I could only say again, “Remarkable, Herr Faesch.” I knew nothing else to say. I was not yet one-and-twenty, I had had no interest in making chemists’ stinks, and much of what he said was Greek to me- or was science to me, which was worse, for I should have understood the Greek tolerably well. Also a certain apprehension lingered in my mind. That terrible white face, those fired eyes, his agitated speech-I could not be blamed, I think. I believed he might be mad. And though I listened, I heard not, as he went ^on to tell me of what his discovery might mean.
The next morning he thrust a sheaf of manuscript at me. “Read, Mr. Lewes!” he commanded me and went off to his mine; but something went wrong. I drowsed through a few pages and made nothing of them except that he thought in some way his nuggets had affected his health. There was a radiant glow in the mine, and the natives believed that glow meant sickness and in time death, and Herr Faesch had come to agree with the natives. A pity, I thought absently, turning in for a nap.
A monstrous smashing sound awakened me. No one was about. I ran out, thrusting aside the tent flap and there, over a hill, through the interstices of the trees, I saw a huge and angry cloud./! don’t know how to describe it; I have never since seen its like, and pray God the world never shall again until the end of time.
Five miles away it must have been, but there was heat from it; the tent itself was charred. Tall it was-I don’t know how tall, stretching straight and thin from the ground to a toadstool crown shot with lightnings.
The natives came after a tune, and though they were desperately afraid, I managed to get from them that it was Herr Faesch’s mine that had blown up, along with Herr Faesch and a dozen of themselves. More than that, they would not say.
And I never saw one of them again. In a few days, when I was strong enough, I made my way back to the river and there I was found and helped-I have never known by whom. Half dazed, my fever recurring, I remember only endless journeying, until I found myself near a port.
Yes, there was explosion enough for any man.
That whippersnapper Wells! Suppose, I put it to you, that some such “radium bomb” should be made. Conceive the captains of Kaiser Will’s dirigible fleet possessed of a few nuggets apiece such as those Herr Faesch owned half a century ago. Imagine them cruising above the city of London, sowing their dragon’s-teeth pellets in certain predetermined places, until in time a sufficient accumulation was reached to set the whole thing off. Can you think what horror it might set free upon the world?
And so I have never told this story, nor ever would if it were not for those same Zeppelin dirigible balloons. Even now I think it best to withhold it until this war is over, a year or two perhaps. (And that will probably make it posthumous-if only to accommodate Shaw-but no matter.)
I have seen a great deal. I know what I know, and I feel what I feel; and I tell you, this marvelous decade that stretches ahead of us after this present war will open new windows on freedom for the human race. Can it be doubted? Poor Bagley’s letters from the trenches tell me that the very poilus and Tommies are determined to build a new world on the ruins of the old.
Well, perhaps Herr Faesch’s nuggets will help them, these wiser, nobler children of the dawn who are to follow us. They will know what to make of them. One thing is sure: Count Zeppelin has made it impossible for Herr Faesch’s metal ever to be used for war. Fighting on the ground itself was terrible enough; this new dimension of warfare will end it. Imagine sending dirigibles across the skies to sow such horrors! Imagine what monstrous brains might plan such an assault! Merciful heaven. They wouldn’t dare.
Critical Mass
After Cyril’s death, his widow turned up a bale of paper and delivered it to me: incomplete manuscripts, notes, one or two projects that he had completed and, for one reason or another, not published. Most of the fragments I ultimately completed, over a period of fifteen years, and they appear in this volume. “Critical Mass” wasn’t exactly one of them, it was three of them - four, if you count some notes of my own, made for a story of that title I started and abandoned in 1954.
I
THE NEUTRON was a plump young man named Walter Chase, though what he thought he was was a brand-new Engineering graduate, sitting mummified and content with the other 3,876 in Eastern’s class of ‘98, waiting for his sheepskin.
The university glee club sang the ancient scholastic song Gaudeamus Igitur with mournful respect and creamy phrasing, for they and most of the graduates, faculty members, parents, relatives and friends present in the field house thought it was a hymn instead of the rowdy drinking song it was. It was a warm June day, conducive to reverence. Of Eastern’s 3,877 graduating men and women only three had majored in classical languages. What those three would do for a living from July on was problematical. But in June they had at least the pleasure of an internal chuckle .over the many bowed heads.
Walter Chase’s was bowed with the rest. He was of the Civil Engineering breed, and he had learned more about concrete in the four years just ended than you would think possible. Something called The Cement Research and Development Institute, whose vague but inspirational commercials were regularly on the TV screens, had located Walter as a promising high-school graduate. He was then considering the glamorous and expensive field of nuclear physics. A plausible C.R.D.I. field man had signed him up and set him straight. It took twelve years to make a nuclear physicist. Now, wasn’t that a hell of a long time to wait for the good things of life? Now, here was something he ought to consider: Four years. In four years he could walk right into a job with automatic pay raises, protected seniority, stock participation and Blue Everything, paid by the company. Concrete was the big industry of tomorrow. The C.R.D.I. was deeply concerned over the lack of interest in concrete engineering, and it was prepared to do something about it: Full four-year scholarship, tuition, living costs and pocket money. Well?
Walter signed. He was a level-headed eighteen-year-old. He had been living with a pinch-penny aunt and uncle, his parents dead; the chance of the aunt and uncle financing twelve years of nuclear studies for him he estimated to lie midway between the incredible and the impossible.
Two solid hours dwindled past in addresses by the Chancellor, the Governor of the State and a couple of other politicos receiving honorary degrees. Walter Chase allowed the words to slip past him as though they were dreams, although many of them concerned his own specialty: shelters. You knew what politician talk was. He and the 3,876 others were coldly realistic enough to know that C.S.B. was a long way from being enacted into law, much less concrete-and-steel Civilian Shelters in fact. Otherwise why would the Institute have to keep begging for students to give scholarships to? He drowsed. Then, as if with an absent-minded start, the program ended.
Everybody flocked away onto the campus.
In the hubbub was all the talk of the time: “Nice weather, but, Kee-rist! those speeches!” “Who d’ya like, in the All-Star?” “Nothing wrong with C.S.B. if it’s handled right, but you take and throw a couple thousand warheads over the Pole and-“ “My, feet hurt.” Chase heard without listening. He was in a hurry.
There was no one he wanted to meet, no special friend or family. The aunt and uncle were not present at his graduation. When it had become clear from their letters that they expected him to pay back what they had spent to care for him as soon as he began earning money, he telephoned them. Collect. He suggested that they sue him for the money or, alternatively, take a flying jump for themselves. It effectively closed out a relationship he loathed.