Nerves Read online

  “Now,” he said to the others, as the troubles of the plant fell back on his shoulders, “all we have to do is hope that Jorgenson’s brain wasn’t injured by the session out there, or by this continued artifically maintained life, and try to get him in condition so he can talk before it’s too late. God grant us time! Blake, you know the detail work as well as I do and we can’t both work on it. You and the fresh nurses take over, doing the bare minimum needed for the patients scattered around the wards and waiting room. Any new ones?”

  “None for some time; I think they’ve reached a stage where that’s over with,” Brown said.

  “I hope so. Then go round up Jenkins and lie down somewhere. That goes for you and Meyers too, Dodd. Blake, give us three hours if you can, then get us up. There won’t be any new developments before then, and we’ll save time in the long run by resting. Jorgenson’s to get first attention!”

  The old leather chair made a fair sort of bed, and Ferrel was too exhausted to benefit as much as he should from sleep of three hours’ duration, for that matter, though it was almost imperative he try. Idly, he wondered what Palmer would think of all his safeguards had he known that Kubelik had come into the place so easily and out again. Not that it mattered; it was doubtful whether anyone else would want to come near, let alone inside the plant.

  In that, apparently, he was wrong. It was considerably less than the three hours when he was awakened to hear the bull-roar of a helicopter outside. But sleep clouded his mind too much for curiosity and he started to drop back into his slumber. Then another sound cut in, jerking him out of his drowsiness. It was the sharp sputter of a machine gun from the direction of the gate, a pause and another burst; an eddy of sleep-memory indicated that it had begun before the helicopter’s arrival, so it couldn’t be that they were shooting at. More trouble, and though it was none of his business he could not go back to sleep. He got up and went out into the surgery, just as a gnomish little man hopped out from the rear entrance.

  The fellow scooted toward Ferrel after one birdlike glance at Blake, his words spilling out with a jerky selfimportance that should have been funny, but missed it by a small margin; under the surface, sincerity still managed to show. “Dr. Ferrel? Uh — Dr. Kubelik — Mayo’s you know — he reported you were shorthanded; stacking patients in the other rooms. We volunteered for duty — me, four other doctors, nine nurses. Probably should have checked with you, but couldn’t get a phone through. Took the liberty of coming through directly, fast as we could push our ‘copters.” Ferrel glanced through the back and saw that there were three of the machines, instead of the one he’d thought, with men and equipment piling out of them. Mentally he kicked himself for not asking help when he’d put through the call; but he’d been used to working with his own little staff for so long that the ready response of his profession to emergencies had been almost forgotten.

  “You know that you’re taking chances coming here? Then in that case I’m grateful to you and Kubelik. We’ve got about forty patients here, all of whom should have considerable attention, though I frankly doubt whether there’s room for you to work.”

  The man hitched his thumb backward jerkily. “Don’t worry about that. Kubelik goes the limit when he arranges things. Everything we need with us, practically all the hospital’s atomic equipment; though maybe you’ll have to piece us out there. Even a field hospital tent, portable wards for every patient you have. Want relief in here, or would you rather have us simply move out the patients to the tent, leave this end to you? Oh, Kubelik sent his regards. Amazing of him!”

  Kubelik, it seemed, had a tangible idea of regards, however dramatically he was inclined to express them; with him directing the volunteer force, the wonder was that the whole staff and equipment hadn’t been moved down. “Better leave this end,” Ferrel decided. “Those in the wards will probably be better off in your tent as well as the men now in the waiting room; we’re equipped beautifully for all emergency work, but not used to keeping the patients here any length of time, so our accommodations that way are rough. Dr. Blake will show you around and help you get organized in the routine we use here. He’ll get help for you in erecting the tent, too. By the way, did you hear the commotion by the entrance as you were landing?”

  “We did, indeed. We saw it, too — bunch of men in some kind of uniform shooting a machine gun; hitting the ground, though. Bunch of other people running back away from it, shaking their fists, looked like. We were expecting a dose of the same, may be; didn’t notice us, though.”

