmitter
in order for transmission to take place at all. It made assurance of privacy in
diplomatic rapid communication for the first time in history, and was a real
help in the crisis. I had brought along my own technician, one of the F. B. I.'s
new corps of specialists, to handle the scrambler and the trigger.
He called to me one afternoon. "Washington signaling."
I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar floor,
wondering if it were another false alarm.
It was the President. His lips were white. "Carry out your basic instructions,
Mr. deFries."
"Yes, Mr. President!"

The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a receipt
and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were finished.
But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers from every
independent nation and from the several provisional governments of occupied
nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at the request of
Manning.
Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all the
dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least, reaching its
destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than Ridpath calculated would
be needed for the mission and my last job was to see to it that every canister
actually went on board a plane of the flight. The extremely small weight of dust
used was emphasized to each of the military observers.
We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, refueled in the
air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled thirty
minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut the thin air
for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and hiked up to permit
the utmost maximum of speed and altitude.
Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act as a
diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the intention
to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few planes actually
engaged in the serious work might well escape attention entirely, flying so high
in the stratosphere.
The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions, planning
to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night was appreciably
clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin is not a hard city to locate,
since it has the largest square-mile area of any modern city and is located on a
broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out the River Spree as we approached it,
and the Havel. The city was blacked out, but a city makes a different sort of
black from open country. Parachute flares hung over the city in many places,
showing that the R. A. F. had been busy before we got there and the A. A.
batteries on the ground helped to pick out the city.
There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our
altitude as nearly as I could judge.
The pilot reported to the captain, "On line of bearing!"
The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse pots
of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of black
powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter the dust at a time after release
predetermined by the fuse spot setting. The method used was no more than an
ancient expedient. The dust would have been almost as effective had it simply
been dumped out in paper bags, although not as well distributed.
The Captain hung over the navigator's board, a slight frown on his thin sallow
face. "Ready one!" reported the bomber.
"Release!"
"Ready two!"
The Captain studied his wristwatch. "Release!"
"Ready three!"
"Release!"
When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail and
ran for home.

No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about it.
But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did not feel
much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his courage and
undergone a serious operation; it's over now, he is still numb from shock but
his mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home.
The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my ship
at once and gave me an escort for the off shore war zone. It was an expensive
way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended some millions of
lives in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a money expense? He gave
the necessary orders absentmindedly.
I took a double dose of Nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some news
while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had. The
government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly after the
raid, sneering at the much vaunted "secret weapon" of the British and stating
that a major air attack had been made on Berlin and several other cities, but
that the raiders had been driven off with only minor damage. The current Lord
Haw-Haw started one of his sarcastic speeches but was unable to continue it. The
announcer said that he had been seized with a heart attack, and substituted some
recordings of patriotic music. The station cut off in the middle of the "Horst
Wesser' song. After that there was silence.
I managed to promote an Army car and a driver at the Baltimore field which made
short work of the Annapolis speedway. We almost overran the turn to the
laboratory.
Manning was in his office. He looked up as I came in said, "Hello, John," in a
dispirited voice, and dropped his eyes again to the blotter pad. He went back to
drawing doodles.
I looked him over and realized for the first time that the chief was an old man.
His face was gray and flabby, deep furrows framed his mouth in a triangle. His
clothes did not fit.
I went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it so hard, chief.
It's not your fault. We gave them all the warning in the world."
He looked up again. "Estelle Karst suicided this morning."
Anybody could have anticipated it, but nobody did. And somehow I felt harder hit
by her death than by the death of all those strangers in Berlin. "How did she do
it?" I asked.
"Dust. She went into the canning room, and took off her armor.
I could picture herùhead held high, eyes snapping, and that set look on her
mouth which she got when people did something she disapproved of. One little old
woman whose lifetime work had been turned against her.
"I wish," Manning added slowly, "that I could explain to her why we had to do
it."
We buried her in a lead-lined coffin, then Manning and I went on to Washington.

While we were there, we saw the motion pictures that had been made of the death
of Berlin. You have not seen them; they never were made public, but they were of
great use in convincing the other nations of the world that peace was a good
idea. I saw them when Congress did, being allowed in because I was Manning's
assistant.
They had been made by a pair of R. A. F. pilots, who had dodged the Luftwaffle
to get them. The first shots showed some of the main streets the morning after
the raid. There was not much to see that would show up in tele-photo shots, just
busy and crowded streets, but if you looked closely you could see that there had
been an excessive number of automobile accidents.
