“What is it — radiation burns, or straight accident?!
“Oh — radiation mostly — maybe accident, too. Someone got a little careless — you know how it is. Nothing to worry about, though. You’ve been through it before when they opened a port too soon.”
Doc knew enough about that — if that’s what it was. “Sure, we can handle that, Palmer. But I thought No. I was closing down at five-thirty tonight. Anyhow, how come they haven’t installed the safety ports on it? You told me they had, six months ago.”
“I didn’t say it was No. 1, or that it was a manual port. You know, new equipment for new products.” Palmer looked up at someone else, and his upper arms made a slight movement before he looked down at the vision cell again. “I can’t go into it now, Dr. Ferrel; accident’s throwing us off schedule, you see — details piling up on me. We can talk it over later, and you probably have to make arrangements now. Call me if you want anything.”
The screen darkened and the phone clicked off abruptly, just as a muffled word started. The voice hadn’t been Palmer’s. Ferrel pulled his stomach in, wiped the sweat off his hands again, and went out into the surgery with careful casualness. Damn Palmer, why couldn’t the fool give enough information to make decent preparations possible? He was sure 3 and 4 alone were operating, and they were supposed to be foolproof. Just what had happened?
Jenkins jerked up from a bench as he came out, face muscles tense and eyes filled with a nameless fear. Where he had been sitting, a copy of the Weekly Ray was lying open at a chart of symbols which meant nothing to Ferrel, except for the penciled line under one of the reactions. The boy picked it up and stuck it back on a table.
“Routine accident,” Ferrel reported as naturally as he could, cursing himself for having to force his voice. Thank the Lord, the boy’s hands hadn’t trembled visibly when he was moving the paper; he’d still be useful if surgery were necessary. Palmer had said nothing of that, of course — he’d said nothing about entirely too much. “They’re bringing a few men over for radiation burns, according to Palmer. Everything ready?”
Jenkins nodded tightly. “Quite ready, sir, as much as we can be for — routine accidents at 3 and 4!… Isotope R…. Sorry, Dr. Ferrel, I didn’t mean that. Should we call in Dr. Blake and the other nurses and attendants?”
“Eh? Oh, probably we can’t reach Blake, and Palmer doesn’t think we need him. You might have Nurse Dodd locate Meyers — the others are out on dates by now if I know them, and the two nurses should be enough, with Jones; they’re better than a flock of the others anyway.” Isotope R? Ferrel remembered the name but nothing else. Something an engineer had said once — but he couldn’t recall in what connection — or had Hokusai mentioned it? He watched Jenkins leave and turned back on an impulse to his office where he could phone in reasonable privacy.
“Get me Matsuura Hokusai.” He stood, drumming on the table impatiently until the screen finally lighted and the little Japanese looked out of it, “Hoke, do you know what they were turning out over at 3 and 4?”
The scientist nodded slowly, his wrinkled face as expressionless as his unaccented English. “Yess, they are make I-713 for the weevil. Why you assk?”
“Nothing; just curious. I heard rumours about an Isotope R and wondered if there was any connection. Seems they had a little accident over there, and I want to be ready for whatever comes of it.”
For a fraction of a second, the heavy lids on Hokusai’s eyes seemed to lift, but his voice remained neutral, only slightly faster. “No connection, Dr. Ferrel, they are not make Issotope R, very much assure you. Besst you forget Issotope R. Very sorry. Dr. Ferrel, I must now see accident. Thank you for call. Goodbye.” The screen was blank again, along with Ferrel’s mind.
Jenkins was standing in the door, but had either heard nothing or seemed not to know about it. “Nurse Meyers is coming back,” he said. “Shall I get ready for curare injections?”
“Uh — might be a good idea.” Ferrel had no intention of being surprised again, no matter what the implication of the words. Curare, one of the greatest poisons, known to South American primitives for centuries and only recently synthesized by modern chemistry, was the final resort for use in cases of radiation injury that was utterly beyond control. While the infirmary stocked it for such emergencies, in the long years of Doc’s practice it had been used only twice; neither experience had been pleasant. Jenkins was either thoroughly frightened or overly zealous — unless he knew something he had no business knowing.
“Seems to take them long enough to get the men here — can’t be too serious, Jenkins, or they’d move faster.”
“Maybe.” Jenkins went on with his preparations, dissolving dried plasma in distilled, de-aerated water, without looking up. “There’s the litter siren now. You’d better get washed up while I take care of the patients.”
Doc listened to the sound that came in as a faint drone from outside, and grinned slightly. “Must be Beel driving; he’s the only man fool enough to run the siren when the run-ways are empty. Anyhow, if you’ll listen, it’s the out trip he’s making. Be at least five minutes before he gets back.” But he turned into the washroom, kicked on the hot water and began scrubbing vigorously with the strong soap.
Damn Jenkins! Here he was preparing for surgery before he had any reason to suspect the need, and the boy was running things to suit himself, pretty much, as if armed with superior knowledge. Well, maybe he was. Either that, or he was simply half crazy with old wives’ fears of anything relating to atomic reactions, and that didn’t seem to fit the case. He rinsed off as Jenkins came in, kicked on the hot-air blast and let his arms dry, then bumped against a rod that brought out rubber gloves on little holders. “Jenkins, what’s all this Isotope R business, anyway? I’ve heard about it somewhere — probably from Hokusai. But I can’t remember anything definite.”
“Naturally — there isn’t anything definite. That’s the trouble.” The young doctor tackled the area under his fingernails before looking up; then he saw Ferrel was slipping into his surgeon’s whites that had come out on a hanger, and waited until the other was finished. “R’s one of the big maybe problems of atomics. Purely theoretical, and none’s been made yet — it’s either impossible or can’t be done in small control batches, safe for testing. That’s the trouble, as I said; nobody knows anything about it, except that — if it can exist — it’ll break down in a fairly short time into Mahler’s Isotope. You’ve heard of that?”
Doc had — twice. The first had been when Mahler and half his laboratory had disappeared with accompanying noise. He’d been making a comparatively small amount of the new product designed to act as a starter for other reactions. Later, Maicewicz had tackled it on a smaller scale, and that time only two rooms and three men had gone up in dust particles. Five or six years later, atomic theory had been extended to the point where any student could find why the apparently safe product decided to become pure helium and energy in approximately one billionth of a second.
“How long a time?”
“Half a dozen theories, and no real idea.” They’d come out of the washrooms, finished except for their masks. Jenkins ran his elbow into a switch that turned on the ultraviolets that were supposed to sterilize entire surgery, then looked around questioningly. “What about the supersonics?”