Nerves

Chapter 3

Allan Palmer had learned long before that the place for a manager was in his office.

It had been a long and expensive lesson, but he’d finally accepted the fact. From his desk he could do the one job that nobody else could do and which could only be done from there— he could manage! If he went out to perform deeds of derring-do, the men might love him for it, but they would also suffer, because who would get the work done?

It was one of the secrets that had carried him up the ladder from construction engineer working under a seventh sub-assistant to head of his own atomic-pile construction company— and then to taking over when bad management had almost wrecked National. It was from his desk that he’d persuaded Link and Hokusai to try their new ideas on superheavy isotopes in full scale, and swung the incredible sums needed to build them the first converter. It was from here that he hoped some day to see Hokusai create the fuel that would take men to the moon and back.

Now he listened to Ferrel’s account silently, fighting back the old desire to go charging out in a last-ditch effort to prove somehow the safety of the plant before the committee could leave. He saw the strain on Doc’s face, and long experience with the man had taught him enough to guess most of the reason— Ferrel’s concern for him— Doc hadn’t yet realized what personal stakes were involved for himself and all the rest.

Palmer leaned back, looking out of the window toward Kimberly. If the crackpots won, it would be a ghost town in five years; there was no reason for a town there, without cheap power and without the atomic plant upon which local industry depended. What would Doc get for his house then? How could he send his boy on through college on what a general practitioner could earn in a dying city. And what would happen to Doc’s partially crippled wife in whatever wild location would be left within the restrictions of the law they proposed for the plants?

Even Doc wouldn’t escape the tar-brush. Let the crackpots win, and every man who was associated with atomics would be a pariah. Doc wasn’t too old yet to go back to hospital work, but he couldn’t carry the stigma with him. And there were a thousand men or more like Doc out there. They called it his problem, but he was the only one among them who was safe, if he chose to give up and sell out for whatever pittance the equipment here might bring. His own private money was safe. He could go to Europe, retire…

And let the damned fools who talked about moving atomic plants try to move a pile that had been running for twenty-five years, building up radioactivity within it every second of that time! Let the untended pile erode until the hell inside it broke out, and the people really had contamination on their hands!

“Doc,” he said at last, “you’ve been with me at least twenty years. During that time have I ever lied to you?”

He didn’t need the touch of a smile to know the answer to that. The need for absolute truth, no matter how much it hurt, was another of the lessons Palmer had learned long ago. Now he leaned back, forcing his face to a relaxation he couldn’t feel. “Okay, then. For God’s sake stop deciding I’m all washed up. When I’m licked I’ll tell you so! Maybe I’m in a corner now because of the accident, and maybe I couldn’t afford it. But I knew it was coming— in these conditions, it had to come; all we could hope was that nobody got hurt, or at least not too many. Maybe it’s going to cost more than we can afford, but not more than I’ll find a way to pay. They haven’t moved us yet, and while I’m alive they won’t! That’s a promise. Now go home and get some rest, or at least get some rest here and stop thinking about my troubles.”

He watched Doc go down the walk toward the Infirmary and nodded slowly to himself. If he’d told the first lie in more than twenty years, he’d done it in a good cause. Doc seemed a dozen years younger than the tired, beaten man who’d come up that walk. And maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe he could still scrape by, somehow. If not…

He stood up and went over to the wall, studying the chart that listed the customers of National together with quantities.

At the top of the list were the hospitals, not because they bought in quantity but because their needs would always have priority. Below that came the military branches, the utilities, the rocket experimenters who needed superheavy isotopes to line their jets, because nothing else could stand the temperatures— and below them every major endeavor of the world. In twenty-five years, superheavy isotopes had become an integral part of the whole fabric of civilization. And now they wanted to rip it out— as if any major industry could move away from all cities of more than ten thousand population. Within six months after the relocation there’d be a city three times that size nearby; there had to be, to hold the workers and the butchers and bakers and shoemakers the workers had to have! And that didn’t count the other industries needed to keep National itself running!

His secretary’s soft voice spoke from the intercom. “Representative Morgan is here to see you, Mr. Palmer.”

“Send him in, Thelma,” he told her. Morgan was the best man on the committee, the only one who could see the facts. Idly, though, Palmer was thinking only of the man’s white hair again, wondering whether he bleached it to get such a startling effect.

