Prodigious Poul: The Collected Short Fiction, page 321
“And get a mess of fast neutrons?” Catherine’s voice died. After all . . . they were being irradiated as they stood here and trembled.
“We’ve got batteries!” It was almost a snarl from Danton’s throat. “Batteries enough to keep us going comfortably for days. Why not use them?”
“And suppose the trouble hasn’t been fixed by the time they’re drained?” challenged Gilchrist.
“Don’t say that!”
“Take it easy,” advised another man.
Danton bit his lip and faced away, mumbling to himself.
A baby began to cry. There seemed no way of quieting it.
“Turn that bloody brat off!” The tone came saw-toothed from somewhere in the pack.
“Shut up!” A woman’s voice, close to hysteria.
Gilchrist realized that his teeth were rattling. He forced them to stop. The air was foul in his nostrils.
He thought of beaches under a flooding sun, of summer meadows and a long sweaty walk down dusty roads, he thought of birds and blue sky. But it was no good. None of it was real.
The reality was here, just beyond the walls, where Neptune hung ashen above glittering snow that was not snow, where a thin poisonous wind whimpered between barren snags, where the dark and the cold flowed triumphantly close. The reality would be a block of solid gas, a hundred human corpses locked in it like flies in amber, it would be death and the end of all things.
He spoke slowly, through numbed lips: “Why has man always supposed that God cared?”
“We don’t know if He does or not,” said Catherine. “But man cares, isn’t that enough?”
“Not when the next nearest man is so far away,” said Alemán, trying to smile. “I will believe in God; man is too small.”
Danton turned around again. “Then why won’t He help us now?” he cried. “Why won’t He at least save the children?”
“I said God cared,” answered Alemán quietly, “not that He will do our work for us.”
“Stow the theology, you two,” said Catherine. “We’re going to pieces in here. Can’t somebody start a song?”
Alemán nodded. “Who has a guitar?’ When there was no response, he began singing a capella:
“La cucaracha, la cucaracha, Ya no quiere caminar—”
Voices joined in, self-consciously. They found themselves too few, and the song died.
Catherine rubbed her fingers together. “Even my pockets are cold now,” she said wryly.
Gilchrist surprised himself; he took her hands in his. “That may help,” he said.
“Why, thank you, Sir Galahad,” she laughed. “You—Oh. Hey, there!”
O’Mallory, off guard detail now that everyone was assembled here, came over. He looked even bulkier than before in half a dozen layers of clothing. Gilchrist, who had been prepared to stand impotently in the background while the engineer distributed blarney, was almost relieved to see the fear on him. He knew!
“Any word?” asked Catherine.
“Not yet,” he muttered.
“Why ’ave we so leetle light?” inquired Alemán. “What is it that draws the current so much? Surely not the heaters.”
“No. It’s the pump. The air-intake pump down in the pile room.” O’Mallory’s voice grew higher. “It’s working overtime, sucking in more hydrogen. Don’t ask me why! I don’t know! Nobody does!”
“Wait,” said Catherine eagerly. “If the room’s losing its warm gas, and having to replace it from the cold stuff outside, would that account for the trouble we’re having?”
“No,” said O’Mallory dully. “We can’t figure out where the hydrogen’s disappearing to, and anyway it shouldn’t make that much difference. The energy output down there’s about what it’s supposed to be, you know.”
Gilchrist stood trying to think. His brain felt gelid.
But damn it, damn it, damn it, there must be a rational answer. He couldn’t believe they had blundered into an ugly unknown facet of the cosmos. Natural law was the same, here or in the farthest galaxy—it had to be.
Item, he thought wearily. The pile was operating as usual, except that somehow hydrogen was being lost abnormally fast and therefore the pump had to bring in more from Triton’s air. But—
—Item. That couldn’t be due to a leak in the heating pipes, because they were still at their ordinary pressure.
—Item. The gas in the pipes included some radioactive isotope. Nevertheless—
—Item. It could not be hydrogen-3, because the pile was working normally and its neutron leakage just wasn’t enough to produce that much. Therefore, some other element was involved.