The second day showed the attempt to evacuate. The inner squares of the city
were practically deserted save for bodies and wrecked cars, but the streets
leading out of town were boiling with people, mostly on foot, for the trams
where out of service. The pitiful creatures were fleeing, not knowing that death
was already lodged inside them. The plane swooped down at one point and the
cinematographer had his telephoto lens pointed directly into the face of a young
woman for several seconds. She stared back at it with a look too woebegone to
forget, then stumbled and fell.
She may have been trampled. I hope so. One of those six horses had looked like
that when the stuff was beginning to hit his vitals.
The last sequence showed Berlin and the roads around it a week after the raid.
The city was dead; there was not a man, a woman, a childùnor cats, nor dogs, not
even a pigeon. Bodies were all around, but they were safe from rats. There were
no rats.
The roads around Berlin were quiet now. Scattered carelessly on shoulders and in
ditches, and to a lesser extent on the pavement itself, like coal shaken off a
train, were the quiet heaps that had been the citizens of the capital of the
Reich. There is no use in talking about it.
But, so far as I am concerned, I left what soul I had in that projection room
and I have not had one since.
The two pilots who made the pictures eventually diedùsystemic, cumulative
infection, dust in the air over Berlin. With precautions it need not have
happened, but the English did not believe, as yet, that our extreme precautions
were necessary.

The Reich took about a week to fold up. It might have taken longer if the new
Fuehrer had not gone to Berlin the day after the raid to 'approve" that the
British boasts had been hollow. There is no need to recount the provisional
governments that Germany had in the following several months; the only one we
are concerned with is the so called restored monarchy which used a cousin of the
old Kaiser as a symbol, the one that sued for peace.
Then the trouble started.
When the Prime Minister announced the terms of the private agreement he had had
with our President, he was met with a silence that was broken only by cries of
"Shame! Shame! Resign!" I suppose it was inevitable; the Commons reflected the
spirit of a people who had been unmercifully punished for four years. They were
in a mood to enforce a peace that would have made the Versailles Treaty look
like the Beatitudes.
The vote of no confidence left the Prime Minister no choice. Forty-eight hours
later the King made a speech from the throne that violated all constitutional
precedent, for it had not been written by a Prime Minister. In this greater
crisis in his reign, his voice was clear and unlabored; it sold the idea to
England and a national coalition government was formed.
I don't know whether we would have dusted London to enforce our terms or not;
Manning thinks we would have done so. I suppose it depended on the character of
the President of the United States, and there is no way of knowing about that
since we did not have to do it.
The United States, and in particular the President of the United States, was
confronted by two inescapable problems. First, we had to consolidate our
position at once, use our temporary advantage of an overwhelmingly powerful
weapon to insure that such a weapon would not be turned on us. Second, some
means had to be worked out to stabilize American foreign policy so that it could
handle the tremendous power we had suddenly had thrust upon us.
The second was by far the most difficult and serious. If we were to establish a
reasonably permanent peaceùsay a century or soùthrough a monopoly on a weapon so
powerful that no one dare fight us, it was imperative that the policy under
which we acted be more lasting than passing political administrations. But more
of that laterù
The first problem had to be attended to at onceùtime was the heart of it. The
emergency lay in the very simplicity of the weapon. It required nothing but
aircraft to scatter it and the dust itself, which was easily and quickly made by
anyone possessing the secret of the Karst-Obre process and having access to a
small supply of uranium-bearing ore.
But the Karst-Obre process was simple and might be independently developed at
any time. Manning reported to the President that it was Ridpath's opinion,
concurred in by Manning, that the staff of any modern radiation laboratory
should be able to work out an equivalent technique in six weeks, working from
the hint given by the events in Berlin alone, and should then be able to produce
enough dust to cause major destruction in another six weeks.
Ninety daysùninety days provided they started from scratch and were not already
halfway to their goal. Less than ninety daysùperhaps no time at allù
By this time Manning was an unofficial member of the cabinet; "Secretary of
Dust," the President called him in one of his rare jovial moods. As for me,
well, I attended cabinet meetings, too. As the only layman who had seen the
whole show from beginning to end, the President wanted me there.
I am an ordinary sort of man who, by a concatenation of improbabilities, found
himself shoved into the councils of the rulers. But I found that the rulers were
ordinary men, too, and frequently as bewildered as I was.
But Manning was no ordinary man. In him ordinary hard sense had been raised to
the level of genius. Oh, yes, I know that it is popular to blame everything on
him and to call him everything from traitor to mad dog, but I still think he was
both wise and benevolent. I don't care how many second-guessing historians
disagree with me.
"I propose," said Manning, "that we begin by immobilizing all aircraft
throughout the world."
The Secretary of Commerce raised his brows. "Aren't you," he said, "being a
little fantastic, Colonel Manning?"
