The Past Through Tomorrow Read online

  He paused momentarily, and Superintendent King put in, “Just a minute, Captain—I may be stupid, or perhaps I missed something, but—is there a connection between what we were discussing before and lunar theory?”

  “Bear with me for a few moments, Doctor King,” Harrington apologized; “there is a connection—at least, I’m afraid there is a connection—but I would rather present my points in their proper order before making my conclusions.” They granted him an alert silence; he went on:

  “Although we are in the habit of referring to the ‘craters’ of the moon, we know they are not volcanic craters. Superficially, they follow none of the rules of terrestrial volcanoes in appearance or distribution, but when Rutter came out in 1952 with his monograph on the dynamics of vulcanology, he proved rather conclusively that the lunar craters could not be caused by anything that we know as volcanic action.

  “That left the bombardment theory as the simplest hypothesis. It looks good, on the face of it, and a few minutes spent throwing pebbles in to a patch of mud will convince anyone that the lunar craters could have been formed by falling meteors.

  “But there are difficulties. If the moon was struck so repeatedly, why not the earth? It hardly seems necessary to mention that the earth’s atmosphere would be no protection against masses big enough to form craters like Endymion, or Plato. And if they fell after the moon was a dead world while the earth was still young enough to change its face and erase the marks of bombardment, why did the meteors avoid so nearly completely the great dry basins we call the seas?

  “I want to cut this short; you’ll find the data and the mathematical investigations from the data here in my notes. There is one other major objection to the meteor-bombardment theory: the great rays that spread from Tycho across almost the entire surface of the moon. It makes the moon look like a crystal ball that had been struck with a hammer, and impact from outside seems evident, but there are difficulties. The striking mass, our hypothetical meteor, must have been smaller than the present crater of Tycho, but it must have the mass and speed to crack an entire planet.

  “Work it out for yourself—you must either postulate a chunk out of the core of a dwarf star, or speeds such as we have never observed within the system. It’s conceivable but a far-fetched explanation.”

  He turned to King. “Doctor, does anything occur to you that might account for a phenomenon like Tycho?”

  The Superintendent grasped the arms of his chair, then glanced at his palms. He fumbled for a handkerchief, and wiped them. “Go ahead,” he said, almost inaudibly.

  “Very well then—” Harrington drew out of his briefcase a large photograph of the moon—a beautiful full-moon portrait made at Lick. “I want you to imagine the moon as she might have been sometime in the past. The dark areas we call the ‘Seas’ are actual oceans. It has an atmosphere, perhaps a heavier gas than oxygen and nitrogen, but an active gas, capable of supporting some conceivable form of life.

  “For this is an inhabited planet, inhabited by intelligent beings, beings capable of discovering atomic power and exploiting it!”

  He pointed out on the photograph, near the southern limb, the lime-white circle of Tycho, with its shining, incredible, thousand-mile-long rays spreading, thrusting, jutting out from it. “Here… here at Tycho was located their main atomic plant.” He moved his finger to a point near the equator, and somewhat east of meridian—the point where three great dark areas merged, Mare Nubium, Mare Imbrium, Oceanus Procellarum—and picked out two bright splotches surrounded also by rays, but shorter, less distinct, and wavy. “And here at Copernicus and at Kepler, on islands at the middle of a great ocean, were secondary power stations.”

  He paused, and interpolated soberly, “Perhaps they knew the danger they ran, but wanted power so badly that they were willing to gamble the life of their race. Perhaps they were ignorant of the ruinous possibilities of their little machines, or perhaps their mathematicians assured them that it could not happen.

  “But we will never know… no one can ever know. For it blew up, and killed them—and it killed their planet.

  “It whisked off the gassy envelope and blew it into outer space. It may even have set up a chain reaction in that atmosphere. It blasted great chunks of the planet’s crust. Perhaps some of that escaped completely, too, but all that did not reach the speed of escape fell back down in time and splashed great ring-shaped craters in the land.