Carbon? There was a little methane vapor in Triton’s atmosphere. But not enough. Anyway, carbon-13 was a stable isotope, and the pile-room conditions wouldn’t produce carbon-14. Unless—
Wait a minute! Something flickered on the edge of awareness.
Danton had buttonholed O’Mallory. “We were talking about using the battery banks,” he said.
The engineer shrugged. “And what happens after they’re used up? No, we’re keeping them as a last resort.” His grin was hideous. “We could get six or seven comfortable days out of them.”
“Then let’s have them! If you thumb-fingered idiots haven’t fixed the system by then, you deserve to die.”
“And you’ll die right along with us, laddybuck.” O’Mallory bristled. “Don’t think the black gang’s loafing. We’re taking the cold and the radiation as much as you are—”
“Radiation?”
Faces turned around. Gilchrist saw eyes gleam white. The word rose in a roar, and a woman screamed.
“Shut up!” bawled O’Mallory frantically. “Shut up!”
Danton shouted and swung at him. The engineer shook his head and hit back. As Danton lurched, a man rabbit-punched O’Mallory from behind.
Gilchrist yanked Catherine away. The mob spilled over, a sudden storm. He heard a table splinter.
Someone leaped at him. He had been an educated man, a most scientific and urbane man, but he had just been told that hard radiation was pouring through his body and he ran about and howled. Gilchrist had a glimpse of an unshaven face drawn into a long thin box with terror, then he hit. The man came on, ignoring blows, his own fists windmilling. Gilchrist lowered his head and tried clumsily to take the fury on his arms. Catherine, he thought dizzily, Catherine was at least behind him.
The man yelled. He sat down hard and gripped his stomach, retching. Alemán laughed shortly. “A good kick is advisable in such unsporting circumstances, mi amigo.”
“Come on,” gasped Catherine. “We’ve got to get help.”
They fled down a tunnel of blackness. The riot noise faded behind, and there was only the hollow slapping of their feet.
Lights burned ahead, Vesey’s office. A pair of engineer guards tried to halt them. Gilchrist choked out an explanation.
Vesey emerged and swore luridly, out of hurt and bewilderment at his own people. “And we haven’t a tear gas bomb or a needier in the place!” He brooded a moment, then whirled on Jahangir, who had come out behind him. “Get a tank of compressed ammonia gas from the chem section and give ’em a few squirts if they’re still kicking up when you arrive. That ought to quiet them without doing any permanent damage.”
The chief nodded and bounded off with his subordinates. In this gravity, one man could carry a good-sized tank.
Vesey beat a fist into his palm. There was agony on his face.
Catherine laid a hand on his arm. “You’ve no choice,” she said gently. “Ammonia is rough stuff, out it would be worse if children started getting trampled.”
Gilchrist, leaning against the wall, straightened. It was as if a bolt had snapped home within him. His shout hurt their eardrums.
“Ammonia!”
“Yes,” said Vesey dully. “What about it?” Breath smoked from his mouth, and his skin was rough with gooseflesh.
“I—I—I—It’s your . . . y-y-your answer!”
THEY HAD set up a heater in his laboratory so he could work, but the test was quickly made. Gilchrist turned from his apparatus and nodded, grinning with victory. “That settles the matter. This sample from the pile room proves it. The air down there is about half ammonia.”
Vesey looked red-eyed at him. There hadn’t been much harm done in the riot, but there had been a bad few minutes. “How’s it work?” he asked. “I’m no chemist.”
Alemán opened his mouth, then bowed grandly. “You tell him, Thomas. It is your moment.”
Gilchrist took out a cigaret. He would have liked to make a cavalier performance of it, with Catherine watching, but his chilled fingers were clumsy and he dropped the little cylinder. She laughed and picked it up for him.
“Simple,” he said. With technicalities to discuss, he could speak well enough, even when his eyes kept straying to the girl. “What we have down there is a Haber process chamber. It’s a method for manufacturing ammonia out of nitrogen and hydrogen—obsolete now, but still of interest to physical chemists like myself.