"No, I'm not," answered Manning shortly. "Im being realistic. The key to this
problem is aircraft. Without aircraft the dust is an inefficient weapon. The
only way I see to gain time enough to deal with the whole problem is to ground
all aircraft and put them out of operation. All aircraft, that is, not actually
in the service of the United States Army. After that we can deal with complete
world disarmament and permanent methods of control."
"Really now," replied the Secretary, "you are not proposing that commercial
airlines be put out of operation. They are an essential part of world economy.
It would be an intolerable nuisance."
"Getting killed is an intolerable nuisance, too," Manning answered stubbornly.
"I do propose just that. All aircraft. All."
The President had been listening without comment to the discussion. He now cut
in. "How about aircraft on which some groups depend to stay alive, Colonel, such
as the Alaskan lines?"
"If there are such, they must be operated by American Army pilots and crews. No
exceptions."
The Secretary of Commerce looked startled. "Am I to infer from that last remark
that you intended this prohibition to apply to the United States as well as
other nations?"
"Naturally."
"But that's impossible. It's unconstitutional. It violates civil rights."
Killing a man violates his civil rights, too Manning answered stubbornly.
"You can't do it. Any Federal Court in the country would enjoin you in five
minutes."
"It seems to me," said Manning slowly, that Andy Jackson gave us a good
precedent for that one when he told John Marshall to go fly a kite." He looked
slowly around the table at faces that ranged from undecided to antagonistic.
"The issue is sharp, gentlemen, andùwe might as well drag it out in the open. We
can be dead men, with everything in due order, constitutional, and technically
correct; or we can do what has to be done, stay alive, and try to straighten out
the legal aspects later." He shut up and waited.
The Secretary of Labor picked it up. "I don't think the Colonel has any corner
on realism. I think I see the problem, too, and I admit it is a serious one. The
dust must never be used again. Had I known about it soon enough, it would never
have been used on Berlin. And I agree that some sort of world wide control is
necessary. But where I differ with the Colonel is in the method. What he
proposes is a military dictatorship imposed by force on the whole world. Admit
it, Colonel. Isn't that what you are proposing?"
Manning did not dodge it. "That is what I am proposing."
"Thanks. Now we know where we stand. I, for one, do not regard democratic
measures and constitutional procedure as of so little importance that I am
willing to jettison them any time it becomes convenient. To me, democracy is
more than a matter of expediency, it is a faith Either it works, or I go under
with it."
What do you propose?" asked the President.
"I propose that we treat this as an opportunity to create a worldwide democratic
commonwealth." Let us use our present dominant position to issue a call to all
nations to send representatives to a conference to form a world constitution."
"League of Nations," I heard someone mutter.
"No!" he answered the side remark. "Not a League of Nations. The old League was
helpless because it had no real existence, no power. It was not implemented to
enforce its decisions; it was just a debating society, a sham. This would be
different for we would turn over the dust to it."
Nobody spoke for some minutes. You could see them turning it over in their
minds, doubtful, partially approving, intrigued but dubious.
"I'd like to answer that," said Manning.
"Go ahead," said the President.
"I will. I'm going to have to use some pretty plain language and I hope that
Secretary Larner will do me the honor of believing that I speak so from
sincerity and deep concern and not from personal pique.
"I think a world democracy would be a very fine thing and I ask that you believe
me when I say I would willingly lay down my life to accomplish it. I also think
it would be a very fine thing for the lion to lie down with the lamb, but I am
reasonably certain that only the lion would get up. If we try to form an actual
world democracy, we'll be the lamb in the setup.
"There are a lot of good, kindly people who are inter-nationalists these days.
Nine out of ten of them are soft in the head and the tenth is ignorant. If we
set up a world-wide democracy, what will the electorate be? Take a look at the
facts: four hundred million Chinese with no more concept of voting and citizen
responsibility than a flea; three hundred million Hindus who aren't much better
indoctrinated; God knows how many in the Eurasian Union who believe in God knows
what; the entire continent of Africa only semicivilized; eighty million Japanese
who really believe that they are Heaven-ordained to rule; our Spanish-American
friends who don't understand the Bill of Rights the way we think of it; a
quarter of a billion people of two dozen different nationalities in Europe, all
with revenge and black hatred in their hearts.
"No, it won't wash. It's preposterousùto talk about a world democracy for many
years to come. If you turn the secret of the dust over to such a body, you will
be arming the whole world to commit suicide."
Larner answered at once. "I could resent some of your remarks, but I don't. To
put it bluntly, I consider the source. The trouble with you, Colonel Manning, is
that you are a professional soldier and have no faith in people. Soldiers may be
necessary, but the worst of them are martinets and the best are merely
paternalistic." There was quite a lot more of the same.