  “The oceans cushioned the shock; only the more massive fragments formed craters through the water. Perhaps some life still remained in those ocean depths. If so, it was doomed to die—for the water, unprotected by atmospheric pressure, could not remain liquid and must inevitably escape in time to outer space. Its life blood drained away. The planet was dead—dead by suicide!”

  He met the grave eyes of his two silent listeners with an expression almost of appeal. “Gentlemen—this is only a theory, I realize… only a theory, a dream, a nightmare— But it has kept me awake so many nights that I had to come tell you about it, and see if you saw it the same way I do. As for the mechanics of it, it’s all in there, in my notes. You can check it—and I pray that you find some error! But it is the only lunar theory I have examined which included all of the known data, and accounted for all of them.”

  He appeared to have finished; Lentz spoke up. “Suppose, Captain, suppose we check your mathematics and find no flaw—what then?”

  Harrington flung out his hands. “That’s what I came here to find out!”

  Although Lentz had asked the question, Harrington directed the appeal to King. The superintendent looked up; his eyes met the astronomer’s, wavered, and dropped again. “There’s nothing to be done,” he said dully, “nothing at all.”

  Harrington stared at him in open amazement. “But good God, man!” he burst out. “Don’t you see it? That pile has got to be disassembled—at once!”

  “Take it easy, Captain.” Lentz’s calm voice was a spray of cold water. “And don’t be too harsh on poor King—this worries him even more than it does you. What he means is this; we’re not faced with a problem in physics, but with a political and economic situation. Let’s put it this way: King can no more dump his plant than a peasant with a vineyard on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius can abandon his holdings and pauperize his family simply because there will be an eruption someday.

  “King doesn’t own that plant out there; he’s only the custodian. If he dumps it against the wishes of the legal owners, they’ll simply oust him and put in someone more amenable. No, we have to convince the owners.”

  “The President could make them do it,” suggested Harrington. “I could get to the President—”

  “No doubt you could, through your department. And you might even convince him. But could he help much?”

  “Why, of course he could. He’s the President!”

  “Wait a minute. You’re Director of the Naval Observatory; suppose you took a sledge hammer and tried to smash the big telescope—how far would you get?”

  “Not very far,” Harrington conceded. “We guard the big fellow pretty closely.”

  “Nor can the President act in an arbitrary manner,” Lentz persisted. “He’s not an unlimited monarch. If he shuts down this plant without due process of law, the federal courts will tie him in knots. I admit that Congress isn’t helpless, since the Atomic Energy Commission takes orders from it, but —would you like to try to give a congressional committee a course in the mechanics of infinitesimals?”

  Harrington readily stipulated the point. “But there is another way,” he pointed out. “Congress is responsive to public opinion. What we need to do is to convince the public that the pile is a menace to everybody. That could be done without ever trying to explain things in terms of higher mathematics.”

  “Certainly it could,” Lentz agreed. “You could go on the air with it and scare everybody half to death. You could create the damnedest panic this slightly slug-nutty country has ever seen. No, thank you. I, for one, would rather
have us all take the chance of being quietly killed than bring on a mass psychosis that would destroy the culture we are building up. I think one taste of the Crazy Years is enough.”

  “Well, then, what do you suggest?”

  Lentz considered shortly, then answered, “All I see is a forlorn hope.

  We’ve got to work on the Board of Directors and try to beat some sense in their heads.”

  King, who had been following the discussion with attention in spite of his tired despondency, interjected a remark. “How would you go about that?”

  “I don’t know,” Lentz admitted. “It will take some thinking. But it seems the most fruitful line of approach. If it doesn’t work, we can always fall back on Harrington’s notion of publicity—I don’t insist that the world commit suicide to satisfy my criteria of evaluation.”

  Harrington glanced at his wrist watch—a bulky affair—and whistled. “Good heavens,” he exclaimed, “I forgot the time! I’m supposed officially to be at the Flagstaff Observatory.”

