“Where did he get all—oh. Of course. A monster couldn’t be locked in—or out. He’s been through the apparatus caches.” McReady stared at the apparatus. “Lord, what minds that race must have—”
“The shimmery sphere—I think it’s a sphere of pure force. Neutrons can pass through any matter, and he wanted a supply reservoir of neutrons. Just project neutrons against silica—calcium—beryllium—almost anything, and the atomic energy is released. That thing is the atomic generator.”
McReady plucked a thermometer from his coat. “It’s 120° in here, despite the open door. Our clothes have kept the heat out to an extent, but I’m sweating now.”
Norris nodded. “The light’s cold. I found that. But it gives off heat to warm the place through that coil. He had all the power in the world. He could keep it warm and pleasant, as his race thought of warmth and pleasantness. Did you notice the light, the color of it?”
McReady nodded. “Beyond the stars is the answer. From beyond the stars. From a hotter planet that circled a brighter, bluer sun they came.”
McReady glanced out the door toward the blasted, smoke-stained trail that flopped and wandered blindly off across the drift. “There won’t be any more coming, I guess. Sheer accident it landed here, and that was twenty million years ago. What did it do all that for?” He nodded toward the apparatus.
Barclay laughed softly. “Did you notice what it was working on when we came? Look.” He pointed toward the ceiling of the shack.
Like a knapsack made of flattened coffee-tins, with dangling cloth straps and leather belts, the mechanism clung to the ceiling. A tiny, glaring heart of supernal flame burned in it, yet burned through the ceiling’s wood without scorching it. Barclay walked over to it, grasped two of the dangling straps in his hands, and pulled it down with an effort. He strapped it about his body. A slight jump carried him in a weirdly slow arc across the room.
“Anti-gravity,” said McReady softly.
“Anti-gravity,” Norris nodded. “Yes, we had ’em stopped, with no planes, and no birds. The birds hadn’t come—but they had coffee-tins and radio parts, and glass and the machine shop at night. And a week—a whole week—all to itself. America in a single jump—with anti-gravity powered by the atomic energy of matter.
“We had ’em stopped. Another half hour—it was just tightening these straps on the device so it could wear it—and we’d have stayed in Antarctica, and shot down any moving thing that came from the rest of the world.”
“The albatross—” McReady said softly. “Do you suppose—”
“With this thing almost finished? With that death weapon it held in its hand?
“No, by the grace of God, who evidently does hear very well, even down here, and the margin of half an hour, we keep our world, and the planets of the system too. Anti-gravity, you know, and atomic power. Because They came from another sun, a star beyond the stars. They came from a world with a bluer sun.”
NERVES
by Lester del Rey
The graveled walks between the sprawling, utilitarian structures of the National Atomic Products Co., Inc., were crowded with the usual five o’clock mass of young huskies just off work or going on the extra shift, and the company cafeteria was jammed to capacity and overflowing. But they made good-natured way for Doc Ferrel as he came out, not bothering to stop their horseplay as they would have done with any of the other half hundred officials of the company. He’d been just Doc to them too long for any need of formality.
He nodded back at them easily, pushed through, and went down the walk toward the Infirmary Building, taking his own time; when a man has turned fifty, with gray hairs and enlarged waistline to show for it, he begins to realize that comfort and relaxation are worth cultivating. Besides, Doc could see no reason for filling his stomach with food and then rushing around in a flurry that gave him no chance to digest it. He let himself in the side entrance, palming his cigar out of long habit, and passed through the surgery to the door marked:
PRIVATE
ROGER T. FERREL
PHYSICIAN IN CHARGE
As always, the little room was heavy with the odor of stale smoke and littered with scraps of this and that. His assistant was already there, rummaging busily through the desk with the brass nerve that was typical of him; Ferrel had no objections to it, though, since Blake’s rock-steady hands and unruffled brain were always dependable in a pinch of any sort.
Blake looked up and grinned confidently. “Hi, Doc. Where the deuce do you keep your cigarettes, anyway? Never mind, got ’em…. Ah, that’s better! Good thing there’s one room in this darned building where the ‘No Smoking’ signs don’t count. You and the wife coming out this evening?”
“Not a chance, Blake.” Ferrel stuck the cigar back in his mouth and settled down into the old leather chair, shaking his head. “Palmer phoned down half an hour ago to ask me if I’d stick through the graveyard shift. Seems the plant’s got a rush order for some particular batch of dust that takes about twelve hours to cook, so they’ll be running No. 3 and 4 till midnight or later.”
“Hm-m-m. So you’re hooked again. I don’t see why any of us has to stick here—nothing serious ever pops up now. Look what I had today; three cases of athlete’s foot—better send a memo down to the showers for extra disinfection—a guy with dandruff, four running noses, and the office boy with a sliver in his thumb! They bring everything to us except their babies—and they’d have them here if they could—but nothing that couldn’t wait a week or a month. Anne’s been counting on you and the missus, Doc; she’ll be disappointed if you aren’t there to celebrate her sticking ten years with me. Why don’t you let the kid stick it out alone tonight?”