Manning stood it until his turn came again. "Maybe I am all those things, but
you haven't met my argument. What are you going to do about the hundreds of
millions of people who have no experience in, nor love for, democracy? Now,
perhaps, I don't have the same conception of democracy as yourself, but I do
know this: Out West there are a couple of hundred thousand people who sent me to
Congress; I am not going to stand quietly by and let a course be followed which
I think will result in their deaths or utter ruin.
"Here is the probable future, as I see it, potential in the smashing of the atom
and the development of lethal artificial radioactives. Some power makes a supply
of the dust. They'll hit us first to try to knock us out and give them a free
hand. New York and Washington overnight, then all of our industrial areas while
we are still politically and economically disorganized. But our army would not
be in those cities; we would have planes and a supply of dust somewhere where
the first dusting wouldn't touch them. Our boys would bravely and righteously
proceed to poison their big cities. Back and forth it would go until the
organization of each country had broken down so completely that they were no
longer able to maintain a sufficiently high level of industrialization to
service planes and manufacture dust. That presupposes starvation and plague in
the process. You can fill in the details.
"The other nations would get in the game. It would be silly and suicidal, of
course, but it doesn't take brains to take a hand in this. All it takes is a
very small group, hungry for power, a few airplanes and a supply of dust. It's a
vicious circle that cannot possibly be stopped until the entire planet has
dropped to a level of economy too low to support the techniques necessary to
maintain it. My best guess is that such a point would be reached when
approximately three-quarters of the world's population were dead of dust,
disease, or hunger, and culture reduced to the peasant-and-village type.
"Where is your Constitution and your Bill of Rights if you let that happen?"
I've shortened it down, but that was the gist of it. I can't hope to record
every word of an argument that went on for days.
The Secretary of the Navy took a crack at him next. "Aren't you getting a bit
hysterical, Colonel? After all, the world has seen a lot of weapons which were
going to make war an impossibility too horrible to contemplate. Poison gas, and
tanks, and airplanesùeven firearms, if I remember my history."
Manning smiled wryly. "You've made a point, Mr. Secretary. 'And when the wolf
really came, the little boy shouted in vain.' I imagine the Chamber of Commerce
in Pompeii presented the same reasonable argument to any arly vulcanologist so
timid as to fear Vesuvius. I'll try to justify my fears. The dust differs from
every earlier weapon in its deadliness and ease of use, but most importantly in
that we have developed no defense against it. For a number of fairly technical
reasons, I don't think we ever will, at least not this century."
"Why not?"
"Because there is no way to counteract radioactivity short of putting a lead
shield between yourself and it, an airtight lead shield. People might survive by
living in sealed underground cities, but our characteristic American culture
could not be maintained."
"Colonel Manning," suggested the Secretary of State, "I think you have
overlooked the obvious alternative."
"Have I?"
"Yesùto keep the dust as our own secret, go our own way, and let the rest of the
world look out for itself. That is the only program that fits our traditions."
The Secretary of State was really a fine old gentleman, and not stupid, but he
was slow to assimilate new ideas.
"Mr. Secretary," said Manning respectfully, "I wish we could afford to mind our
own business. I do wish we could. But it is the best opinion of all the experts
that we can't maintain control of this secret except by rigid policing. The
Germans were close on our heels in nuclear research; it was sheer luck that we
got there first. I ask you to imagine Germany a year henceùwith a supply of
dust."
The Secretary did not answer, but I saw his lips form the word Berlin.
They came around. The President had deliberately let Manning bear the brunt of
the argument, concerning his own stock of goodwill to coax the obdurate. He
decided against putting it up to Congress; the dusters would have been overhead
before each senator had finished his say. What he intended to do might be
unconstitutional, but if he failed to act there might not be any Constitution
shortly. There was precedentùthe Emancipation Proclamation, the Monroe Doctrine,
the Louisiana Purchase, suspension of habeas corpus in the War between the
States, the Destroyer Deal.
On February 22nd the President declared a state of full emergency internally and
sent his Peace Proclamation to the head of every sovereign state. Divested of
its diplomatic surplusage, it said: The United States is prepared to defeat any
power, or combination of powers, in jig time. Accordingly, we are outlawing war
and are calling on every nation to disarm completely at once. In other words,
"Throw down your guns, boys; we've got the drop on you!"
A supplement set forth the procedure: All aircraft capable of flying the
Atlantic were to be delivered in one week's time to a field, or rather a great
stretch of prairie, just west of Fort Riley, Kansas. For lesser aircraft, a spot
near Shanghai and a rendezvous in Wales were designated. Memoranda would be
issued with respect to other war equipment. Uranium and its ores were not
mentioned; that would come later.
No excuses. Failure to disarm would be construed as an act of war against the
United States.

There were no cases of apoplexy in the Senate; why not, I don't know.