  King had automatically noted the time shown by the Captain’s watch as it was displayed. “But it can’t be that late,” he had objected. Harrington looked puzzled, then laughed.

  “It isn’t—not by two hours. We are in zone plus-seven; this shows zone plus-five—it’s radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington.”

  “Did you say radio-synchronized?”

  “Yes. Clever, isn’t it?” He held it out for inspection. “I call it a tele-chronometer; it’s the only one of its sort to date. My nephew designed it for me. He’s a bright one, that boy. He’ll go far. That is”—his face clouded, as if the little interlude had only served to emphasize the tragedy that hung over them—“if any of us live that long!”

  A signal light glowed at King’s desk, and Steinke’s face showed on the communicator screen. King answered him, then said, “Your car is ready, Doctor Lentz.”

  “Let Captain Harrington have it.”

  “Then you’re not going back to Chicago?”

  “No. The situation has changed. If you want me, I’m stringing along.”

  The following Friday Steinke ushered Lentz into King’s office. King looked almost happy as he shook hands. “When did you ground, Doctor? I didn’t expect you back for another hour, or so.”

  “Just now. I hired a cab instead of waiting for the shuttle.”

  “Any luck?” King demanded.

  “None. The same answer they gave you: ‘The Company is assured by independent experts that Destry’s mechanics is valid, and sees no reason to encourage an hysterical attitude among its employees.’”

  King tapped on his desk top, his eyes unfocused. Then, hitching himself around to face Lentz directly, he said, “Do you suppose the Chairman is right?”

  “How?”

  “Could the three of us, you, me, and Harrington, have gone off the deep end, slipped mentally?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Certain. I looked up some independent experts of my own, not retained by the Company, and had them check Harrington’s work. It checks.” Lentz purposely neglected to mention that he had done so partly because he was none too sure of King’s present mental stability.

  King sat up briskly, reached out and stabbed a push button. “I am going to make one more try,” he explained, “to see if I can’t throw a scare into Dixon’s thick head. Steinke,” he said to the communicator, “get me Mr. Dixon on the screen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In about two minutes the visiphone screen came to life and showed the features of Chairman Dixon. He was transmitting, not from his office, but from the boardroom of the power syndicate in Jersey City. “Yes?” he said. “What is it, Superintendent?” His manner was somehow both querulous and affable.

  “Mr. Dixon,” King began, “I’ve called to try to impress on you the seriousness of the Company’s action. I stake my scientific reputation that Harrington has proved completely—”

  “Oh, that? Mr. King, I thought you understood that that was a closed matter.”

  “But Mr. Dixon—”

  “Superintendent, please! If there was any possible legitimate cause to fear do you think I would hesitate? I have children you know, and grandchildren.”

  “That is just why—”

  “We try to conduct the affairs of the Company with reasonable wisdom, and in the public interest. But we have other responsibilities, too. There are hundreds of thousands of little stockholders who expect us to show a reasonable return on their investment. You must not expect us to jettison a billion-dollar corporation just because you’ve taken up astrology. Moon theory!” He sniffed.

  “Very well, Mister Chairman.” King’s tone was stiff.

  “Don’t take it that way, Mr. King. I’m glad you called—the Board has just adjourned a special meeting. They have decided to accept you for retirement—with full pay, of course.”

  “I did not apply for retirement!”

  “I know, Mr. King, but the Board feels that—”

  “I understand. Goodbye!”

  “Mr. King—”

  “Goodbye!” He switched him off, and turned to Lentz. “ ‘—with full pay,’” he quoted, “which I can enjoy in any way that I like for the rest of my life —just as happy as a man in the deathhouse!”

  “Exactly,” Lentz agreed. “Well, we’ve tried our way. I suppose we should call up Harrington now and let him try the political and publicity method.”

  “I suppose so,” King seconded absent-mindedly. “Will you be leaving for Chicago now?”

  “No…” said Lentz. “No… I think I will catch the shuttle for Los Angeles and take the evening rocket for the Antipodes.”