“I wish I could, but this happens to be my job. As a matter of fact, though, Jenkins worked up an acute case of duty and decided to stay on with me tonight.” Ferrel twitched his lips in a stiff smile, remembering back to the time when his waistline had been smaller than his chest and he’d gone through the same feeling that destiny had singled him out to save the world. “The kid had his first real case today, and he’s all puffed up. Handled it all by himself, so he’s now Dr. Jenkins, if you please.”
Blake had his own memories. “Yeah? Wonder when he’ll realize that everything he did by himself came from your hints? 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 percent of the radiation. Somehow, this fellow managed to leave off his two inner shields and pick up a year’s burn in six hours. Now he’s probably back on No. 1, still running through the hundred liturgies I gave him to say and hoping we won’t get him sacked.”
No. 1 was the first converter around which National Atomic had built its present monopoly in artificial radioactives, back in the days when shields were still inefficient to one part in a thousand and the materials handled were milder than the modern ones. They still used it for the gentler reactions, prices of converters being what they were; anyhow, if reasonable precautions were taken, there was no serious danger.
“A tenth percent will kill; five percent thereof is one two-hundredth; five percent of that is one four-thousandth; and five percent again leaves one eight-thousandth, safe for all but fools.” Blake sing-songed the liturgy solemnly, then chuckled. “You’re getting old, Doc; you used to give them a thousand times. Well, if you get the chance, you and Mrs. Ferrel drop out and say hello, even if it’s after midnight. Anne’s gonna be disappointed, but she ought to know how it goes. So long.”
“ ’Night.” Ferrel watched him leave, still smiling faintly. Some day his own son would be out of medical school, and Blake would make a good man for him to start under and begin the same old grind upward. First like young Jenkins, he’d be filled with his mission to humanity, tense and uncertain, but somehow things would roll along through Blake’s stage and up, probably to Doc’s own level, where the same old problems were solved in the same old way, and life settled down into a comfortable mellow dullness.
There were worse lives, certainly, even though it wasn’t like the mass of murders, kidnappings and applied miracles played up in the current movie series about Dr. Hoozis. Come to think of it, Hoozis was supposed to be working in an atomic products plant right how—but one where chrome-plated converters covered with pretty neon tubes were mysteriously blowing up every second day, and men were brought in with blue flames all over them to be cured instantly in time to utter the magic words so the hero could dash in and put out the atomic flame barehanded. Ferrel grunted and reached back for his old copy of the “Decameron.”
Then he heard Jenkins out in the surgery, puttering around with quick, nervous little sounds. Never do to let the boy find him loafing back here, when the possible fate of the world so obviously hung on his alertness. Young doctors had to be disillusioned slowly, or they became bitter and their work suffered. Yet, in spite of his amusement at Jenkins’ nervousness, he couldn’t help envying the thin-faced young man’s erect shoulders and flat stomach. Years crept by, it seemed.
Jenkins straightened out a wrinkle in his white jacket fussily and looked up. “I’ve been getting the surgery ready for instant use, Dr. Ferrel. Do you think it’s safe to keep only Miss Dodd and one male attendant here—shouldn’t we have more than the bare legally sanctioned staff?”
“Dodd’s a one-man staff,” Ferrel assured him. “Expecting accidents tonight?”
“No, sir, not exactly. But do you know what they’re running off?”
“No.” Ferrel hadn’t asked Palmer; he’d learned long before that he couldn’t keep up with the atomic engineering developments, and had stopped trying. “Some new type of atomic tank fuel for the army to use in its war games?”
“Worse than that, sir. They’re making their first commercial run of Natomic I-713 in both No. 3 and 4 converters at once.”
“So? Seems to me I did hear something about that. Had to do with killing off boll weevils, didn’t it?” Ferrel was vaguely familiar with the process of sowing radioactive dust in a circle outside the weevil area, to isolate the pest, then gradually moving inward from the border. Used with proper precautions, it had slowly killed off the weevil and driven it back into half the territory once occupied.
Jenkins managed to look disappointed, surprised and slightly superior without a visible change of expression. “There was an article on it in the Natomic Weekly Ray of last issue, Dr. Ferrel. You probably know that the trouble with Natomic I-344, which they’ve been using, was its half life of over four months; that made the land sowed useless for planting the next year, so they had to move very slowly. I-713 has a half life of less than a week and reaches safe limits in about two months, so they’ll be able to isolate whole strips of hundreds of miles during the winter and still have the land usable by spring. Reid tests have been highly successful, and we’ve just gotten a huge order from two States that want immediate delivery.”