There were only three powers to be seriously worried about, England, Japan, and
the Eurasian Union. England had been forewarned, we had pulled her out of a war
she was losing, and sheùor rather her men in powerùknew accurately what we could
and would do.
Japan was another matter. They had not seen Berlin and they did not really
believe it. Besides, they had been telling each other for so many years that
they were unbeatable, they believed it. It does not do to get too tough with a
Japanese too quickly, for they will die rather than lose face. The negotiations
were conducted very quietly indeed, but our fleet was halfway from Pearl Harbor
to Kobe, loaded with enough dust to sterilize their six biggest cities, before
they were concluded. Do you know what did it? This never hit the newspapers but
it was the wording of the pamphlets we proposed to scatter before dusting.
The Emperor was pleased to declare a New Order of Peace. The official version,
built up for home consumption, made the whole matter one of collaboration
between two great and friendly powers, with Japan taking the initiative.
The Eurasian Union was a puzzle. After Stalin's unexpected death in 1941, no
western nation knew very much about what went on in there. Our own diplomatic
relations had atrophied through failure to replace men called home nearly four
years before. Everybody knew, of course, that the new group in power called
themselves Fifth Internationalists, but what that meant, aside from ceasing to
display the pictures of Lenin and Stalin, nobody knew.
But they agreed to our terms and offered to cooperate in every way. They pointed
out that the Union had never been warlike and had kept out of the recent world
struggle. It was fitting that the two remaining great powers should use their
greatness to insure a lasting peace.
I was delighted; I had been worried about the E. U.
They commenced delivery of some of their smaller planes to the receiving station
near Shanghai at once. The reports on the number and quality of the planes
seemed to indicate that they had stayed out of the war through necessity, the
planes were mostly of German make and poor conditionùtypes that Germany had
abandoned early in the war.
Manning went west to supervise certain details in connection with immobilizing
the big planes, the trans-oceanic planes, which were to gather near Fort Riley.
We planned to spray them with oil, then dust from a low altitude, as in crop
dusting, with a low concentration of one-year dust. Then we could turn our backs
on them and forget them, while attending to other matters.
But there were hazards. The dust must not be allowed to reach Kansas City,
Lincoln, Wichitaùany of the nearby cities. The smaller towns roundabout had been
temporarily evacuated. Testing stations needed to be set up in all directions in
order that accurate tab on the dust might be kept. Manning felt personally
responsible to make sure that no bystander was poisoned.
We circled the receiving station before landing at Fort Riley. I could pick out
the three landing fields which had hurriedly been graded. Their runways were
white in the sun, the twenty-four-hour cement as yet undirtied. Around each of
the landing fields were crowded dozens of parking fields, less perfectly graded.
Tractors and bulldozers were still at work on some of them. In the eastern-most
fields, the German and British ships were already in place, jammed wing to body
as tightly as planes on the flight deck of a carrierùsave for a few that were
still being towed into position, the tiny tractors looking from the air like
ants dragging pieces of leaf many times larger than themselves.
Only three flying fortresses had arrived from the Eurasian Union. Their
representatives had asked for a short delay in order that a supply of high-test
aviation gasoline might be delivered to them. They claimed a shortage of fuel
necessary to make the long flight over the Arctic safe. There was no way to
check the claim and the delay was granted while a shipment was routed from
England.
We were about to leave, Manning having satisfied himself as to safety
precautions, when a dispatch came in announcing that a flight of E. U. bombers
might be expected before the day was out. Manning wanted to see them arrive; we
waited around for four hours. When it was finally reported that our escort of
fighters had picked them up at the Canadian border, Manning appeared to have
grown fidgety and stated that he would watch them from the air. We took off,
gained altitude and waited.
There were nine of them in the flight, cruising in column of echelons and
looking so huge that our little fighters were hardly noticeable. They circled
the field and I was admiring the stately dignity of them when Manning's pilot,
Lieutenant Rafferty, exclaimed, "What the devil! They are preparing to land
downwind!"
I still did not tumble, but Manning shouted to the copilot, "Get the field!"
He fiddled with his instruments and announced, "Got 'em, sir!"
"General alarm! Armor!"
We could not hear the sirens, naturally, but I could see the white plumes rise
from the big steam whistle on the roof of the Administration Buildingùthree long
blasts, then three short ones. It seemed almost at the same time that the first
cloud broke from the E. U. planes.
Instead of landing, they passed low over the receiving station, jam-packed now
with ships from all over the world. Each echelon picked one of three groups
centered around the three landing fields and streamers of heavy brown smoke
poured from the bellies of the E. U. ships. I saw a tiny black figure jump from
a tractor and run toward the nearest building. Then the smoke screen obscured
the field.
