Charles Snow - The New Men

‘There might be others,’ said Martin.

‘No,’ said Luke. ‘ That’s it .’

‘I’m not convinced,’ said Martin.

But he was. Even that night, Luke’s authority had surged up again. Later, other scientists said there was nothing wonderful about Luke’s diagnosis; anyone would have reached it, given a cool head and a little time. What some of them did praise (even those who only passed compliments on those securely dead) was his recuperative power.

They did not see him just a moment after his flare of certainty. He knew what was wrong, he could stiffen himself to months’ more work: but there was something to do first.

He stopped his pacing, put a hand on the desk and spoke to Martin.

‘Do you think they rumbled?’

(He meant the other scientists waiting by the pile.)

‘I doubt it,’ said Martin.

‘I should have thought they must. They must be thinking that I’ve given them the laugh of a lifetime.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin.

‘They’ve got to be told.’

Martin nodded. His own face pale, he was watching Luke’s. Luke broke out: ‘I can’t do it.’ His bounce had quitted him; his active nature had gone dead.

Martin pressed in his lips.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

Then Luke took hold of the desk and shook himself, shook his heavy shoulders like a dog on the beach.

‘No, I must do it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got more nerve than I have, but you’d be too diplomatic. It’s a mistake to be diplomatic about a bloody fiasco.’

‘You’re right,’ said Martin. For the first time since I came into that office, there was a comradely glance between them.

Luke went straight to the door.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

But, as they stood in the open hangar, with the crowd between them and the pile, Luke muttered: ‘I’m going to try another reading, just on the off chance.’

Even now he was hoping for a miracle to save him. He walked, arms swinging, to the instrument bench, and once more studied the graph. He called out: ‘Take her up to.6.’ Martin stood by his side. They had been gone less than twenty minutes. There was a stir in the spectators round me, but I did not hear any word of doubt. Mary Pearson’s hair was close to the table as she read the indicator. With a slow sweep, like the movement of someone drugged, retarded but not jerky, her hand moved over the graph paper. The instant her pen point came to rest, Luke snatched the sheet from her. He glanced — showed it to Martin — threw it on to the bench — more quickly than a man could light a cigarette. He took a step forward, and in a loud, slow, inflexible voice said: ‘It’s a flop. That’s all for tonight. We’ll get it right, but it’s going to take some time.’

A hush. An hysterical laugh. A gasp. Men talking at once. Pushing up her glasses, Mary Pearson began to sob, tears rolling down her face. I caught sight of young Sawbridge, his mouth open with pain like a Marathon runner’s: for once I saw emotion on his face, he too was nearly crying.

Drawbell, Rudd, and Mounteney pushed towards the graph.

‘What is all this?’ Mounteney was asking irritably. ‘What has the k got up to?’

Rudd said to Martin: ‘Never mind, old chap. It might happen to anyone.’

‘Not quite like this,’ said Martin, looking straight into Rudd’s eyes, in search of the gloating that he expected in all eyes just then.

In the hubbub, the high questions, the hot wash of feeling more alive that men get from any catastrophe not their own, Drawbell took command. Mounting on Mary Pearson’s chair he shouted for attention; and as they huddled round him, as round an orator in Hyde Park, he stood quite still with an expression steady, friendly, undisturbed.

When they were looking up at him, he spoke, with the same steadiness: ‘Now I’m going to send you home. We’ll begin the inquest tomorrow, and I shall give you a statement all in good time. But I don’t want you to go home tonight in the wrong frame of mind. It’s true that the experiment hasn’t worked according to plan, and Luke was right to tell us so. I’m not going to raise false hopes, so I shan’t say any more about that. But I do tell you something else: that even if the worst comes to the worst, this experiment has taught us more about our job than any establishment in the world, except our friends across the Atlantic. We shall finish up better because we’ve had our setbacks. This isn’t the end, this is the beginning.’

Without a flash of his own disappointments, free from the honours receding from him that night, without tremor of schadenfreude at Luke’s fall, Drawbell stood there, happier with a crowd than ever with a single person, engrossed in infecting them with his own curious courage, delighted (as the complex sometimes are) because he was behaving well. It was he who cleared the hangar, to allow Luke and Martin to get back to their office undisturbed. Outside on the floor round the pile, there was soon no one left, except Nora Luke; we looked at each other without a word, unable to go away.

‘We’d better ask,’ she said at last, as we stood helplessly there, ‘whether we can be any use.’

In the office, Luke and Martin were both sitting down. As Nora saw her husband she said, awkwardly, wishing from the bottom of her heart that she could let herself go: ‘Bad luck.’

It was Martin who replied, picking up Drawbell’s speech with harsh irony: ‘We shall finish up better because we’ve had our set-backs.’

To his wife, Luke said, ‘Let’s have some tea.’

That was the first pot of tea. Nora made five others before the night ended. Like other men of action, Luke talked more as he grew more tired. What to do? — decisions of his kind were not made in monosyllables, they were made in repetitious soliloquies, often in speeches that got nowhere, that were more like singing than the ordinary give and take of talk. Yet out of that welter sprang, several times that night, a new resolve, one more point ticked off.

Meanwhile, Nora sat by, calculating for him how many (if his assumption were right) uranium slugs would have to be replaced, before the pile would run. It was a long calculation; she carried it out like the professional mathematician that she was; sometimes she glanced at Luke, distrusting herself, thinking that another woman might have given him rest. But she was wrong. His bad time was behind him, of us all he was the least broken.

As Luke talked more, Martin became more silent. He took in each new plan, he answered questions; but through the small hours lie sat volunteering no words of his own, giving his opinion when Luke asked for it, like a sensible second-in-command — and yet each time I heard that controlled voice I knew that he was eating himself up with hopes in retrospect, with that singular kind of might-have-been that twists one’s bowels because it still grips one like a hope.

As I looked at Martin, my disappointment for him, which had started anew, the instant I caught the glance between him and Luke over the graph, was growing so that it drained me of all other feelings, of patience, of sympathy, of affection. This might have been the night of his success. Now it came to the test, that was my only hunger. I had none to spare for the project; on the other hand, I did not give a thought for our forebodings with Mounteney by the river. I had none of the frustration that Luke felt and perhaps Martin also, because they were being kept at arm’s length from a piece of scientific truth. For me, this ought to have been the night of Martin’s success. I was bitter with him because it had gone wrong.

At last Luke said, his voice still resonant, that we had done enough for one night, and Martin and I walked together out of the hangar door. The sky was dark, without any stars, but in the east there was a pallor that seemed less comforting.