Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

Near the other end of that telephone, where Paul was still talking, Hooker wandered about restlessly, looking dumbfounded. They were in the laboratory, immediately beneath the platform of the tower, and a very fine little lab. it was too, as Hooker had admitted at once. The experiment had just taken place; hence Paul’s triumphant and urgent messages to his brothers, and Hooker’s bewildered dismay. While Paul was still talking, Hooker examined everything again, feeling a fool, not like a fellow physicist but rather like one of those open-mouthed fellows from the audience who gape at the trick properties on the stage. Yes, the heavy lump of granite, which he had handled himself, had gone. The thick lead screens, the thickest if not the largest he had ever known, were unbelievably scarred and blasted. A little more force, and that would have been the end of those screens, perhaps the end of everything and everybody in the lab. itself. He looked around as carefully as he could, for he did not trust MacMichael, too dramatic altogether, too queer, too conceited, to be a completely trustworthy experimenter; but he was still feeling dazed. Gee-what an experiment! More like a little volcanic eruption! And what an eruption, what an earthquake, unless there was some catch in it he couldn’t see, it was going to cause in the world of physics! Boy-oh boy! But he still couldn’t make head or tail of it.

“No deception, Dr. Hooker,” cried Paul, now coming across the lab., “no deception at all, dear doctor, I assure you.”

That emphasised “doctor” was just a sneer, of course, and Hooker wished to heaven he could put his finger on some flaw or trick that would wipe the sneering smile off MacMichael’s dark face, now alight with triumph.

“I don’t get this at all,” he grunted.

“Quite a small voltage. Get that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“A mere speck of the bombarded element, the tiniest possible. You saw it?”

“Yep. I saw it all right. But what is it?”

“One that we seemed to have carelessly overlooked, Dr. Hooker. Of course it has no commercial value, and we live in a world that cherishes commercial value. But oddly enough, it’s also been overlooked by all you fellows experimenting in transmutations, perhaps because you’re all so busy instructing the young about spectra and isotopes. But of course I’ve been busy some time myself on transmutations, and I hardly need tell you that this is an artificial element, very difficult to produce. It happens, however, that tunnelling under this tower, deep down, we found a rich deposit of a certain heavy mineral, also of no commercial value-what a pleasure it is to say that, Hooker, in this greedy world!-that was of great assistance to me. I don’t feel inclined at the moment to give you the atomic number of my element-it’s very high, of course, though curiously enough this element is only unstable under certain conditions, but then it can behave very queerly-but let’s give it a name, shall we? I wonder if you’d think me egoistical if I called it, just for reference, paulium?”

“All right,” grumbled Hooker, who disliked the tone of all this. “Go on.”

“And I have another new name for you to learn, if you don’t mind, Dr. Hooker, another little coinage of my own. I know you’re well acquainted-I remember one or two little discussions we had-”

“So do I, MacMichael,” muttered Hooker, angrily.

“Well, what about them?”

“Only that you were just as damned high-hat then as you’re being now. Can’t you drop it, and talk like an honest-to-God scientist?”

“When I first began to have a few ideas of my own, Hooker-oh, much younger than you are now-I did talk, as you say, like an honest-to-God scientist-talked straight out of my mind and heart, for I think we fellows sometimes have to use our hearts too-and what did I get in return? You ask some of those pompous old frogs still drivelling in their professorial chairs what they tried to do to me. And I’d even changed my name, so that people wouldn’t think I was trading on the old man’s fame and fortune. I received too many neat slaps on the face, Hooker, so I stopped showing it to them.”

“Well, I didn’t do it,” said Hooker, speaking abruptly. “And I’ve had to take it-even from you-without getting sour. But let’s get back to the subject.”

“Willingly. I was talking about my other little new coinage, and I say that I know you’re well acquainted with electrons, neutrons, deuterons, photons, but this, I think, will be quite new to you. And you saw it in operation here. Shall we call it a dynatron?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“I know that, Hooker. But it meant something round here-didn’t it-a few minutes ago?”

“Alpha particles?”

“No, that won’t do, quite. In fact, we’ll have to reconsider a good deal of that radioactive theory, in the light of what I’ve recently discovered. I can’t explain the result of five years’ intensive research in five minutes, Hooker, but you can take it from me that what I’ll call my dynatrons have a very respectable kinetic energy indeed-hence the name. I suspect all the radium compounds are releasing them, but you know how difficult they are to handle, whereas this tiny group of peculiar unstables, of which paulium is easily the best for my purpose, are comparatively easy to handle. Now bombard, even mildly as we did just now, this paulium, and it starts to disintegrate at once, releasing the dynatrons-only a few, of course, if you treat it gently. Even then, as you saw, the fun begins. And if you don’t treat it gently, if you’re really rough with it-”

“Listen, MacMichael,” Hooker broke in, earnestly regarding him, “I’ve just heard some ridiculous talk here about ending the world. Now quite apart from the sheer God-damned wickedness of the thing, you’re not cracked enough to believe you could do it-are you-just because you’ve discovered one or two things ahead of anybody else?”

“Foolish idea, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and you know it is. Handing ’em out that stuff-and you call yourself a scientist!” Hooker made the taunt quite deliberate.

“Why, you young lout, I not only call myself a scientist, but I’m a better scientist than you could prove yourself to be within the next five hundred years, not one of which you’re going to live to see.”

“World ends to-morrow, I suppose?” Hooker jeered.

“That’s exactly what I’m planning, my dear doctor,” said MacMichael, in a quiet but deadly tone, “and later I’ll let you know the exact time.”

“Boo! You can’t kid me, MacMichael, even if you can play about with your precious paulium, and your dynatrons, which ten to one will turn out to be heavy electrons-”

“I knew they weren’t that, nearly two years ago,” said MacMichael, still quiet but very angry, which was precisely what Hooker intended he should be. “And I’m not fool enough to imagine I can explode this planet, for even you know what its density must be near the centre. But I can peel it like peeling an orange, only faster.”

“Talk sense!”

MacMichael’s gigantic conceit, amounting to megalomania, responded at once to this further jeer. “Just come this way, Hooker,” he said, in the same quiet but very angry tone, and went to the other end of the laboratory and opened a door there. Hooker was not slow to follow him. A short flight of curving metal stairs led down to a small platform, inside the body of the tower. They reached the platform, and MacMichael switched on a light or two. Hooker, peering down, exclaimed in surprise. The few lights that had been turned on were not enough to illuminate clearly the great shaft, but Hooker caught sight of vast metal bulbs and other apparatus that suggested an electrostatic generator of unusual size.