  Blake snorted in half-amusement. “You probably would have got it if our manager hadn’t forgotten to give orders covering the air approach; they must figure that’s an official route.” He beckoned the little doctor after him, then turned his head to address Brown over his shoulder. “Show Doc the results while I’m gone, honey.”

  Ferrel forgot his new recruits and swung back to the girl. “Bad?”

  She made no comment, but picked up a lead shield and placed it over Jorgenson’s chest so that it cut off all radiation from the lower part of his body, then placed the radiation indicator close to the man’s throat. Doc looked once; no more was needed. It was obvious that Blake had already done his best to remove the radioactive from all parts of the body needed for speech, in the hope that they might strap down the others and block them off with local anesthetics; then the curare could have been counteracted long enough for such information as was needed. Equally obviously, he’d failed. There was no sense in going through the job of neutralizing the drug’s block only to have him under the control of the radioactive still present. The stuff was too finely dispersed for surgical removal. Now what? He had no answer.

  Jenkins’ lean-sinewed hand took the indicator from him for inspection. The boy was already frowning as Doc looked up in faint surprise, and his face made no change. He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I figured as much. That was a beautiful piece of work you did, too. Too bad. I was watching from the door and you almost convinced me he’d be all right, the way you handled it. But…So we have to make out without him; and Hoke and Palmer haven’t even cooked up a lead that’s worth a good test. Want to come into my office, Doc? There’s nothing we can do here.”

  Ferrel followed Jenkins into the little office off the now-empty waiting room; the men from the hospital had worked rapidly, it seemed. “So, you haven’t been sleeping, I take it? Where’s Hokusai now?”

  “Out there with Palmer; he promised to behave, if that’ll comfort you…. Nice guy, Hoke; I’d forgotten what it felt like to talk to an atomic engineer without being laughed at. Palmer, too. I wish…” There was a brief light in the boy’s face and the first glow of normal human pride Doc had seen in him. Then he shrugged, and it vanished back into his taut cheeks and reddened eyes. “We cooked up the wildest kind of a scheme, but it isn’t so hot.”

  Hoke’s voice came out of the doorway, as the little man came in and sat down carefully in one of the three chairs. “No, not so hot! It iss fail already. Jorgensson?”

  “Out, no hope there! What happened?”

  Hoke spread his arms, his eyes almost closing. “Nothing. We knew it could never work, not so? Misster Palmer, he iss come soon here, then we make planss again. I am think now besst we should move from here. Palmer, I — mostly, we are theoreticians; and excuse, you alsso, doctor. Jorgensson wass the production man. No Jorgensson, no — ah — soap!”

  Mentally, Ferrel agreed about the moving and soon! But he could see Palmer’s point of view; to give up the fight was against the grain somehow. And besides, once the blow-up happened, with the resultant damage to an unknown area, the pressure groups would have a field day. They might even force the congressional committee to go further than the current bill to move all atomic plants out into some barren section where workers couldn’t be persuaded to follow; the crackpot fringe that had been shouting for the end of all tinkering with atomics might sweep into complete control. If by some streak of luck Palmer could save the plant with no greater loss o
f life and property than already existed, there would be enough proof that atomics could be handled safely to win over the saner elements, and the benefits from the products National made would again outweigh all risks. But…

  “Just what will happen if it all goes off?” he asked.

  Jenkins shrugged, biting at his inner lip as he went over a sheaf of papers on the desk covered with the scrawling symbols of atomics. “Anybody’s guess. Suppose three tons of the army’s new explosive were to explode in a billionth of a second. Normally, you know, compared to atomics, that stuff burns like any fire, slowly and quietly, giving its gases plenty of time to get out of the way in an orderly fashion. Figure it one way, with this all going off together, and the stuff could drill a hole that’d split open the whole continent from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and leave a lovely sea where the Middle West is now. Figure it another, and it might only kill off everything within fifty miles of here. Somewhere in between is the chance we count on. This isn’t a hydrogen bomb, you know.”

