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.
A 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. His 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!"
He 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 power - level 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 Steinke!" He seemed to grasp for the first time who was on the trigger. "He can't manage the controls - " 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 - 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 pile 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 - 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 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 - to rest, safe and harmless, until it should be reassembled far out in space.
AFTERWORD
December 1979, exactly 40 years after I researched BLOWUPS HAPPEN (Dec. '39): I had some doubt about republishing this because of the current ignorant fear of fission power, recently enhanced by the harmless flap at Three Mile Island. When I wrote this, there was not a full gram of purified U - 235 on this planet, and no one knew its hazards in detail, most especially the mass and geometry and speed of assembly necessary to make "blowups happen." But we now know from long experience and endless tests that the "tons" used in this story could never be assembled - no explosion, melt - down possible, melt - down being the worst that can happen at a power plant; to cause U - 235 to explode is very difficult and requires very different design. Yes, radiation is hazardous
BUT - RADIATION EXPOSURE
Half a mile from Three - Mile plant during the flap 83 millirems
At the power plant 1,100 millirems
During heart catheterization for angiogram 45,000 millirems
- which I underwent 18 months ago. I feel fine.
R.A.H.
FOREWORD
I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no interest in it - backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I being always firmly resolved to quit the silly business once I had my chart squared away.
At a meeting of the Mai ana Literary Society - an amorphous disorganization having as its avowed purpose "to permit young writers to talk out their stories to each other in order to get them off their minds and thereby save themselves the trouble of writing them down" - at a gathering of this noble group I was expounding my determination to retire from writing once my bills were paid - in a few weeks, during 1940, if the tripe continued to sell.
William A. P. White ("Anthony Boucher") gave me a sour look. "Do you know any retired writers?"
"How could I? All the writers I've ever met are in this room.
"Irrelevant. You know retired school teachers, retired naval officers, retired policemen, retired farmers. Why don't you know at least one retired writer?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Robert, there are no retired writers. There are writers who have stopped selling... but they have not stopped writing.
I pooh - poohed Bill's remarks - possibly what he said applied to writers in general... but I wasn't really a writer; I was just a chap who needed money and happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without stealing and without honest work. ("Honest work" - a euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.
Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be described as "honest work.")
BLOWUPS HAPPEN sold and I gave a mortgage - burning party. But I did not quit writing at once (24 Feb 1940) because, while I had the Old Man of the Sea (that damned mortgage) off my back, there were still some other items. I needed a new car; the house needed paint and some repairs; I wanted to make a trip to New York; and it would not hurt to have a couple of hundred extra in the bank as a cushion - and I had a dozen - odd stories in file, planned and ready to write.
So I wrote MAGIC, INCORPORATED and started east on the proceeds, and wrote THEY and SIXTH COLUMN while I was on that trip. The latter was the only story of mine ever influenced to any marked degree by John W. Campbell, Jr. He had in file an unsold story he had written some years earlier. JWC did not show me his manuscript; instead he told me the story line orally and stated that, if I would write it, he would buy it.
He needed a serial; I needed an automobile. I took the brass check.
Writing SIXTH COLUMN was a job I sweated over. I had to re - slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line. And I didn't really believe the pseudoscientific rationale of Campbell's three spectra - so I worked especially hard to make it sound realistic.
It worked out all right. The check for the serial, plus 35 in cash, bought me that new car.. . and the book editions continue to sell and sell and sell, and have earned more than forty times as much as I was paid for the serial. So it was a financial success. . but I do not consider it to be an artistic success.