Nerves Read online

  Blake looked up and grinned confidently. “Hi, Doc. Where the deuce do you keep your lighter fluid? Never mind, got it!…Thought you were taking the day off?”

  “Fat chance.” Ferrel stuck the cigar back in his mouth and settled into the old leather chair, shaking his head. “Palmer phoned me at the crack of dawn. We’ve got an emergency again.”

  “So you’re stuck with it. I don’t see why any of us has to show up here– nothing serious ever pops up. Look at yesterday. I had three cases of athlete’s foot– better send a memo down to the showers to use extra disinfectant– a boy with a running nose, the usual hypochondriacs, and a guy with a sliver in his thumb! They bring everything to us except their babies, and they’d have them here if they could. Nothing that couldn’t wait a week or a month.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I almost forgot. If you’re free tonight, Anne and I are celebrating sticking together ten years. She wants you and Emma with us. Let the kid handle the office tonight.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. But you’d better stop calling Jenkins the kid.” Ferrel twitched his lips in a stiff smile, remembering the time when he’d been as dead-serious as the new doctor; after only a week of real practice it was too soon to learn that destiny hadn’t really singled him out to save the world. “He had his first real case yesterday. Handled it all by himself, so he’s now Doctor Jenkins, if you please.”

  Blake had his own memories. “Yeah? Wonder when he’ll realize that everything he did by himself came from you? What was it, anyway?”

  “Same old story– simple radiation burns. No matter how much we tell the men when they first come in, most of them can’t see why they should wear three ninety-five-percent efficient shields when the main converter shield cuts off all but one-tenth per cent of the radiation.” Mathematically, it was good sense that three added shields would cut the radiation down to a mere eighty-thousandth of full force, but it was hard to convince the men that multiplying poor shields by the one good one could make that difference. “He managed to leave off his two inner shields and pick up a year’s burn in six hours. Now he’s probably home, sweating it out and hoping we won’t get him fired.”

  It had been at Number One, the first converter around which National Atomic had built its present control of artificial radioactives, back in the days before Wemrath at Caltech found a way to use some of the superheavy isotopes as ultra-efficient shielding. Number One had the old, immense concrete shield, but converters were expensive and they still kept it for the gentler reactions; if reasonable precautions were taken there was no serious danger.

  Blake chuckled. “You’re getting old, Doc; you used to give them something to sweat about! Well, I’d better check up on the staff– someone might be a minute late, and then where’d we be?”

  Ferrel followed him out, spotting young Jenkins in his office intent over some book. The boy nodded a tightlipped greeting. Doc returned it, being careful not to intrude on whatever he was studying. Jenkins was at least intelligent and willing to work. A week was too little to tell whether he had the stuff to stay on here or not, but he probably would if his nerves didn’t get in the way. He seemed to be nothing but sinews with taut skin drawn over them, and his shock of blond hair fell over the deepestset blue eyes Doc had ever seen. He looked like a garretstarving young poet, and his nerves seemed as fine-drawn, but he had an amazingly good background of practical studies.

  For a moment Doc considered going back to his office and catching a nap in the old chair. There was nothing to do that Blake couldn’t handle. The Infirmary was already run the way he wanted it, and he saw no need to change for inspection. He could catch a few winks before Palmer called him. He started to turn back, then hesitated at the sight of Jenkins. At his stage, the boy might not understand sleeping on the job.

  “If anyone needs me, I’ll be at Palmer’s office,” he called out. Jenkins nodded, and Doc went through the side door and down the long walk toward the Administration building, overshadowed by the ugly bulk of the power-generating station — the oldest building on the grounds.