  Doc winced. He’d been picturing the plant going up in the air violently, with maybe a few buildings somewhere near it, but nothing like this. It had been purely a local affair in his mind but this didn’t sound like one. No wonder Jenkins was in that state of suppressed jitters; it wasn’t too much imagination but too much cold, hard knowledge that was worrying him. Ferrel looked at their faces as they bent over the symbols once more, tracing out point by point their calculations in the hope of finding one overlooked loophole, then decided to leave them alone.

  The whole problem was hopeless without Jorgenson, it seemed, and Jorgenson was his responsibility; if the plant went, it was squarely on the senior physician’s shoulders. But there was no apparent solution. If it would help, he could cut it down to a direct path from brain to speaking organs, strap down the body and block off all nerves below the neck, using an artificial larynx instead of the normal breathing through vocal cords. But the indicator showed the futility of it; the orders could never get through from the brain with the amount of radioactive still present throwing them off track — even granted that the brain itself was not affected, which was doubtful.

  Fortunately for Jorgenson the stuff was all finely dispersed around the head, with no concentration at any one place that was unquestionably destructive to his mind; but the good fortune was also the trouble, since it could not be removed by any means known to medical practice. Even so simple a thing as letting the man read the questions and spell out the answers by winking an eyelid as they pointed to the alphabet was hopeless.

  Nerves! Jorgenson had his blocked out, but Ferrel wondered if the rest of them weren’t in as bad a state. Probably somewhere well within their grasp there was a solution that was being held back because the nerves of everyone in the plant were blocked by fear and pressure that defeated its own purpose. Jenkins, Palmer, Hokusai — under purely theoretical conditions, any one of them might spot the answer to the problem, but the sheet necessity of finding it could be the thing that hid it. The same might be true with the problem of Jorgenson’s treatment. Yet, though he tried to relax and let his mind stray idly around the loose ends and seemingly disconnected knowledge he had, it returned incessantly to the need for doing something, and doing it now!

  Ferrel heard weary footsteps behind him and turned to see Palmer coming from the front entrance. The man had no business walking into the surgery, but such minor rules had gone by the board hours before.

  “Jorgenson?” Palmer’s conversation began with the same question in the usual tone, and he read the answer from Doc’s face with a look that indicated it was no news. “Hoke and that Jenkins kid still in there?”

  Doc nodded, and plodded behind him toward Jenkins’ office; he was useless to them but there was still the idea that in filling his mind with other things some little factor he had overlooked might have a chance to come forth. Also, curiosity still worked on him, demanding to know what was happening. He flopped into the third chair and Palmer squatted down on the edge of the table.

  “Know a good spiritualist, Jenkins?” the manager asked. “Because if you do, I’m about ready to try calling back Kellar’s ghost. The Steinmetz of atomics — so he had to die before this Isotope R came up, and leave up without even a good guess at how long we’ve got to crack the problem. Hey, what’s the matter?”

  Jenkins’ face had tensed and his body straightened back tautly in his chair, but he shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching wryly. “Nothing. Nerves, I guess. Hoke and I dug out some things that give an indication on how long this runs, though. We still don’t know exactly, but from observations out there and the general theory before, it looks like something between six and thirty hours left; probably ten’s closer to being correct!”

  “Can’t be much longer. It’s driving the men back right now! Even the tanks can’t get in where they can do the most good, and we’re using the shielding around Number Three as a headquarters for the men; in another half hour, maybe they won’t be able to stay that near the thing. Radiation indicators won’t register any more, and it’s spitting all over the place almost constantly. Heat’s terrific; it’s gone up to around three hundred centigrade and sticks right there now, but that’s enough to warm up Three, even.”

  Doc looked up. “Number Three?”

