Charles Snow - The New Men

He could not resist telling me some details, there and then, in the middle of the night. It had been his idea to hold a ‘dress rehearsal’. During the summer, they had built a syphoning plant for the heavy water, so they had not required many hands: even of those present, few realized that this was the ‘real thing’. They had begun just after midnight, and the filling was still going on. For ten minutes, at the halfway stage, the graph points seemed to be going wrong again. ‘That was pretty hard to take,’ said Martin. Then the points began to come out according to calculation. In fact, they were coming out slightly better than calculation. Martin for once forgot his listener, and broke into technical language: ‘The k is 1.2 already, it’s too hot to put in more than three-quarters of the heavy water.

‘It’s embarrassing that it’s gone too well,’ he added. ‘Still, it’s quite a tolerable way to be embarrassed.’

The following afternoon, when he met me at the station, he was just as happy. It was no longer self-discipline that kept his expression firm; one could see the happiness beneath the skin; he was not a man to lose appetite for triumph the moment he had it.

We shook hands, which we did not often do.

‘The pile, I think,’ said Martin, without asking me where we should go first. He said, as we walked along: ‘When it looked as though we were due for another fiasco last night — that was getting near the bone.’

Contentedly browsing over past dramas, Martin led me into a hangar. It was empty, not a single human being in sight; it was noiseless, the pile standing silent in the airy space.

‘There she goes,’ said Martin. But he did not see the curious sinister emptiness of the place. He was thinking not of the silent, blank-faced pile but of the reaction going on within. He took me to the control room, a cubbyhole full of shining valves with one kitchen chair placed, domestic and incongruous, in front of a panel of indicators. Sitting there was the only other man I had seen that afternoon.

‘All well?’ asked Martin.

‘All well, Dr Eliot,’ said the duty officer.

‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ Martin said to me.

As we went out, there was a hallooing from close by, and Luke, who had just tramped in, called us into his office.

‘Well, Lewis,’ he said, ‘this is a bit better.’

‘To say the least of it,’ I said.

‘They ought to have known it was the neatest way to do it.’

‘They’ were Luke’s collection of enemies and detractors, and without malice, or even much interest, he dismissed them. He was sitting on his desk, and suddenly his whole face and body became vigorous.

‘There’s only one thing that matters now, as I’ve been saying to Martin this morning,’ he said, ‘and that is, how soon can we finish it off?’

Martin smiled. For himself, he would have been glad of a breathing space, to luxuriate in the success; to him, it was real success, the first he had had. But then Martin, less humble than Luke as a man, was far more so as a scientist. Luke knew his powers; he knew that this project had not stretched them; it had tested his character, but in terms of scientific imagination, it had needed little. He did not take much pride in the achievement; this was no place to rest; with all his energies, he wanted to push on.

‘We’ve got to make the bloody bomb while we’re about it,’ said Luke. ‘Until we’ve got the plutonium out, I shan’t be able to put my in-tray on top of my out-tray and go back to something worth doing.’

As I already knew, making the pile work was only the first stage, though the most important, in producing a bomb; second by second, the pile was now changing minute amounts of uranium into plutonium. In a hundred and fifty to two hundred days, they calculated, the transformation would have gone far enough: the slugs could then be taken out to cool: in another ninety days Luke and Martin could begin extracting the plutonium. Luke said they might cut a little off those periods, but not much,

‘Perhaps we can begin extracting in March,’ he said. ‘Which leaves one question sticking out, when is the war going to end?’

This was late September 1944: we all agreed that there was no chance of an end that year. The intelligence teams in Germany were reporting that the Germans had got nowhere with their pile — but Luke and others at Barford found it hard to credit.

‘What we can do, so can they,’ said Luke. ‘Which is one reason why I want to whip that plutonium out. It would be too damn silly if they lifted this one out of the bag before us.’

‘What are the other reasons?’

Luke said quietly: ‘To tell you the truth, Lewis, I’d rather we got it first — so that we should have some influence in case any maniac wants to use the damned thing.’

It was the first time I had heard Luke talk about anyone using the bomb.

‘That is a point,’ said Martin.

‘But it isn’t the real point,’ said Luke, his face open and truculent once more. ‘Let’s come clean with you, Lewis. That’s a very good reason, but it isn’t the real reason, and you both know that as well as I do. The real reason is just that I can’t bear not to come in first.’

They could not touch the rods before March 1st; what was the earliest possible date to possess the plutonium?

Martin said: ‘The operative word is “possible”.’

Luke said: ‘I’ll get that stuff out in six weeks from March 1st if it’s the last thing I do.’

Martin said: ‘It may be.’

‘What is the matter?’ I said.

Luke and Martin looked at each other.

‘There are some hazards,’ said Luke.

That was the term they used for physical danger. Luke went on being frank. The ‘hazards’ might be formidable. No one knew much about handling plutonium; it might well have obscure toxic properties. There would not be time to test each step for safety, they might expose themselves to illness: conceivably grave illness, or worse.

‘Is that fair?’ Luke said to Martin, when he had finished.

‘Quite fair,’ said Martin.

There was a silence, which Martin broke: ‘I agree with you,’ he said, speaking straight to Luke. ‘There are good reasons for pushing ahead.’

‘I’m glad you admit it at last, anyway,’ said Luke.

‘I also agree that we’ve got to take certain hazards,’ said Martin. ‘I’m not happy about it, but I’m prepared to take a few modest risks. I don’t think, though, that I’m prepared to take the risks you are. I don’t believe the reasons justify them.’

‘They’re ninety per cent conclusive,’ said Luke.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin.

‘I haven’t thought it out yet,’ said Luke. ‘I must get it clear with myself where I stand about the risks. But I think I shall take them.’

‘You’re not the only person involved,’ said Martin.

‘Look here,’ Luke said, ‘this is going to be like walking blindfold, and I am not beginning to answer for anyone but myself’.’

Some of this repartee sounded as though they were repeating the morning’s argument, but, for a few moments past, they had seemed surprised by each other. Martin’s voice was sharp: ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that I can’t ask any of our chaps to put their hands inside the blasted stew,’ Luke replied. ‘If anyone is going to dabble in chemistry with the lid off it’s me.’

‘Just before Lewis arrived,’ said Martin, on his side producing something new, ‘someone was waiting to volunteer.’

‘Who?’

‘Sawbridge.’

‘Good for him,’ said Luke, ‘but I can’t let him.’

‘Yes, I’m quite sure,’ said Martin slowly, ‘we can’t ask any of the others, or even let them volunteer.’