"Do you still have the field?" demanded Manning.
"Yes, sir."
"Cross connect to the chief safety technician. Hurry!"
The copilot cut in the amplifier so that Manning could talk directly. "Saunders?
This is Manning. How about it?"
"Radioactive, chief. Intensity seven point four."
They had paralleled the Karst-Obre research.
Manning cut him off and demanded that the communication office at the field
raise the Chief of Staff. There was nerve-stretching delay, for it had to be
routed over landùwire to Kansas City, and some chief operator had to be
convinced that she should commandeer a trunk line that was in commercial use.
But we got through at last and Manning made his report. "It stands to reason," I
heard him say, that other flights are approaching the border by this time. New
York, of course, and Washington. Probably Detroit and Chicago as well. No way of
knowing."
The Chief of Staff cut off abruptly, without comment. I knew that the U.S. air
fleets, in a state of alert for weeks past, would have their orders in a few
seconds and would be on their way to hunt out and down the attackers, if
possible before they could reach the cities.
I glanced back at the field. The formations were broken up. One of the E. U.
bombers was down, crashed, half a mile beyond the station. While I watched, one
of our midget dive-bombers screamed down on a behemoth E. U. ship and unloaded
his eggs. It was a center hit, but the American pilot had cut it too fine, could
not pull out, crashed before his victim.

There is no point in rehashing the newspaper stories of the Four-days War. The
point is that we should have lost it, and we would have, had it not been for an
unlikely combination of luck, foresight and good management. Apparently the
nuclear physicists of the Eurasian Union were almost as far along as Ridpath's
crew when the destruction of Berlin gave them the tip they needed. But we had
rushed them, forced them to move before they were ready, because of the deadline
for disarmament set forth in our Peace Proclamation.
If the President had waited to fight it out with Congress before issuing the
proclamation, there would not be any United States.
Manning never got credit for it, but it is evident to me that he anticipated the
possibility of something like the Four-days War and prepared for it in a dozen
different devious ways. I don't mean military preparation; the Army and the Navy
saw to that. But it was no accident that Congress was adjourned at the time. I
had something to do with the vote-swapping and compromising that led up to it,
and I know.
But I put it to youùwould he have maneuvered to get Congress out of Washington
at a time when he feared that Washington might be attacked if he had had
dictatorial ambitions?
Of course, it was the President who was back of the ten-day leaves that had been
granted to most of the civil-service personnel in Washington and he himself must
have made the decision to take a swing through the South at that time, but it
must have been Manning who put the idea in his head. It is inconceivable that
the President would have left Washington to escape personal danger.
And then, there was the plague scare. I don't know how or when Manning could
have started thatùit certainly did not go through my notebookùbut I simply do
not believe that it was accidental that a completely unfounded rumor or bubonic
plaque caused New York City to be semi-deserted at the time the E. U. bombers
struck.
At that, we lost over eight hundred thousand people in Manhattan alone.
Of course, the government was blamed for the lives that were lost and the papers
were merciless in their criticism at the failure to anticipate and force an
evacuation of all the major cities.
If Manning anticipated trouble, why did he not ask for evacuation?
Well, as I see it, for this reason:
A big city will not, never has, evacuated in response to rational argument.
London never was evacuated on any major scale and we failed utterly in our
attempt to force the evacuation of Berlin. The people of New York City had
considered the danger of air raids since 1940 and were long since hardened to
the thought.
But the fear of a nonexistent epidemic of plague caused the most nearly complete
evacuation of a major city ever seen.
And don't forget what we did to Vladivostok and Irkutsk and Moscowùthose were
innocent people, too. War isn't pretty.
I said luck played a part. It was bad navigation that caused one of our ships to
dust Ryazan instead of Moscow, but that mistake knocked out the laboratory and
plant which produced the only supply of military radio-actives in the Erasian
Union. Suppose the mistake had been the other way aroundùsuppose that one of the
E. U. ships in attacking Washington, D.C., by mistake, had included Ridpath's
shop forty-five miles away in Maryland?
Congress reconvened at the temporary capital in St. Louis, and the American
Pacification Expedition started the job of pulling the fangs of the Eurasian
Union. It was not a military occupation in the usual sense; there were two
simple objectives: to search out and dust all aircraft, aircraft plants, and
fields, and to locate and dust radiation laboratories, uranium supplies, find
lodes of carnotite and pitchblende. No attempt was made to interfere with, or to
replace, civil government.
We used a two-year dust, which gave a breathing spell in which to consolidate
our position. Liberal rewards were offered to informers, a technique which
worked remarkably well not only in the E. U., but in most parts of the world.