  “Yeah. Nothing happened to that batch; it ran through and came out I-713 right on schedule, hours ago.” Palmer reached for a cigarette, realized he had one in his mouth and slammed the package back on the table. “Significant data, Doc; if we get out of this, we’ll figure out just what caused the change in Four — if we get out! Any chance of making those variable factors work, Hoke?”

  Hokusai shook his head, and again Jenkins answered from the notes. “Not a chance. Sure, theoretically, at least, R should have a period varying between twelve and sixty hours before turning into Mahler’s Isotope, depending on what chains or subchains of reactions it goes through; they all look equally good and probably are all going on in there now, depending on what’s around to soak up neutrons or let them roam, the concentration and amount of R together, and even high or low temperatures that change their activity somewhat. It’s one of the variables, no question about that.”

  “The spitting iss prove that,” Hoke supplemented.

  “Sure. But there’s too much of it together and we can’t break it down fine enough to reach any safety point where it won’t toss energy around like rain. The minute one particle manages to make itself into Mahler’s, it’ll crash through with energy enough to blast the next over the hump and into the same thing instantly and that passes it on to the next at about light speed! If we could get it juggled around so some would go off first, other atoms a little later and so on, fine…. Only we can’t do it unless we can be sure of isolating every blob bigger than a tenth of a gram from every other one! And if we start breaking it down into reasonably small pieces we’re likely to have one strike on the short transformation subchain and go off at any time; pure chance gave us a concentration to begin with that eliminated the shorter chains, but we can’t break it down into small lots and those into smaller lots and so on. Too much risk!”

  Ferrel had known vaguely that there were such things as variables but the theory behind them was too new and too complex for him; he’d learned what little he knew when the simpler radioactives proceeded normally from radium to lead, as an example, with a definite, fixed half-life, instead of the superheavy atoms they now used that could jump through several different paths, yet end up the same. He’d had it explained to him, but the complexity of the extra electron shells was made worse by references to packed shells; the engineers talked about doubled nuclei, meson chains and a host of other things and then turned around and denied that they really meant any of them! He’d thought once he was getting somewhere when he heard them discussing fractionating bonds, only to find that they considered each bond — whatever it was — in quantum terms, and hence indivisible! Hoke and Jenkins managed to make all previous dis
cussions he’d heard sound like kindergarten stuff.

  It was over his head, and he started to get up and go back to Jorgenson.

  Palmer’s words stopped him. “I knew it, of course, but I hoped maybe I was wrong. Then — we evacuate! No use fooling ourselves any longer. I’ll call the Governor and try to get him to clear the country around; Hoke, you can tell the men to get the hell out of here! All we ever had was the counteracting isotope to hope on and no chance of getting enough of that. There was no sense in making I-631 in thousand-pound batches before. Well…”

  He reached for the phone but Ferrel cut in. “What about the men in the wards? They’re loaded with the stuff, most of them with more than a gram apiece dispersed through them. They’re in the same class with the converter, maybe, but we can’t just pull out and leave them!”

  Silence hit them, to be broken by Jenkins’ hushed whisper. “My God! What damned fools we are. I-631 under discussion for hours, and I never thought of it. Now you two throw the connection in my face and I still almost miss it!”

  “I-631? But there iss not enough. Maybe twenty-five pound, maybe less. Three and a half dayss to make more. The little we have would be no good, Dr. Jenkinss. We forget that already.” Hoke struck a match to a piece of paper, shook one drop of ink onto it and watched it continue burning for a second before putting it out. “So. A drop of water for stop a foresst fire. No!”

  “Wrong. Hoke. A drop to short a switch that’ll turn on the real stream — maybe. Look, Doc, I-631’s an isotope that reacts atomically with R — we’ve checked on that already. It simply gets together with the stuff and the two break down into non-radioactive elements and a little heat. It’s like a lot of other such atomic reactions but it isn’t the violent kind. They simply swap parts in a friendly way and open up to simpler atoms that are stable. We have a few pounds on hand, can’t make enough in time to help with Number Four, but we do have enough to treat every man in the wards, including Jorgenson!”