“And if we get the men out, it’s too late — there’ll be no one left in here to do the work!” Jenkins’ hand snapped out and jerked the receiver of the plug-in telephone from Palmer’s hand. “Cancel the call, operator; it won’t be necessary. Palmer, you’ve got to listen to me; you can’t clear the whole middle of the continent, and you can’t depend on the explosion to limit itself to less ground. It’s a gamble, but you’re risking fifty million people against a mere hundred thousand. Give me a chance!”
“I’ll give you exactly one minute to convince me, Jenkins, and it had better be good! Maybe the blowup won’t hit beyond the fifty-mile limit!”
“Maybe. And I can’t explain in a minute.” The boy scowled tensely. “O.K., you’ve been bellyaching about a man named Kellar being dead. If he were here, would you take a chance on him? Or on a man who’d worked under him on everything he tried?”
“Absolutely, but you’re not Kellar. And I happen to know he was a lone wolf; didn’t hire outside engineers after Jorgenson had a squabble with him and came here.” Palmer reached for the phone. “It won’t wash, Jenkins.”
Jenkins’ hand clamped down on the instrument, jerking it out of reach. “I wasn’t outside help, Palmer. When Jorgenson was afraid to run one of the things off and quit, I was twelve; three years later, things got too tight for him to handle alone, but he decided he might as well keep it in the family, so he started me in. I’m Kellar’s stepson!”
Pieces clicked together in Doc’s head then, and he kicked himself mentally for not having seen the obvious before. “That’s why Jorgenson knew you, then? I thought that was funny. It checks, Palmer.”
For a split second, the manager hesitated uncertainly. Then he shrugged and gave in. “O.K., I’m a fool to trust you, Jenkins, but it’s too late for anything else, I guess. I never forgot that I was gambling the locality against half the continent. What do you want?”
“Men — construction men, mostly, and a few volunteers for dirty work. I want all the blowers, exhaust equipment, tubing, booster blowers and everything ripped from the other three converters and connected as close to No. 4 as you can get. Put them up some way so they can be shoved in over the stuff by crane — I don’t care how; the shop men will know better than I do. You’ve got sort of a river running off behind the plant; get everyone within a few miles of it out of there, and connect the blower outlets down to it. Where does it end, anyway — some kind of a swamp, or morass?”
“About ten miles farther down, yes; we didn’t bother keeping the drainage system going, since the land meant nothing to us, and the swamps made as good a dumping ground as anything else.” When the plant had first used the little river as an outlet for their waste products, there’d been so much trouble that National had been forced to take over all adjacent land and quiet the owners’ fears of the atomic activity in cold cash. Since then, it had gone to weeds and rabbits, mostly. “Everyone within a few miles is out, anyway, except a few fishers or tramps that don’t know we use it. I’ll have militia sent in to scare them out.”
“Good. Ideal, in fact, since the swamps will hold stuff longer in there where the current’s slow. Now, what about that super-thermite stuff you were producing last year? Any around?”
“Not in the plant. But we’ve got tons of it at the warehouse, still waiting for the army’s requisition. That’s pretty hot stuff to handle, though. Know much about it?”
“Enough to know it’s what I want.” Jenkins indicated the copy of the Weekly Ray still lying where he’d dropped it, and Doc remembered skimming through the nontechnical part of the description. It was made up of two superheavy atoms, kept separate. By itself, neither was particularly important or active, but together they reacted with each other atomically to release a tremendous amount of raw heat and comparatively little unwanted radiation. “Goes up around twenty thousand centigrade, doesn’t it? How’s it stored?”
“In ten-pound bombs that have a fragile partition; it breaks with shock, starting the action. Hoke can explain it — it’s his baby.” Palmer reached for the phone. “Anything else? Then, get out and get busy! The men will be ready for you when you get there! I’ll be out myself as soon as I can put through your orders.”
Doc watched them go out, to be followed in short order by the manager, and was alone in the infirmary with Jorgenson and his thoughts. They weren’t pleasant; he was both too far outside the inner circle to know what was going on and too much mixed up in it not to know the dangers. Now he could have used some work of any nature to take his mind off useless speculations, but aside from a needless check of the foreman’s condition, there was nothing for him to do.
He wriggled down in the leather chair, making the mistake of trying to force sleep, while his mind chased out after the sounds that came in from outside. There were the drones of crane and tank motors coming to life, the shouts of hurried orders, and above all, the jarring rhythm of pneumatic hammers on metal, each sound suggesting some possibility to him without adding to his knowledge. The “Decameron” was boring, the whiskey tasted raw and rancid, and solitaire wasn’t worth the trouble of cheating.
Finally, he gave up and turned out to the field hospital tent. Jorgenson would be better off out there, under the care of the staff from Mayo’s, and perhaps he could make himself useful. As he passed through the rear entrance, he heard the sound of a number of helicopters coming over with heavy loads, and looked up as they began settling over the edge of the buildings. From somewhere, a group of men came running forward, and disappeared in the direction of the freighters. He wondered whether any of those men would be forced back into the stuff out there to return filled with radioactive; though it didn’t matter so much, now that the isotope could be eliminated without surgery.
Blake met him at the entrance of the field tent, obviously well satisfied with his duty of bossing and instructing the others. “Scram, Doc. You aren’t necessary here, and you need some rest. Don’t want you added to the casualties. What’s the latest dope from the pow-wow front?”
“Jorgenson didn’t come through, but the kid had an idea, and they’re out there working on it.” Doc tried to sound more hopeful than he felt. “I was thinking you might as well bring Jorgenson in here; he’s still unconscious, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about. Where’s Brown? She’ll probably want to know what’s up, if she isn’t asleep.”
“Asleep when the kid isn’t? Uh-huh. Mother complex, has to worry about him.” Blake grinned. “She got a look at him running out with Hoke tagging at his heels, and hiked out after him, so she probably knows everything now. Wish Anne’d chase me that way, just once — Jenkins, the wonder boy! Well, it’s out of my line; I don’t intend to start worrying until they pass out the order. O.K., Doc, I’ll have Jorgenson out here in a couple of minutes, so you grab yourself a cot and get some shut-eye.”
Doc grunted, looking curiously at the refinements and well-equipped interior of the field tent. “I’ve already prescribed that, Blake, but the patient can’t seem to take it. I think I’ll hunt up Brown, so give me a call over the public speaker if anything turns up.”
He headed toward the center of action, knowing that he’d been wanting to do it all along, but hadn’t been sure of not being a nuisance. Well, if Brown could look on, there was no reason why he couldn’t. He passed the machine shop, noting the excited flurry of activity going on, and went past No. 2, where other men were busily ripping out long sections of big piping and various other devices. There was a rope fence barring his way, well beyond No. 3, and he followed along the edge, looking for Palmer or Brown.