  Palmer’s office had been designed to look like a proper place for an executive, including a built-in bar. But in the middle of it, serving as desk, was an old draftsman’s table, littered with graphs, stained with ink and loaded with baskets. One corner showed the years of whittling where Palmer had chipped off improvised toothpicks, before he got his complete plates. The man himself was like his office: Tasteful, expensive clothes, a well-barbered look and the obvious intelligence in the heavy face suggested the good, executive. But now his suit coat lay on a leather couch and he was wearing a battered leather jacket. His hands bore the marks of hard labor, which had thickened the veins and swelled the knuckles; and he remained hard-muscled and active in body as a working construction engineer. He nodded Ferrel to a chair, but continued standing himself.

  “Thanks for coming, Doc. I got the word late last night. There’s even an AEC inspector with them, ready to snatch our power license if we aren’t good boys. I don’t mind him; the AEC plays as straight as anyone in government can. But the rest of them — the Guilden reporters, anyhow — are probably looking for trouble. I need every good man here I can get.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Doc protested. “They can’t get along without the plants now; every hospital in the country would go crazy if we stopped production, and it’s just as bad with the other users. They can’t move the plants out where no workers would come.”

  Palmer sighed wearily. “They couldn’t pass prohibition, either, Doc. But they did.”

  “But atomic plants aren’t that dangerous!”

  “Unfortunately, they could be,” Palmer said. He looked dead with fatigue, and his reddened eyes indicated that he’d probably had no sleep at all. “We’ve had atomic power for a quarter-century, now. That means some of the early plants, built before we knew what we were doing — I helped build some of them — are probably in bad condition. It also means a whole generation of engineers and workers have been taking atomics for granted and getting careless. Since that accident at Croton, inspections have shown too much radioactive contamination around half a dozen plants. They need policing.”

  He dropped onto the couch, shoving piles of government bulletins aside, and massaging his temples. “I think we’re clean here, Doc. But it’s just our tough luck that old man Guilden got a tiny dose of poisoning from one of our early products he was misusing. He’s gunning for us, using this as a front, and he swings a lot of weight. Oh, hell, I didn’t want you for sympathy. I want to check on a probable ringer.”

  During the early days the companies had been plagued by suits alleging ruined health from radiation poisoning. A few had been legitimate, but most had been phonies trying to force a settlement with the threat of publicity for the company — ringers.

  “Plant worker?” Doc asked. They were the hardest to check, since almost any worker would have some slight trace of contamination.

  “Delicatessen worker in Kimberly. I talked to her at her place last night, and I think she believes she’s been poisoned. But somebody’s using her. Expensive lawyer. He wouldn’t give her doctor’s name. I got her to give her symptoms — and she looks sick.”

  He passed over a piece of paper, covered with his square, heavy writing. Ferrel studied it, trying to make sense out of what a layman considered the facts. Yet there was something of a pattern there. “I’d need more than that, at least a good blood sample, as a start,” he protested.

  “I’ve got it. I had that nurse of yours — Dodd — come with me, posing as my secretary. She bullied the woman into giving a sample while I was outside pretending settlement with the lawyer. Here!” He handed over a bottle, and Doc could see that Dodd had been careful to make a good job of it. She would, just as she’d be able to persuade the woman to do anything. “I’ll expect a report on that, after this inspection mess. But what’s your guess now?”

  Doc gave it reluctantly. “It might be radiation. We can’t police every place t
hat uses our stuff. But it’s probably leukemia. If she found some slipshod doctor who’d stopped keeping up with progress as well as with professional ethics, he might decide it could fool a jury. It wouldn’t, of course.”

  “It wouldn’t have to. We can’t take a thing like this to court now. The publicity would ruin us, even if we were proved innocent later. And we can’t settle, that would only make us look as if we were guilty.” Palmer got up and started pacing about. “That’s the trouble, Doc. One little accident that happens — or that might happen — is enough to prove danger. But there’s no way to prove the absence of danger in a spectacular fashion that will hit the press. And I can’t even swear that there is no danger!…Leukemia…cancer of the blood cells….”

  “Well, something like that. It used to be one hundred percent fatal. It still will be if she has it and doesn’t get treatment soon.”

