Doc could repeat that; with the older, natural product, true standardization and exact dosage had been next to impossible. Too much, and its action on the body was fatal; the patient died from “exhaustion” of his chest muscles in a matter of minutes. Too little was practically useless. Now that the danger of self-injury and fatal exhaustion from wild exertion was over, he could attend to such relatively unimportant things as the agony still going on — curare had no particular effect on the sensory nerves. He injected neo-heroin and began cleaning the burned areas and treating them with the standard tannic-acid routine, first with a sulphonamide to eliminate possible infection, glancing up occasionally at Jenkins.
He had no need to worry, though; the boy’s nerves were frozen into an unnatural calm that still pressed through with a speed Ferrel made no attempt to equal, knowing his work would suffer for it. At a gesture, Dodd handed him the little radiation detector, and he began hunting over the skin, inch by inch, for the almost miscroscopic bits of matter; there was no hope of finding all now, but the worst deposits could be found and removed; later, with more time, a final probing could be made.
“Jenkins,” he asked, “how about I-713’s chemical action? Is it basically poisonous to the system?”
“No. Perfectly safe except for radiation. Eight in the outer electron ring, chemically inert.”
That, at least, was a relief. Radiations were bad enough in and of themselves, but when coupled with metallic poisoning, like the old radium or mercury poisoning, it was even worse. The small colloidally fine particles of I-713 in the flesh would set up their own danger signal, and could be scraped away in the worst cases; otherwise, they’d probably have to stay until the isotope exhausted itself. Mercifully, its half-life was short, which would decrease the long hospitalization and suffering of the men.
Jenkins joined Ferrel on the last patient, replacing Dodd at handing instruments. Doc would have preferred the nurse, who was used to his little signals, but he said nothing, and was surprised to note the efficiency of the boy’s cooperation. “How about the breakdown products?” he asked.
“I-713? Harmless enough, mostly, and what isn’t harmless isn’t concentrated enough to worry about. That is, if it’s still I-713. Otherwise—”
Otherwise, Doc finished mentally, the boy meant there’d be no danger from poisoning, at least. Isotope R, with an uncertain degeneration period, turned into Mahler’s Isotope, with a complete breakdown in a billionth of a second. He had a fleeting vision of men, filled with a fine dispersion of that, suddenly erupting over their body with a violence that could never be described; Jenkins must have been thinking the same thing. For a few seconds, they stood there, looking at each other silently, but neither chose to speak of it. Ferrel reached for the probe, Jenkins shrugged, and they went on with their work and their thoughts.
It was a picture impossible to imagine, which they might or might not see; if such an atomic blowup occurred, what would happen to the laboratory was problematical. No one knew the exact amount Maicewicz had worked on, except that it was the smallest amount he could make, so there could be no good estimate of the damage. The bodies on the operating tables, the little scraps of removed flesh containing the minute globules of radioactive, even the instruments that had come in contact with them, were bombs waiting to explode. Ferrel’s own fingers took on some of the steadiness that was frozen in Jenkins as he went about his work, forcing his mind onto the difficult labor at hand.
It might have been minutes or hours later when the last dressing was in place and the three broken bones of the worst case were set. Meyers and Dodd, along with Jones, were taking care of the men, putting them into the little wards, and the two physicians were alone, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, waiting without knowing exactly what they expected.
Outside, a droning chug came to their ears, and the thump of something heavy moving over the runways. By common impulse they slipped to the side door and looked out, to see the rear end of one of the electric tanks moving away from them. Night had fallen some time before, but the gleaming lights from the big towers around the fence made the plant stand out in glaring detail. Except for the tank moving away, though, other buildings cut off their view.
Then, from the direction of the main gate, a shrill whistle cut the air and there was the sound of men’s voices, though the words were indistinguishable. Sharp, crisp syllables followed, and Jenkins nodded slowly to himself. “Ten’ll get you a hundred,” he began, “that— Uh, no use betting. It is.”
Around the corner a squad of men in state militia uniform marched briskly, bayoneted rifles on their arms. With efficient precision, they spread out under a sergeant’s direction, each taking a post before the door of one of the buildings, one approaching the place where Ferrel and Jenkins stood.
“So that’s what Palmer was talking to the Governor about,” Ferrel muttered. “No use asking them questions, I suppose; they know less than we do. Come on inside where we can sit down and rest. Wonder what good the militia can do here — unless Palmer’s afraid someone inside’s going to crack and cause trouble.”
Jenkins followed him back to the office and accepted a cigarette automatically as he flopped back into a chair. Doc was discovering just how good it felt to give his muscles and nerves a chance to relax, and realizing that they must have been far longer in the surgery than he had thought. “Care for a drink?”
“Uh — is it safe, Doc? We’re apt to be back in there any minute.”
Ferrel pulled a grin onto his face and nodded. “It won’t hurt you — we’re just enough on edge and tired for it to be burned up inside for fuel instead of reaching our nerves. Here.” It was a generous slug of rye he poured for each, enough to send an almost immediate warmth through them, and to relax their overtensed nerves. “Wonder why Beel hasn’t been back long ago?”
“That tank we saw probably explains it; it got too tough for the men to work in just their suits, and they’ve had to start excavating through the converters with the tanks. Electric, wasn’t it, battery powered?… So there’s enough radiation loose out there to interfere with atomic-powered machines, then. That means whatever they’re doing is tough and slow work. Anyhow, it’s more important that they damp the action than get the men out, if they only realize it — Sue!”
Ferrel looked up quickly to see the girl standing there, already dressed for surgery, and he was not too old for a little glow of appreciation to creep over him. No wonder Jenkins’ face lighted up. She was small, but her figure was shaped like that of a taller girl, not in the cute or pert lines usually associated with shorter women, and the serious competence of her expression hid none of the liveliness of her face. Obviously she was several years older than Jenkins, but as he stood up to greet her, her face softened and seemed somehow youthful beside the boy’s as she looked up.
“You’re Dr. Ferrel?” she asked, turning to the older man. “I was a little late — there was some trouble at first about letting me in — so I went directly to prepare before bothering you. And just so you won’t be afraid to use me, my credentials are all here.”
She put the little bundle on the table, and Ferrel ran through them briefly; it was better than he’d expected. Technically she wasn’t nurse at all, but a doctor of medicine, a so-called nursing doctor; there’d been the need for assistants midway between doctor and nurse for years, having the general training and abilities of both, but only in the last decade had the actual course been created, and the graduates were still limited to a few. He nodded and handed them back.