The "weasel," an instrument to smell out radiation based on the
electroscope-discharge principle and refined by Ridpath's staff, greatly
facilitated the work of locating uranium and uranium ores. A grid of weasels,
properly spaced over a suspect area, could locate any important mass of uranium
almost as handily as a direction-finder can spot a radio station.
But, notwithstanding the excellent work of General Bulfinch and the Pacification
Expedition as a whole, it was the original mistake of dusting Ryazan that made
the job possible of accomplishment.
Anyone interested in the details of the pacification work done in l945-6 should
see the "Proceedings of the American Foundation for Social Research" for a paper
entitled, A Study of the Execution of the American Peace Policy from February,
1945. The de facto solution of the problem of policing the world against war
left the United States with the much greater problem of perfecting a policy that
would insure that the deadly power of the dust would never fall into unfit
hands.
The problem is as easy to state as the problem of squaring the circle and almost
as impossible of accomplishment. Both Manning and the President believed that
the United States must of necessity keep the power for the time being until some
permanent institution could be developed fit to retain it. The hazard was this:
Foreign policy is lodged jointly in the hands of the President and the Congress.
We were fortunate at the time in having a good President and an adequate
Congress, but that was no guarantee for the future. We have had unfit Presidents
and power-hungry Congressesùoh, yes! Read the history of the Mexican War.
We were about to hand over to future governments of the United States the power
to turn the entire globe into an empire, our empire, and it was the sober
opinion of the President that our characteristic and beloved democratic culture
would not stand up under the temptation. Imperialism degrades both oppressor and
oppressed.
The President was determined that our sudden power should be used for the
absolute minimum of maintaining peace in the worldùthe simple purpose of
outlawing war and nothing else. It must not be used to protect American
investments abroad, to coerce trade agreements, for any purpose but the simple
abolition of mass killing.
There is no science of sociology. Perhaps there will be, some day, when a
rigorous physics gives a finished science of colloidal chemistry and that leads
in turn to a complete knowledge of biology, and from there to a definitive
psychology. After that we may begin to know something about sociology and
politics. Something around the year 5,000 A.D., maybeùif the human race does not
commit suicide before then.
Until then, there is only horse sense and rule of thumb and observational
knowledge of probabilities. Manning and the President played by ear.
The treaties with Great Britain, Germany and the Eurasian Union, whereby we
assumed the responsibility for world peace and at the same time guaranteed the
contracting nations against our own misuse of power were rushed through in the
period of relief and goodwill that immediately followed the termination of the
Four-days War. We followed the precedents established by the Panama Canal
treaties, the Suez Canal agreements, and the Philippine Independence policy.
But the purpose underneath was to commit future governments of the United States
to an irrevocable benevolent policy.
The act to implement the treaties by creating the Commission of World Safety
followed soon after, and Colonel Manning became Mr. Commissioner Manning.
Commissioners had a life tenure and the intention was to create a body with the
integrity, permanence and freedom from outside pressure possessed by the supreme
court of the United States. Since the treaties contemplated an eventual joint
trust, commissioners need not be American citizensùand the oath they took was to
preserve the peace of the world.
There was trouble getting that clause past the Congress! Every other similar
oath had been to the Constitution of the United States.
Nevertheless the Commission was formed. It took charge of world aircraft,
assumed jurisdiction over radio-actives, natural and artificial, and commenced
the long slow task of building up the Peace Patrol.
Manning envisioned a corps of world policemen, an aristocracy which through
selection and indoctrination, could be trusted with unlimited power over the
life of every man, every woman, every child on the face of the globe. For the
power would be unlimited, the precautions necessary to insure the unbeatable
weapon from getting loose in the world again made it axiomatic that its
custodians would wield power that is safe only in the hands of Deity. There
would be no one to guard those self same guardians. Their own characters and the
watch they kept on each other would be all that stood between the race and
disaster.
For the first time in history, supreme political power was to be exerted with no
possibility of checks and balances from the outside. Manning took up the task of
perfecting it was a dragging subconscious conviction that it was too much for
human nature.
The rest of the Commission was appointed slowly, the names being sent to the
Senate after long joint consideration by the President and Manning. The director
of the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from Switzerland, Dr.
Igor Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique independently and whom
the A. P. F. had discovered in prison after the dusting of Moscowùthose three
were the only foreigners. The rest of the list is well known.
Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the
Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all of
the pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their habits and
associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional attitudes examined
by the best psychological research methods availableùwhich weren't good enough.
Their final acceptance for the Patrol depended on two personal interviews, one
with Manning, one with the President.
Manning told me that he depended more on the President's feeling for character
than he did on all the association and reaction tests the psychologists could
think up. "It's like the nose of a bloodhound," he said. "In his forty years of
practical politics he has seen more phonies than you and I will ever see and
each one was trying to sell him something. He can tell one in the dark."