But the rest of the man was almost as impressive. Buried in the files, Palmer had the almost forgotten fact that Morgan had spent several years on the stage under another name as a leading man before turning to law and politics. He was still a consummate actor when he chose, and his speeches were always an event. Now, though, he was acting as little as he could. He looked tired. And the hand he held out lacked some of its usual heartiness.

“I suppose the others have all gone?” Palmer asked.

Morgan nodded. “They pulled out fifteen minutes ago. They got what they came for. Oh, most of them are honest, Allan. Even Shenkler believes the rot he keeps ranting. But that accident’s going to make it a lot easier for them to go along with all the voters in their states who are agitating for the bill. It was a tough break.”

“Maybe. At least the Guilden papers won’t have pictures of the accident. I’m that much ahead,” Palmer told him. “Call it a calculated risk. When you told me last night they were planning this inspection I couldn’t guess whether it was better now or later. I still don’t know, and it’s a little late to change our minds. Bourbon?”

At Morgan’s nod, he poured the drinks, mixing his own with a touch of color to make it stronger in appearance than fact.

“What’s on your mind, Phil?” he asked.

Morgan laughed. It was a rich, warm laugh that he was accused of having spent years perfecting, but too easy to be anything but his own. It fitted the soft voice and the Southern drawl that could take on a heavy accent when he campaigned in the back counties. “Getting elected again,” he admitted easily. “And at the same time keeping a bunch of fools from wrecking us because they’re whipped up right now. What happens if the bill doesn’t get passed out of committee, Allan? Say for a couple of years?”

It would kill it, Palmer knew. The Croton accident and the discoveries of other contamination had played into the hands of the relatively few real bigots. With two years more to go, the plants would be policed, the people would begin to feel safe again, and the whole movement would die away like most crazes. It was the answer, of course— the quiet, indirect answer that had saved the country repeatedly from some folly, while the papers screamed at the faults of the system that made it possible. And Morgan was head of the committee that would have to submit the bill with recommendations to Congress.

“I’m listening,” Palmer said. “But can you get away with it?”

Morgan studied the glass, running the whiskey around in a little swirl that made its beads dance in the sunlight. He shook his head slowly. “Phil, you may not believe it, but I happen to believe the country’s welfare is more important than I am. If my bottling it up would kill the bill, I’d do it. But to keep it bottled, I have to get re-elected four months from now. That would give us the two years. I’m lucky, in a way. Mississippi’s still pretty much an agricultural state, and we don’t have much atomic stuff there. So maybe the voters would go along with me if I forgot to report the bill out.”

He took another swallow and sighed, either from pleasure or from his own thoughts. “Maybe! But I don’t know. Unless I can go back to them and show them I’m doing something for them that means more than any old bill like this. That’s where you come in.”

“How?”

“Mind you, I’m not guaranteeing I can swing it. If things really get hot enough, they can force the bill onto the floor, no matter what I try! All I can promise is to try to keep it from a vote.”

“I know all that,” Palmer agreed. He’d been making the reservations as a matter of course.

“Got a copy of that little old house organ of yours?”

Palmer found one on his desk and handed it across, wondering if Morgan realized the little old house organ was the leading scientific paper in the field. Then he blinked as he saw the article the politician was pointing to. Either Morgan knew a lot more about mathematics and engineering than he’d suspected or the man had someone on his side who did.

“Takes a long time to clear the land of the weevil down home,” Morgan said. “This claims a way to do it in four months. And in four months, if I show the farmers the land free and ready to use again, they’ll vote me in even if they see me spit on Lee’s picture or find out I’ve turned atheist. I can get the money for it— don’t worry about that. And I can get ‘em to give me 100,000 acres for the experiment. All I need is enough of this to treat that much territory and I’ll kill the bill.”

The manager studied the map Morgan gave him, estimating the amount. Enough to make a full converter load — two converters to be sure. “But it isn’t in production yet,” he protested. “Jorgenson ran a test, and he’s worked out the engineering techniques for the converters. We can’t guarantee conversion efficiency, or —”

“Get me even a quarter of it to start, with the rest coming, and I’ll still make out.”

Palmer studied it again. He’d wanted to talk about it to Hokusai and consult with some of the other men. But there’d be no time. If it was to do any good in Morgan’s election it would have to start feeding into supply dumps almost at once. “Let me call in Jorgenson and talk it over,” he suggested. “If we can do it at all, I’ll start changing the converters at once and we’ll run an extra shift tonight. Okay?”