  Palmer breathed a heavy sigh of relief. ‘Whew! At least there’s a chance, then. If that’s it, we can get a specialist who’ll scare her with the facts. She ought to jump at a chance to ditch her lawyer for free treatment. Thanks, Doc. And let me know as soon as you find out for sure.”

  Ferrel went back to the Infirmary, frowning. If some unethical quack was trying to use the woman, he wanted the man’s name. It took only a few of those to ruin the carefully built reputation of the whole profession! He was almost to the corner of the building before he saw Jenkins. He was outside, arguing with Jorgenson, one of the top production engineers. The man was huge, built like an ox, and almost as strong, from the stories told about him, but his mind wasn’t secondary to his body.

  Jenkins said something quickly, indicating a piece of paper in his hands, but Jorgenson brushed it aside with a flip of his finger. “And I say to hell with you, sonny, until you can make it stick. Go peddle your nostrums!”

  The engineer swung around and stalked off. Jenkins stared after him tensely, then stepped back into the Infirmary.

  Doc could make no sense of it, but he didn’t like it. If the boy was a troublemaker…Still, he had nothing to go on. Until he knew more, it was none of his business.

  By the time Ferrel was inside, Jenkins had settled back to his usual stiff calm. He looked up at Doc, and his voice was normal. “I’ve told the nurses to expect more minor accidents already, Dr. Ferrel,” he said. “I knew you’d want that, after seeing Mr. Palmer.”

  Ferrel studied the young man. “Why? Just what was I supposed to have seen Palmer about, anyhow?”

  Jenkins controlled his impatience with the older man’s obtuseness by an effort, but his voice was respectful. “The inspection, of course. It’s all over the plant grapevine. I heard about it when I first came in. It isn’t hard to know what that will do to the accident rate.”

  “Yeah.” Doc grimaced at his own stupidity. He had been obtuse. “Good work, son. You were quite right.”

  There’d be accidents, all right. With men getting a major inspection under these conditions, they’d be under constant tension, and there was no better breeding ground for mistakes. With luck, there might only be the routine mishaps. But there was no way of being sure of such good fortune. Almost anything could happen.

  Palmer had indicated that one accident could prove their lack of safety. They certainly couldn’t afford any black marks on the books of the committee now. But with any operation as complicated as the creation of the superheavy isotopes, something was sure to go wrong when the men were on edge.

  He should have told Palmer to go to hell and stayed home!

  Chapter 2

  Ferrel found Meyers on duty in the dispensary, handling the routine cases with her usual efficiency. He preferred the grim, hard-faced Dodd in the operating room, but here Meyers was best. She was hardly thirty and would have been pretty, except that her face lacked all color. Hair, skin and eyes were all so dull that no amount of make-up could quite bring them to life.

  She was swabbing out the eye of a man as Ferrel came in, and she finished before turning to the doctor. “He brushed a cigarette against his eye while putting on his goggles,” she reported. “Nothing serious, though. That’s the eleventh report I’ve filled out in the last half hour.”

  Doc looked at the stack of cards, and his question was answered. Jenkins had been right; the accident rate was triple what it should have been. But so far none of the cases had been serious.

  “Not many goldbricks today, though,” she said. There were usually a few who decided the best way to get a day off was to play sick. She giggled faintly. “Dr. Jenkins got a run of them, but I guess they didn’t like his giving out laxatives. Even the telephone girl wasn’t in today.”

  “She only reports in sick when she’s bored. Today she’s probably expecting fireworks,” Ferrel observed. He had made it a habit for years to give the girl a day off about once every four months to encourage her imagination. She was the only one in the plant who managed to come up with interesting symptoms when she wanted a day’s loafing.

  “Jenkins had her yesterday. He diagnosed it as galloping leprosy and gave her something that made her lips burn for hours,” Meyers said. She seemed to admire the boy. It was the first evidence Doc had that Jenkins possessed a sense of humor.