The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet
patrolmen, schools that were to be open to youths of any race, color, or
nationality, and from which they would go forth to guard the peace of every
country but their own. To that country a man would never return during his
service. They were to be a deliberately expatriated band of Janizaries, with an
obligation only to the Commission and to the race, and welded together with a
carefully nurtured esprit de corps.
It stood a chance of working. Had Manning been allowed twenty years without
interruption, the original plan might have worked.

The President's running mate for re-election was the result of a political
compromise. The candidate for Vice President was a confirmed isolationist who
had opposed the Peace Commission from the first, but it was he or a party split
in a year when the opposition was strong. The President sneaked back in but with
a greatly weakened Congress; only his power of veto twice prevented the repeal
of the Peace Act. The Vice President did nothing to help him, although he did
not publicly lead the insurrection. Manning revised his plans to complete the
essential program by the end of 1952, there being no way to predict the temper
of the next administration.
We were both over worked and I was beginning to realize that my health was gone.
The cause was not far to seek; R photographic film strapped next to my skin
would cloud in twenty minutes. I was suffering from cumulative minimal
radioactive poisoning. No well defined cancer that could be operated on, but a
systemic deterioration of function and tissue. There was no help for it, and
there was work to be done. I've always attributed it mainly to the week I spent
sitting on those canisters before the raid on Berlin.

February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash about the plane crash that killed
the President because I was lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that time,
was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunch, though I was still on
duty. I first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and
at once hurried into Manning's office.

There was a curious unreality to that meeting. It seemed to me that we had
slipped back to that day when I returned from England, the day that Estelle
Karst died. He looked up. "Hello John," he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it so hard, chief," was all I could
think of to say.
Forty-eight hours later came the message from the newly sworn-in President for
Manning to report to him. I took it in to him, an official dispatch which I
decoded. Manning read it, face impassive.
"Are you going, chief?" I asked.
"Eh? Why, certainly."
I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and brief case.
Manning looked up when I came back in. "Never mind, John," he said. "You're not
going." I guess I must have looked stubborn, for he added, "You're not to go
because there is work to do here. Wait a minute."
He went to his safe, twiddled the dials, opened it and removed a sealed envelope
which he threw on the desk between us. "Here are your orders. Get busy."
He went out as I was opening them. I read them through and got busy. There was
little enough time.

The new president received Manning standing and in the company of several of his
bodyguard and intimates. Manning recognized the senator who had led the movement
to use the Patrol to recover expropriated holdings in South America and
Rhodesia, as well as the chairman of the committee on aviation with whom he had
had several unsatisfactory conferences in an attempt to work out a modus
operandi for reinstituting commercial airlines.
"You're prompt, I see," said the President. "Good."
Manning bowed.
"We might as well come straight to the point," the Chief Executive went on.
"There are going to be some changes of policy in the administration. I want your
resignation."
"I am sorry to have to refuse, sir."
'Well see about that. In the meantime, Colonel Manning, your are relieved from
duty."
"Mr. Commissioner Manning, if you please."
The new President shrugged. "One or the other, as you please. You are relieved,
either way."
'1 am sorry to disagree again. My appointment is for life."
"That's enough," was the answer. "This is the United States of America. There
can be no higher authority. You are under arrest"
I can visualize Manning staring steadily at him for a long moment, then
answering slowly, "You are physically able to arrest me, I will concede, but I
advise you to wait a few minutes." He stepped to the window. "Look up into the
sky."
Six bombers of the Peace Commission patrolled over the Capitol. "None of those
pilots are American born," Manning added slowly. "If you confine me, none of us
here in this room will live out the day."
There were incidents thereafter, such as the unfortunate affair at Fort Benning
three days later, and the outbreak in the wing of the Patrol based in Lisbon and
its resultant wholesale dismissals, but for practical purposes, that was all
there was to the coup d' etat.
Manning was the undisputed military dictator of the world.
Whether or not any man as universally hated as Manning can perfect the Patrol he
envisioned, make it self-perpetuating and trustworthy, I don't know, andùbecause
of that week of waiting in a buried English hangarùI won't be here to find out.
Manning's heart disease makes the outcome even more uncertainùhe may last
another twenty years; he may keel over dead tomorrowùand there is no one to take
his place. I've set this down partly to occupy the short time I have left and
partly to show there is another side to any story, even world dominion.
Not that I would like the outcome, either way. If there is anything to this
survival-after-death business, I am going to look up the man who invented the
bow and arrow and take him apart with my bare hands. For myself, I can't be
happy in a world where any man, or group of men, has the power of death over you
and me, our neighbors, every human, every animal, every living thing. I don't
like anyone to have that kind of power.
And neither does Manning.