“Your word’s all I want.” Morgan stood up, finished the last of the whiskey and held out his hand. “And now I’d better get back to my colleagues before they smell something.”

Palmer watched him go and stood staring at the paper. He shrugged finally and ordered Thelma to locate Jorgenson for him. The mathematics here was beyond his knowledge of modern converter technology; he would have to depend on his production engineer. There was no time for the study others would need in order to form an opinion.

For the hundredth time he cursed the fact that Kellar was dead. The man had been his chief competitor, and had threatened to become more than that. But he’d been a genius, the only man who ever combined engineering talent with the ability to think in the pure mathematics of the abstract scientist and do both by an almost instinctive reaction. He’d have given a lot to be able to call Kellar up and get a snap judgment. But Kellar was dead and the only man who’d ever worked under him was Jorgenson.

Jorgenson was there almost at once, seeming to fill the room. He listened as Palmer outlined the situation. “It’ll be a tough job,” he said in his slow voice. “This requires a pretty radical change in the converter set-ups, and I’d have to spend a couple of hours briefing my foremen. What converters?”

“You pick them. They’re all clean except Number One and Number Six.”

“Three and Four, then. It’ll be tough enough running two at once on a new project, but I guess I can do it. It’s going to cost for some of the materials I’ll need, though.”

Palmer grinned wryly. It always cost, and if the engineers had a free hand the costs would make profit impossible for the next ten years on any process. But for once the price didn’t matter. Jorgenson couldn’t spend even a fraction of what success in this would be worth. “Forget the cost, Jorgenson. Do whatever you have to and we’ll flange up some kind of accounting later.” Then he paused. “If you want to run it.”

The huge engineer scowled at him. “Of course I want to run it. Why not?”

“Because you’ll be working with a buch of men who’ve just seen one accident already today. They’ll be tired from that, from the shift they’ve already put in and from wondering what will happen to them when the committee report goes in. Those men aren’t normal workers now, and don’t forget it. I can give you twice the number you’ll need, to ease the work, but I can’t give you fresh, unworried men. Do you still want it?”

“I’ll run it.”

Then Jorgenson paused, hesitating over a decision. Finally his enormous shoulders hunched. “Look, Palmer, I’ve been over that math a hundred times and I’ve run six trial lots in the tank. There isn’t a thing I can find wrong anywhere. But since this came out, I’d better mention that there’s one vote against the process. Only one— nobody else has been worried. But I figure you should know.”

“I should,” Palmer agreed. “Who was it?”

“Just an amateur — makes a hobby of atomics, I guess. But he claimed we might get Isotope R.”

Palmer felt the skin along his back quiver. The possible existence of Isotope R was enough to make every man in the country get behind the bill, perhaps including Morgan. Sometimes he’d had nightmares of word of it reaching the Guilden press, but so far those who knew about it were the last ones who would leak it to such a place.

“An amateur, and he knows about that?” he asked sharply.

“His old man was in the business,” Jorgenson answered. He scowled again, then shrugged once more. “Look, I’ve been over these figures again since he brought it up. If I thought there was a chance in a billion of R getting mixed up in it you couldn’t hire me to touch it. It’s not the first time that has come up.”

In that the man was right. Palmer had missed his chance at a highly desirable process once simply because a professor had written in suggesting a possible chain that might lead to the dreaded isotope. The small plants that competed weakly with him had run it off with no difficulty and now used it as the backbone of their businesses.

He stared at the chart that showed his outlets again, and then out at the plant. If it meant only the loss of revenue he’d still call a halt until he could have every figure rechecked fifty times more. But this time he was gambling a vague, probably ridiculous fear on the part of someone who was an amateur against the fate of all the plants, and perhaps of any orderly civilization for the next decade.

“All right,” he said at last. “Run it.”

But he was reaching for the phone before Jorgenson was through the door. “Give me Ferrel,” he told the operator.

He had no business asking the man to stay on for the late shift, of course. But he made no move to cancel the call. There was no logic in his decision but he’d learned to follow his hunches when they were this strong.

At least the men would feel better, knowing that Doc was there. They had learned to trust themselves to him. And right now they needed all the comfort they could get.