  King looked surprised, but said nothing. Lentz answered the unspoken comment. “Perhaps some of us on the other side of the earth will survive. I’ve done all that I can here. I would rather be a live sheepherder in Australia than a dead psychiatrist in Chicago.”

  King nodded vigorously. “That shows horse sense. For two cents, I’d dump the pile now, and go with you.”

  “Not horse sense, my friend—a horse will run back into a burning bam, which is exactly what I plan not to do. Why don’t you do it and come along. If you did, it would help Harrington to scare ‘em to death.”

  “I believe I will!”

  Steinke’s face appeared again on the screen. “Harper and Erickson are here, Chief.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “They are pretty urgent about seeing you.”

  “Oh—all right,” King said in a tired voice, “show them in. It doesn’t matter.”

  They breezed in, Harper in the van. He commenced talking at once, oblivious to the superintendent’s morose preoccupation. “We’ve got it, Chief, we’ve got it!—and it all checks out to the umpteenth decimal!”

  “You’ve got what? Speak English.”

  Harper grinned. He was enjoying his moment of triumph, and was stretching it out to savor it. “Chief, do you remember a few weeks back when I asked for an additional allotment—a special one without specifying how I was going to spend it?”

  “Yes. Come on—get to the point.”

  “You kicked at first, but finally granted it. Remember? Well, we’ve got something to show for it, all tied up in pink ribbon. It’s the greatest advance in radioactivity since Hahn split the nucleus. Atomic fuel, Chief, atomic fuel, safe, concentrated, and controllable. Suitable for rockets, for power plants, for any damn thing you care to use it for.”

  King showed alert interest for the first time. “You mean a power source that doesn’t require a pile?”

  “Oh, no, I Didn’t say that. You use the breeder pile to make the fuel, then you use the fuel anywhere and anyhow you like, with something like ninety-two percent recovery of energy. But you could junk the power sequence, if you wanted to.”

  King’s first wild hope of a way out of his dilemma was dashed; he subsided. “Go ahead. Tell me about it.”

  “Well—it’s a
matter of artificial radioactives. Just before I asked for that special research allotment, Erickson and I—Doctor Lentz had a finger in it too,” he acknowledged with an appreciative nod to the psychiatrist, “—found two isotopes that seemed to be mutually antagonistic. That is, when we goosed ‘em in the presence of each other they gave up their latent energy all at once—blew all to hell. The important point is we were using just a gnat’s whisker of mass of each—the reaction didn’t require a big mass to maintain it.”

  “I don’t see,” objected King, “how that could—”

  “Neither do we, quite—but it works. We’ve kept it quiet until we were sure. We checked on what we had, and we found a dozen other fuels. Probably we’ll be able to tailor-make fuels for any desired purpose. But here it is.” He handed him a bound sheaf of typewritten notes which he had been carrying under his arm. “That’s your copy. Look it over.”

  King started to do so. Lentz joined him, after a look that was a silent request for permission, which Erickson had answered with his only verbal contribution, “Sure, doc.”

  As King read, the troubled feelings of an acutely harassed executive left him. His dominant personality took charge, that of the scientist. He enjoyed the controlled and cerebral ecstasy of the impersonal seeker for the elusive truth. The emotions felt in his throbbing thalamus were permitted only to form a sensuous obbligato for the cold flame of cortical activity. For the time being, he was sane, more nearly completely sane than most men ever achieve at any time.

  For a long period there was only an occasional grunt, the clatter of turned pages, a nod of approval. At last he put it down.

  “It’s the stuff,” he said. “You’ve done it, boys. It’s great; I’m proud of you.”

  Erickson glowed a bright pink, and swallowed. Harper’s small, tense figure gave the ghost of a wriggle, reminiscent of a wire-haired terrier receiving approval. “That’s fine, Chief. We’d rather hear you say that than get the Nobel Prize.”

  “I think you’ll probably get it. However”—the proud light in his eyes died down—‘I’m not going to take any action in this matter.”