“I haven’t tested this sample for nitrogen yet, but there’s got to be some, because ammonia is NH3. Obviously, there’s a vein of solid nitrogen down under the Hill. As the heat from the pile room penetrated downward, this slowly warmed up. Some of it turned gaseous, generating terrific pressure; and finally that pressure forced the gas up into the pile room.
“Now, when you have a nitrogen-hydrogen mixture at 500 degrees and 600 atmospheres, in the presence of a suitable catalyst, you get about a 45 percent yield of ammonia—”
“You looked that up,” said Catherine accusingly.
He chuckled. “My dear girl,” he said, “there are two ways to know a thing: you can know it, or you can know where to look it up. I prefer the latter.” After a moment: “Naturally, this combination decreases the total volume of gas; so the pump has to pull in more hydrogen from outside to satisfy its barystat, and more nitrogen is welling from below all the time. We’ve been operating quite an efficient little ammonia factory down there, though it should reach equilibrium as to pressure and yield pretty soon.
“The Haber process catalyst, incidentally, is spongy iron with certain promoters—potassium and aluminum oxides are excellent ones. In other words, it so happened that the Hill is a natural Haber catalyst, which is why we’ve had this trouble.”
“And I suppose the reaction is endothermic and absorbs heat?” asked Catherine.
“No . . . as a matter of fact, it’s exothermic, which is why the pile is actually a little hotter than usual, and that in spite of having to warm up all that outside air. But ammonia does have a considerably higher specific heat than hydrogen. So, while the gas in our pipes has the same caloric content, it has a lower temperature.”
“Ummm—” Vesey rubbed his chin. “And the radiation?”
“Nitrogen plus neutrons gives carbon-14, a beta emitter.”
“All right,” said Catherine. “Now tell us how to repair the situation.”
Her tone was light—after all, the answer was obvious—but it didn’t escape Gilchrist that she had asked him to speak. Or was he thinking wishfully?
“We turn off the pile, empty the pipes, and go into the room in spacesuits,” he said. “Probably the simplest thing would be to drill an outlet for the nitrogen vein and drop a thermite bomb down there . . . that should flush it out in a hurry. Or maybe we can lay an impermeable floor. In any event, it shouldn’t take more than a few days, which the batteries will see us through. Then we can go back to operation as usual.”
Vesey nodded. “I’ll put Jahangir on it right away.” He stood up and extended his hand. “As for you, Dr. Gilchrist, you’ve saved all our lives and—”
“Shucks.” His cheeks felt hot. “It was my own neck too.”
Before his self-confidence could evaporate, he turned to Catherine. “Since we can’t get back to work for a few days, how about going down to the bar for a drink? I believe it’ll soon be functioning again. And, uh, there’ll doubtless be a dance to celebrate later—”
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she said.
“I can’t,” he blurted.
They went out together. It is not merely inorganic reactions which require a catalyst.
The Corkscrew of Space
Of course history had to be rewritten . . . how could these facts be left on the books?
“IT IS the very essence of being human that Man should ever long for new horizons, onward, upward striving. When Man ceases to hunger for the frontier, he will no longer be Man. They say Columbus was looking for a new trade route for spices from the Orient. What nonsense! As if the divine discontent could be reduced to an investment of the Grocery Guild! And likewise, on that memorable day whose centenary we are now observing, that unforgettable day when Man broke the last shackles of space and time, it was the holy fire which burned in that dauntless pioneer—” Speech by Hon. J. Farnsworth Willis gate, Martian Representative, in United Nations Assembly, 14 May 2247.
EVERYBODY in Syrtis turned out when the Fleet arrived, and those who could traveled from as far as Yellowpeak and Whatsit for the occasion. A fair sprang up overnight, tents and booths sprawling over dusty miles, carnivals, migratory shows both live and recorded, noise and bustle and cheer. The alcohol plants and the fun houses did a rush business and you couldn’t get a hotel room for love, money or good sweet water. Some folk even had to break the law and camp in the ruins, the long extinct native race sheltering a new, non-furry breed of Martian.