  He went back into the main part of the building. They were equipped and staffed beyond any plant set-up he’d ever known, with almost an embarrassment of riches. Aside from Dodd and Meyers, there were three other nurses, two male attendants, two drivers for the little three-wheeled emergency litters, a receptionist, and a secretary for the doctors. The operating room had everything, and there were even little wards where they could keep patients, if the need should arise.

  He went over to the hypothermy-cryotherapy outfit, looking down at it. Most of the things here were required by state law, but this was Palmer’s own idea. It was designed to lower the temperature of the body — or any part — to a level where there would be no response to pain. It was an old idea in medicine and had been tried for everything, including the attempt to cure cancer. But it had finally been perfected in form, and a technique had evolved that made it usable. In emergency operations it served far better than the usual anesthesia. There was even an attachment for the litter to start freezing tissue on the way in.

  The inspection didn’t worry him too much. The state laws had been toughened up for atomic plants until they were far more severe than any requirements the AEC might suggest, and he’d passed that inspection less than a month before.

  Blake came by, chuckling, and stopped as he spotted Ferrel. “The inspection committee is here, Doc.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “But not the reporters! Old Palmer’s a fox. He put Number One to work first thing this morning on something the army ordered. It’s secret enough so that he could declare the plant restricted territory — but not too restricted for congressmen. So the newspaper boys are running around trying to get themselves cleared. With luck, they’ll make it about the time the whole thing’s finished.”

  Doc grinned, but he had his doubts. The men for the Guilden chain would write up what they wanted to, anyhow, and this would only antagonize the reporters who might have been friendly. It would also go rather badly with a couple of the congressmen who apparently were on the committee only for the publicity they could get. To the larger number of men, who were probably quite sincere, it would have a suspicious tinge of trying to cover up from the public.

  Palmer usually had his reasons for what he did, but Doc could make little sense of this. It almost seemed that the manager had gone out of his way to make enemies and lose friends.

  But at least it was a good story. Even Dodd was smiling when he saw her. On a sudden hunch Ferrel went outside and walked down to the cafeteria. There was only a small crowd there now, but he could catch bits of their conversation as he waited for his coffee. Most of the talk seemed to be about the fate of the reporters. And the general reaction was that Palmer had pulled his best trick in a long time.

  Doc headed back, carrying an extra coffee for Meyers, who
should need it. She was the only one who’d really been busy so far. He found her alone. “Business slacking off?” he asked as he gave her the container.

  “Thanks, Dr. Ferrel. You’re a life-saver!” She poured in enough sugar to make a concentrated syrup and sipped the hot stuff gratefully. “I guess I’m losing my popularity. Nobody’s been here for the last twenty minutes.”

  Ferrel hung around a few minutes more, and then left, convinced that his hunch had been right. Palmer had been as aware as Jenkins that the men had spread the story the inspection and that it was raising hob with morale. He’d been prepared for it, and had made the only possible move to counteract — give the men something to laugh about instead of fretting. Whether it would work when the actual inspection began was another matter.

  Dodd brought word of the inspection back. Apparently the group was larger than Doc had thought. There were half a dozen congressmen and a number of “experts” with them. Outside, others were moving about with instruments, making spot checks to find whether the atmosphere and ground around was contaminated. That part of it, at least, was a sensible precaution, though it merely duplicated the checks that National ran periodically itself.

  They had already gone through two of the converters with no trouble and not even a minor accident to mar the record. They showed no sign of heading for the Infirmary yet, though Doc had expected that to be one of the first places they would visit. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was already noon.

  He went out to locate Dodd and ask for further details, but she could add little to her previous account. They were moving about at random now, apparently examining the shipping department.

  He fumed for fifteen minutes more. It was his bitten cigar that finally made him realize his tension. He had mangled the end until it finally came to pieces in his mouth. He spat out the tobacco, muttering to himself.