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- Author: Randall Garrett
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The man wasn't thinking. He was willing to grasp at anything that offered him a chance—dream straws. The idea was to keep him busy, keep his mind on trivia, keep him from thinking about what was going on inside that reactor.
He should have known automatically that it was building toward Fermium 256. It was the most logical, easiest, and simplest way for a D-H reactor to go off the deep end.
A Ditmars-Horst reactor took advantage of the fact that any number can be expressed as the sum of powers of two—and the number of nucleons in an atomic nucleus was no exception to that mathematical rule.
Building atoms by adding nucleons wasn't as simple as putting marbles in a bag because of the energy differential, but the energy derived from the fusion of the elements lighter than Iron 56 could be compensated for by using it to pack the nuclei heavier than that. The trick was to find a chain of reactions that gave the least necessary energy transfer. The method by which the reactions were carried out might have driven a mid-Twentieth Century physicist a trifle ga-ga, but most of the reactions themselves would have been recognizable.
There were several possible reactions which Ferguson and Metty could have used to produce Hg-203, but de Hooch was fairly sure he knew which one it was. The five-branch, double-alpha-addition scheme was the one that was easiest to use—and it was the only one that started the damnable doubling chain reaction, where the nuclear weights went up exponentially under the influence of the peculiar conditions within the reactor. 2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256 ... Hydrogen 2 and Helium 4 were stable. So were Oxygen 16 and Sulfur 32. The reaction encountered a sticky spot at Beryllium 8, which is highly unstable, with a half life of ten to the minus sixteenth seconds, spontaneously fissioning back into two Helium 4 nuclei. Past Sulfur 32, there was a lot of positron emission as the nuclei fought to increase the number of neutrons to maintain a stable balance. Germanium 64 is not at all stable, and neither is Neodymium 128, but the instability can be corrected by positive beta emission. When two nuclei of the resulting Xenon 128 are forced together, the positron emission begins long before the coalescence is complete, resulting in Fermium 256.
But not even a Ditmars-Horst reactor can stand the next step, because matter itself won't stand it—not even in a D-H reactor. The trouble is that a D-H reactor tries. Mathematically, it was assumed that the resulting nucleus did exist—for an infinitesimal instant of time. Literally, mathematically, infinitesimal—so close to zero that it would be utterly impossible to measure it. Someone had dubbed the hypothetical stuff Instantanium 512.
Whether Instantanium 512 had any real existence is an argument for philosophers only. The results, in any case, were catastrophic. The whole conglomeration came apart in a grand splatter of neutrons, protons, negatrons, positrons, electrons, neutrinos—a whole slew of Greek-lettered mesons of various charges and masses, and a fine collection of strange and ultrastrange particles. Energy? Just oodles and gobs.
Peter de Hooch had heard about the results. He had no desire to experience them first hand. Fortunately, the reaction that led up to them took time. It could be stopped at any time up to the Fm-256 stage. According to the instruments, that wouldn't be for another six hours yet, so there was nothing at all to worry about. Even after that it could be stopped, provided one had a way to get rid of the violently fissioning fermium.
"Connections O.K.?" Willows asked. His voice came over the earphones inside the ponderous helmet of the radiation suit.
"Fine," said de Hooch. He adjusted the double periscope so that his vision was clear. "Perfect."
He tested the controls, moving his arms and legs to see if the suit responded. The suit was so heavy that, without powered joints, controlled by servomechanisms, he would have been unable to move, even under Lunar gravity. With the power on, though, it was no harder than walking underwater in a diving suit. "All's well, Puss," he said.
"I'll keep an eye on you," said Willows.
"Fine. Well, here goes Colossus de Hooch." He began walking toward the door that led into the corridor which connected the reactor anteroom to the control room.
It took time to drag the two inert figures out of the anteroom. All de Hooch could do was grab them under the armpits, apply power, and drag them out. He went out the same way he had come in, traversing the separate chambers in reverse order. First came the decontamination chamber, where the radioactive dust that might have settled on the suits was sluiced off by the detergent sprays. When the radiation detectors registered low enough, de Hooch dragged Ferguson into the outer chamber, then went back and got Metty and put him through the same process. Then he dragged them on into the control room so that Willows could get them out of the heavy suits.
"Can you help me, Guz?" Willows asked. It was obvious that he didn't want to open the suits. He didn't want to see what might be inside. De Hooch helped him.
They were both alive, but unconscious. Bones had been broken, and Metty appeared to be suffering from concussion. They were badly damaged, but they'd live.
De Hooch and Willows made two trips down E and C corridors, carrying the men on a stretcher, to get them in bed. De Hooch splinted the broken bones as best he could and gave each of them a shot of narcodyne. He had to do the medical work because Quillan, the medic, was trapped in Corridor A. He called Quillan on the phone to tell him what had happened. He described the signs and symptoms of the victims as best he could, and then did what Quillan told him to do.
"They ought to be all right," Quillan said. "With that dope in them, they'll be out cold for the next twelve hours, and by that time, the boys from Base will be here. Just leave 'em alone and don't move 'em any more."
"Right. I'll call you back later. Right now, Puss and I are going to see what's wrong with the control linkages on Number Two."
"Right. By-o."
De Hooch and Willows walked back to the control room of Number Two Reactor in silence.
Once inside the control room, de Hooch said: "How are those control circuits?" Willows was supposed to have been checking them while he had been dragging Ferguson and Metty out of the antechamber.
"Well, I ... I'm not sure. I'll show you what I've found so far, Guz. You ought to take a look at them. I ... I'd like you to take a look-see. I think"—he gestured toward the console—"I think they're all right except for the freezer vernier and the pressure release control."