Laslos Magarac threaded past the crowds till he got to the spaceport fence. He had an impulse to pay a dollar to one of the telescope concessionaires for a look at the fifty great ships orbiting around the planet, but decided against it—the line was too long. After all, twice a local year was about once an Earth-year, so it was a capitalized Event—but the shuttle boats blasting down, sheeting flame through clouds of kicked-up red dust, were spectacular enough.
There was one arriving now, descending on a tail of fire some four miles away—which put it almost on the horizon. It was a bright gleam against the darkblue sky, under the shrunken sun. As he watched, it entered its cradle and was wheeled off toward the waiting electrotrucks. Unloading began immediately; the trucks gulped packages and scurried like beetles toward the warehouses. Mail, merchandise, tools and luxuries—it was like a friendly greeting from old Earth.
Another line of vehicles was chuffing toward an empty shuttle with boxed and baled Martian goods, mostly drybean extract with a scattering of jewels, hopper pelts and prehistoric relics. The Fleet had to work fast, deliver its cargo and get loaded and start home again in a few days.
Magarac found a place in the post office line and resigned himself to waiting an hour. He was a somewhat dehydrated-looking man with a gaunt ugly face and dry black hair. The coverall which protected him from the late-afternoon chill was the standard Martian garment, but as a well-to-do planter, he bore an expensive cloak patterned like a rainbow.
“Ah . . . impatient, I see, my friend.”
Magarac turned around. Oliver Latourelle had joined the queue behind him. The physicist was a well-nourished man with a plump, sharp-nosed face, watery blue eyes and bushy white hair fringing an egg-shaped skull. “Is it that you await mail from a fair one back on Earth?”
“Not any more,” said Magarac gloomily. “Three Mars-years was too long to wait.”
LATOURELLE clicked his tongue in sympathy. “The old tale, no? You are going to Mars to raise drybeans and make a fortune. But it takes long to become rich, even in the Dominion, and meanwhile the radio beams are too public and first-class mail is ten dollars an ounce.”
Tm doing okay,” said Magarac defensively. “On Mars, that is. The trouble is that passage home would eat up half my money.” He didn’t like to discuss his personal affairs, but when there are barely 10,000 people on an entire planet, privacy hardly exists.
“Be consoled,” advised Latourelle. “I speak as a man of experience. No one ever died of a broken heart. That organ is capable of miraculously rapid self-repair. The secret is to give it time to do so.”
“Oh, I’m long over that business,” said Magarac. “What I’m anxious to find out is how synthetic chemistry is progressing on Earth.”
“So? I realize that to operate a plantation here requires a good scientific background, but are you so vitally interested that you cannot wait until your mail is delivered?”
“I am,” said Magarac. “And so is all Mars, whether they know it or not. Eighty per cent of our industry is based on the drybean. It won’t grow anywhere else, and they’re finding new medicinal uses for the extract every year. But figure it out for yourself. Freight rates being what they are, the stuff costs fifty dollars an ounce by the time the Earth doctor gets it. Every chemical firm you can name has a team trying to synthesize the basic molecule. One day soon, they’re going to do it and then the drybean planters are finished. I’m watching the technical journals so I can sell out in time.”
“And what will you do then, with the Dominion broke?”
“God only knows.”
“And I thank Him I was born to be a research physicist, and I thank the Rockefeller Foundation for so generously subsidizing my work,” said Latourelle. “Though with all respect to this excellent planet of yours, my friend, it seems a long and dry three years ahead until I can return to France.” He had arrived with the Fleet before last, but even if he finished ahead of schedule, he would have to wait his turn for passage.
“What d’you have to be here for, anyway?” asked Magarac. He had gotten quite friendly with Latourelle, but knew little of the man’s highly specialized project.
“I am studying magnetism. Mars, you see, does not have a core like Earth, but is of uniform composition. Apparently that accounts for its peculiar magnetic field . . . Yet in what way? I think it is an effect of relativistic wave mechanics. I have developed a most beautiful theory of Riemannian folds in a multiply connected space. Now I am checking the magnetic data to see if my theory will hold—you pardon the expression—water.”
