Charles Snow - The New Men

‘Anything stopping you?’ he called to Martin.

‘Nothing at all,’ said Martin.

‘ Then let her go .’

For an hour it was anticlimax. We could not see much of it, just the scurry of Martin and the others behind the pile, pouring in flask after flask. ‘A quarter full,’ Martin said at eight o’clock.

Mary Pearson read the flux and made a point on the graph. Luke and Martin nodded; all was as it should be. Martin said: ‘My turn to do some more pouring.’

‘Glug glug,’ said Luke.

As the level of heavy water rose, they poured more slowly. At last: ‘Half full.’ Mary scrutinized the indicator and inked in another point. Did she know, I was thinking, exactly where those points should fall to mean success? Luke looked over her shoulder.

‘There or thereabouts,’ he said quietly to Mounteney, who had come in a quarter of an hour before.

Although he had spoken in a low tone, somehow the crowd picked up the first intimation of good news. The excitement was sharper, they were quiet, they were on edge for something to cheer. Once more Martin came round and also studied the graph. ‘Not so bad,’ he whispered to Luke, raising an eyebrow, and then called out to the man at the filling place: ‘Slowly now. Only when I say.’

Flask by flask, the level went up from half way. Mary was reading the flux each minute now. To the first points after half way, neither Luke nor Martin paid much attention. Then, as the minutes went on, they both stood by her watching each point. No one else went near the instrument. The excitement stayed, they were ready for Luke to say — ‘In — minutes from now the chain reaction will begin.’

Luke and Martin were staring down at the graph. I could not see their faces. I had almost no fears left. Certainly I did not watch Mary’s hand as the level went up to 0.55 inserting a point as though her fingers were weighed down. As her pen stopped above the next point, Luke and Martin straightened themselves and looked at each other. Still the mood round me, the expectancy and elation, had not changed. Luke’s glance at Martin might have told me nothing; but Martin’s at Luke in one instant let me know the worst.

As Martin and Luke looked at each other, no one round realized what the graph had told them. Someone threw in a scientific jibe about ‘cooking’ and Luke replied. He said to the men at the filling place: ‘Hold it for a minute.’ Even then, no one, not even Mounteney suspected.

He left Mary’s bench, pushed through the crowd, and, his stiff strong back straight, walked rapidly to his little office at the hangar side. That was nothing startling; he had done so three times since the experiment began. Martin remained on the ‘quarter deck’ space, strolled over to the pile and back to Mary’s instrument bench, then, with an air of casualness, as it were absent-mindedly, followed Luke. The scientists were chattering round me, relaxed until Luke came back; I did not attract attention, when in a moment I also followed.

In the office Martin was sitting on a chair, his arms rigid by his sides, while Luke paced from the window to the door, three stamping steps, turned, three steps to the window, like a wild dog in the zoo.

As I went in, Martin did not move, greeted me only with his eyes.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘If only I’d made the whole thing bigger!’ Luke was saying, in a grinding voice.

‘In fact we didn’t,’ said Martin.

‘How bad is it?’ I had to ask.

‘It’s pretty bad,’ said Martin.

Luke cried: ‘If only I’d made the thing fifty per cent bigger. Then whatever’s gone wrong, it would still have worked!’

‘I can’t blame ourselves for that ,’ said Martin. His tone was bitter.

‘What do you blame us for?’ Luke stopped and rounded on him.

‘We spoke too soon,’ said Martin.

‘You mean,’ said Luke, ‘that I never know when to keep my mouth shut.’

‘It doesn’t matter what caused it,’ said Martin, and his temper for once was ready to match Luke’s. ‘We’ve got to take the consequences.’

‘Yes,’ Luke broke out, ‘you’re going to look a fool because of me.’ They both felt the fury of collaborators. The fabric of businesslike affection opened, and one saw — Martin’s anger at having been led astray, his dislike of trusting his leader too far, perhaps his dislike of having a leader at all, perhaps a flicker of the obscure, destructive satisfaction that comes to a junior partner in a failure for which he is not to blame. One saw Luke’s resentment at the partner to whom he had done harm, the ferocious resentment of the leader to someone he has led into failure. Luke was a responsible, confident man, he knew Martin had served him with complete loyalty: in disaster he was choked with anger at the sight of Martin’s face.

But those feelings were not their deepest. Each was face to face with his own disaster. Each was raking it in his own fashion. I did not know which was being hurt more.

Martin said: ‘It will give some simple pleasure in various quarters.’

He had tried to teach himself not to be proud, he had set out to be sensible, calculating, prepared to risk snubs, but there was a nerve of pride hidden beneath. Now he was preparing himself for a humiliation. He had tried to be content with little, but this time he had believed that what he wanted was in his hands; he was composing himself again to expect nothing.

To Luke, even to me, his stoicism seemed enviable. To himself, it was like an invalid pretending to feel better for the benefit of his visitors and then sinking down when they had gone.

Luke made no attempt at stoicism, less so than most men. He assumed that he was the more wretched, that he would jib more at the humiliation.

‘Why are the wise old jaw-bacons always right?’ he cried, repeating criticisms that had been made of him, dwelling on them, sometimes agreeing with them. ‘When shall I learn not to make a mess of things? If ever the jaw-bacons had a good idea, they would handle it without any of this nonsense. How can I go and tell them that their damn silly short-sighted fatuous bloody ignorant criticism has just turned out right all the time?’

Yet, though he might feel more ashamed than Martin, though he would have no guard at all when he heard what Mounteney and the others had to say, he would recover sooner. Even in his wretchedness, his powers were beginning to reassert themselves. It was frustration to him to feel those powers deprived, to know that through his own fault he had not fulfilled them; until the pile was running, he would know self-reproach like a hunger of flesh and bone; but underneath the misery and self-accusation his resolve was taking shape.

‘It was just on the edge of being right,’ he said. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t I get it quite right?

‘What is stopping them (the neutrons)?

‘Brother Rudd will have a nice sleep tonight. Well, I can’t grudge him that.

‘The heavy water is all right.

‘The electronics are all right.

‘The engineering is all right.

‘I only hope the Germans are capable of making bloody fools of themselves like this. Or anyone else who gets as far. I tell you we’ve got as near as kiss your hand.

‘ The engineering is all right .

‘ The heavy water is all right .

‘ The uranium is all right .

‘ The uranium is all right .

‘No, it blasted well can’t be.

‘ That must be it . It must be the uranium — there’s something left there stopping the neuts.’

Martin, who had been sitting so still that he might not have heard Luke’s outburst, suddenly broke in. From the beginning they had known that the uranium had to be pure to a degree that made them need a new metallurgy. After all, that still might not be pure enough. Was there an impurity, present in minute quantities, which happened to have great stopping power? I heard names strange to me. One Luke kept repeating (it was gadolinium, though on the spot my ear did not pick it up). ‘That’s it,’ he cried.