He doesn't trust his own work, de Hooch thought. Well, that's all right. Neither do I.
Painstakingly, the two of them went over the checking circuits. Willows was right. The freezer and pressure controls were inoperable.
"Damn," said de Hooch. "Double damn."
"They're probably both stuck at the firewall," Willows said.
"Sure. Where else? I'll have to go in there and unstick 'em. Help me get back into that two-legged tank again." He wished he knew more about what Ferguson and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why the two men had gone into the anteroom in the first place. He wished a lot of things, but wishing was a useless pastime at this stage of the game.
If only one of the two men had been in a condition to talk!
He got back into his radiation-proof suit again, took one last look at the instruments on the console, and headed for the reactor.
Through the first radiation trap—left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn—through the "cold" room, through the second radiation trap, through the decontamination chamber, and through the third radiation trap into the anteroom. Now that Ferguson and Metty were safely out of the way, he could give his attention to the damage that had been done.
Had Ferguson and Metty actually come in to tap off a sample, as he had suggested to Willows? He looked around at the wreckage in the antechamber. Quite obviously, the heavy door of the sample chamber was wide open, and it certainly appeared that the wreckage was scattered from that point. Cautiously, he went over to look at the open sample chamber. It looked all right, except that the bottom was covered with a bright, metallic dust. He rubbed his finger over it and looked at the fingertip. A very fine dust. And yet it hadn't been scattered very much by the explosion. Heavy. Very likely osmium. Osmium 187 was stable, but it wasn't a normally used step toward Mercury 203. Four successive alpha captures would give Polonium 203, not mercury. Ditto for an oxygen fusion. It could be iridium or platinum, of course. Whatever it was, the instruments in his helmet told him it wasn't hot.
He had a hunch that Ferguson and Metty had been building Mercury 203 from Hafnium 179 by the process of successive fusions with Hydrogen 3 and that something had gone wrong with the H-3 production. It appeared that the explosion had been a simple chemical blast caused by the air oxidation of H-2. But the bleeder vent at the other end of the reactor had apparently kicked at the same time. An enormous amount of unused energy had been released, blowing the entire emergency bleeder system out.
Something didn't seem right. Something stuck in his craw, and he couldn't figure out what it was.
He opened up the conduit boxes that led through the antechamber from the control console to the reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked fine. That meant that whatever it was that had fouled up the controls was on the other side of the firewall.
"How does it look?" Willows' voice came worriedly over the earphones.
"Have I already said 'damn'?" de Hooch asked.
"You have," Willows said with forced lightness. "You even said 'double damn'."
"Factorial damn, then!" said de Hooch.
"What's the matter?"
"Apparently the foul-up is on the other side of the firewall."
"Are you going in?"
"I'll have to."
"All right. Watch yourself."
"I will." He went over to the periscope that surveyed the part of the reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked normal enough. He carefully checked the pressure gauge. Normal.
"Check the spectro for me, will you?" he asked. "Make sure that's just the normal helium atmosphere in there."
"Sure." A pause. "Nothing but helium, Guz. What were you expecting?"
"I don't think I'd care to walk into a hydrogen atmosphere at three hundred Centigrade."
"Neither would I, but how could there be hydrogen in there?"
"There shouldn't be. But there's something screwy going on here, and I can't put my finger on it."
"Well, whatever it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room."
"O.K. Stand by. I'm going in."
He walked over to the firewall door. On the other side of it was a small chamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air would be swept out before he opened the inner door to go into the inner chamber itself. There was no need for an air lock, since small amounts of impurities in the He-4 didn't bother anything.
It was just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall door that he realized his mistake.
But it was too late.
The door jerked outward, and a hot wind picked him up and slammed him against the far wall.
There was a moment of pain.
Then—nothing.
There was something familiar about the man who was turning the wheel, but de Hooch couldn't place it. The man was wearing a black hood, as befitted a torturer and executioner.
"Idiot," said the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a little more pressure, "explain the following: If a half plus a half is equal to a whole, why is halfnium plus halfnium not equal to wholmium?"
Stretched as he was on the rack, de Hooch could not think straight because of the excruciating pain.
"Because a half is eight point two eight per cent heavier than a hole," said de Hooch.
"You are an idiot, none the less," said the torturer. He gave the wheel another twist. De Hooch wanted to scream, but he couldn't.
"Try again," said the torturer. "What is a half plus four plus four plus four plus four plus—"
"Stop!" screamed de Hooch. "Stop! Stop at the osmium!"
"Ah! But it didn't stop at the osmium," said the hooded man. "It went on and on and on. Plus four plus four plus four plus four plus four—until there were so many plus fours in there that the place looked like an old-fashioned golf course."
"My legs hurt," said de Hooch. The man was no longer wearing a hood, but de Hooch couldn't tell if it was Willows or himself.
"We will all go together when we go," said the man.
De Hooch turned his head away and looked at the ceiling.
And he realized that it was the ceiling of the antechamber.
"My legs hurt," he repeated. And he could hear the hoarse whisper inside the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on his back. He had been jarred around quite a bit in the suit.
He wondered if he could sit up. He managed to get both arms behind him and push himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The servos responded. He hurt all over, but a little experiment told him that he was only bruised. Nothing was broken. He hadn't been hit as hard as Ferguson and Metty had been.
"Willows?" he said. "Willows?"
There was no answer from the earphones.
He looked at the chronometer dial inside his helmet. Oh two forty-nine. He had been unconscious less than ten minutes.
The same glance brought his eyes to two other dials. The internal radiation of the suit
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