Part 14 (1/2)

”Don't let it worry you,” advised Erickson ”There's a spotter on the job now Look” Harper followed his coical staff He was leaning against the far end of the bar, and nursing a tall glass, which gave him protective coloration But his stance was such that his field of vision included not only Hannigan, but Erickson and Harper as well

”Yeah, and he's studying us as well,” Harper added ”damn it to hell, why does it make my back hair rise just to lay eyes on one of thenored it ”Let's get out of here,”

he suggested, ”and have dinner somewhere else”

”OK”

DeLancey hientlemen?”

he asked, in a voice that implied that their departure would leave hiht If you do not like it, you need not pay” He shtly

”Not sea food, Lance,” Harper told hiht Tell me - why do you stick around here when you know that the bo run? Aren't you afraid of it?”

The tavern keeper's eyebrows shot up ”Afraid of the bomb? But it is my friend!”

”Makes you money, eh?”

”Oh, I do not mean that” He leaned toward theo I come here to make some money quickly for my family before my cancer of the stomach, it kills entleain No, I aood friend”

”Suppose it blows up?”

”When the good Lord needs me, He will take me” He crossed himself quickly

As they turned away, Erickson commented in a low voice to Harper, ”There's your answer, Cal - if all us engineers had his faith, the boet us down”

Harper was unconvinced ”I don't know,” he ination - and knowledge”

Notwithstanding King's confidence, Lentz did not show up until the next day The superintendent was subconsciously a little surprised at his visitor's appearance He had pictured ahair, an i black eyes But this man was not very tall, was heavy in his fraht have been a butcher Little, piggy, faded-blue eyes peered y blond brows There was no hair anywhere else on the enormous skull, and the apelike jaas smooth and pink He was dressed in arette holder jutted permanently from one corner of a wide ested unmalicious amusement at the worst that life, orfound hiestion the superintendent went first into the history of the atomic power plant, how the fission of the uranium atom by Dr Otto Hahn in December, 1938, had opened up the way to atomic power The door was opened just a crack; the process to be self-perpetuating and coreater mass of uranium than there was available in the entire civilized world at that time

But the discovery, fifteen years later, of enor Little America removed that obstacle The deposits were similar to those previously worked at Great Bear Lake in the arctic north of Canada, but so muchenough uranium to build an atomic power plant became evident

The demand for commercially usable, cheap power had never been satiated

Even the Douglas-Martin sun-power screens, used to drive the roaring road cities of the period and for a myriad other industrial purposes, were not sufficient to fill the ever-growing de famine of oil and coal, but their maximum output of approximately one horsepower per square yard of sun-illuminated surface put a definite liraphical area Atomic poas needed - was demanded

But theoretical atoe to assist in its own disintegration ht assist too well - blow up instantaneously,

with such force that it would probably wreck every lobe and conceivably destroy the entire huh the uranium was available

”It was Destry's mechanics of infinitesi went on ”His equations appeared to predict that an atomic explosion once started, would disrupt the h the outer surface of the fragression of the atomic explosion to zero before complete explosion could be reached

”For the mass we use in the bomb, his equations predict a possible force of explosion one seventh of one percent of the force of complete explosion