Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

It was satisfying to see them jump-but how long had they been standing in the open like that before he noticed them?

As the militia car pulled away from the plant gate, Smin caught a glimpse through the trees of the bright towers of the town of Pripyat, prettily colored in the morning sun. He should, he thought, have put his message to his wife and son more strongly, so that they would keep away until things became more normal-

If things ever would. But Smin, at least, had a pretty clear idea of what the radionuclides that had erupted from Reactor No. 4 were going to do to the buildings, streets, and soil of Pripyat, once the wind changed-were already doing, no doubt, to the little farm villages in Byelorussia, just across the border to the north.

Smin recognized the little park by the river. It was where people swam in the summer, and the plant's football team practiced on its greensward. Now the goal cages had been torn away and the people there were not playing football. Some were on stretchers, waiting for the airlift to the larger hospital in Chernobyl.

Smin was surprised to see Chief Engineer Varazin bustling toward him. The man was neatly dressed, even freshly shaved, though the lines on his face suggested he had not slept. "Eh, Simyon," Varazin sighed gloomily. "What a night! Wouldn't you know, the minute the Director goes out of town!" Then he brightened. "You'll be glad to know that I've made sure all our observer guests are safe, and I've made arrangements for the new ones from the Ministry."

"Well, that's very good, anyway," Smin said wonderingly.

"Exactly! Put the past behind us. Get on with the work ahead, right, Simyon? But I'd better be doing it than talking about it," Varazin said, and trotted away, glancing up at the sky.

Smin shook his head. Was it possible the man thought that escorting the observers to Pripyat would do anything to ameliorate the miseries that lay ahead for him? Well, for both of them, to be sure, Smin thought resignedly; but there was no time to worry about that sort of thing now. He peered up into the sky. He could hear the helicopter approaching from the southeast, but it did not come directly to the pad. It veered away and slowly circled the Chernobyl plant. Sensible of them to take a good look at the ruin, Smin thought, and wished he could do the same.

"Deputy Director Smin?" It was one of the Ponomorenko brothers, the footballer they called Autumn.

Smin searched for his actual name and came up with it. "Hello, Vladimir. No game today, after all."

"No. Can you tell me, please, if you know anything of my cousin Vyacheslav? They say he is missing."

"Was he on duty?" Smin thought for a moment. "Yes, of course he was. On the night shift. Well, no, I haven't seen him. Probably he had the good sense to go home when the plant was evacuated."

"He isn't at home, Deputy Director Smin. Thank you, I'll go on looking." Ponomorenko hesitated. "My brother is in the hospital over there," he said, waving toward the distant towers of Pripyat. "He got some radio thing."

"He'll have the best of care," Smin promised, trying to sound more certain than he was. "We can't spare the Four Seasons, after all!" He glanced up. The helicopter from Kiev had completed its leisurely tour and was fluttering down toward them. "Well, here come the experts from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, so we'll have everything straightened out quickly now."

It was a way of trying to reassure the football player, but it was not, Smin admitted to himself, a realistic statement. Even the experts from the Ministry had had no experience of anything like this, since nothing like it had ever happened before. Not even in America, Smin thought wryly, remembering how he had boasted to the Americans just the night before. It was a definite first in nuclear technology, and once again the Soviet Union had led the way.

There were four of the experts from the Ministry of Nuclear Energy jumping out of the helicopter, and Chief Engineer Varazin was ducking under the blades even before they had stopped revolving to greet them. Smin recognized a couple of the men, but Varazin introduced them all around anyway. "Comrades Istvili, Rasputin, Lestilyan," he said, and waited for them to introduce the fourth man. They didn't. Rasputin, the one Smin had not met before, shook Smin's hand heartily.

"No, I am not the mad monk," he said, smiling. "I'm simply from the section on biological effects of radiation. I'm not related to the writer, either."

"A pity," Varazin said chattily. "My wife is a great admirer of his thrillers." He hesitated. "I had thought perhaps our Director Zaglodin might have been with you."

Istvili shook his head. He was a tall, heavyset man, with the dark, almost Mediterranean look of a Georgian. "We hoped that, too, but he had not been located when our special plane left Moscow-at six this morning," he added. "It's been a long trip."

"Of course," Varazin sympathized. "Well. I've prepared a command post just five kilometers away; it will all be ready when you require it. I think it will be suitable. But first I'm sure you would like to inspect the station-"

Smin was listening in amazement to the casual chatter; why, Varazin was talking to these men exactly as though they were visiting Yemenis, no more than a mild annoyance to a busy man. "Can I borrow your helicopter?" he asked brusquely.

Istvili understood at once. "Of course. It's worth a look from above. Then"-he glanced at his watch-"it's eighteen minutes after nine now. Can we meet at ten in this command post for a first conference? Good, then let's go."

Simyon Smin had seldom been in a helicopter before, but the rapid, efficient movements of the pilot didn't interest him on this occasion. His eyes were all for the plant. "Stay away from that plume of smoke," he ordered the pilot. "Not too low-not below two hundred meters. But get as close as you can."

"Of course," the pilot said, not even looking around-no doubt he had had the same orders from his last passengers. But Smin wasn't listening, either. He was staring out the window, scuttling over to the seat on the other side as the helicopter turned, keeping the plant always in view. As they approached from the undamaged side, over the cooling pond, the plant looked almost normal-at least, if you did not count the pall of dark smoke that was drifting slowly northward from the still-smoldering embers. Firemen were methodically removing their suction hoses from the pond. The roof was not yet in view.

Then it was, and Smin groaned. There were still firemen on the roof, and they were still playing hoses on patches that smoked. Idiots! Didn't they know the debris on the roof was radioactive-some of it right out of the core itself? Then, as the helicopter lurched upward, the ruin of Reactor No. 4 came into view, and Smin forgot about the endangered firemen.

From the ground he had not seen quite how terrible the destruction was. There was actually nothing at all left of the reactor building, no refueling hall, no roof. He saw twisted metal that might once have been the refueling crane. Most of all, he saw the naked core itself. He squinted between his fingers, instinctively protected his eyes, suddenly aware that even two hundred meters was not too far to be from that radioactive ember. An arc of brilliant blue-white light from one edge showed the burning graphite-not more than ten percent of the exposed surface burning now, Smin thought, and wondered if that was less than an hour ago-or more.

The helicopter veered away from the smoke plume. The pilot called, "Shall I duck under the smoke? Or would you like to go back around again?"

Smin sank back in his seat. "I've seen enough," he said.

Varazin's "command center" turned out to be nothing more or less than Varazin's own comfortable dacha, set a hundred meters off the road in the fir forest. Its large main room was twice the size of anything in Smin's flat, but it was crowded by the time the meeting began. Smin, Varazin, the four men from the Ministry, the general of fire brigades, the head doctor from the Pripyat hospital, Khrenov (looking worn but confident), two men from the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian Republic (when had they arrived?), half a dozen from the Pripyat Party Committee, an Army general. Smin looked at the crowd in dismay. This was an emergency meeting, not a Party rally. It was his firm conviction that the effectiveness of any conference was in inverse ratio to the number of people sitting around the table, and over five you might as well sleep through the proceedings.