August 10, 2025 • 38 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Bramble Bush by Randal Garrett. There was a man
in our town, and he was wondrous. Wise, he jumped
into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
Old nursery rhyme Peter de Hoque was dreaming that the
moon had blown up. When he awakened, the room was
dark except for the glowing night light near the door,
(00:22):
and he sat up, trying to separate the dream from reality.
He focused his eyes on the glow plate. What had
wakened him? Something had, he was sure, but there didn't
seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Now, the
explosion in his dream it seemed extraordinarily realistic. He could
still remember vividly the vibration and the crump of the noise,
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but there was no sign of what might have caused
the dream sequence. Maybe something fell, he thought. He swung
his legs off his bed and padded barefoot over to
the light switch. He was so used to walking under
the light lunar gravity that he was no longer conscious
of it. He pressed the switch and the room was
suddenly flooded with light. He looked around. Everything was in place.
(01:03):
Apparently there was nothing on the floor that shouldn't be there.
The books were all in their places in the bookshelf.
The stuff on his desk seemed undisturbed. The only thing
that wasn't as it should be was the picture on
the wall. It was a reproduction of a painting by
Peter de Hoque, which he had always liked, aside from
the fact that he had been named after the seventeenth
century Dutch artist. The picture was slightly askew on the wall.
(01:26):
He was sleepily trying to figure out the significance of that.
When the phone sounded. He walked over and picked it up. Yeah, Guz,
guzz get over here quick. Sam Willow's voice came excitedly
from the instrument. What's the matter, Puss, he asked, blearily.
Number two just blue. We need help, guzz fast. I'm
(01:46):
on my way, to Hoak said, Take C corridor, Willows warned,
A and B caved in and the bulkheads have dropped.
Make it snappy. I'm gone already, to Hoak said, dropping
the phone back into placebbed his vacuum suit from its
hangar and got into it, as though his own room
had already sprung an air leak. Number two is blown.
He thought that would be the one that Ferguson and
(02:09):
Metti were working on. What had they been cooking, he
couldn't remember right off the bat. Something touchy, he thought,
something pretty hot, But that wouldn't cause an atomic reactor
to blow it. Obviously hadn't been a nuclear blow up
of any proportions, or he wouldn't be here now, zipping
up the front of his vacksuit. Still, it had been
powerful enough to shake the lunar crust a little, or
he wouldn't have been wakened by the blast. These new
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reactors could get out a lot more power, and they
could do a lot more than the old ones could,
but they weren't as safe as the old heavy metal
reactors by a long shot. None had blown up yet quite,
but there was still the chance. That's why they were
built on Luna instead of on Earth. Considering what they
could do to Hooke often felt that it would be
safer if they were built out on some nice, safe asteroid,
(02:51):
preferably one in the Jovian Trojan sector. He clamped his
fish bowl lawn tight, opened the door, and sprinted toward
Corridor Sea. The trouble with the Ditmars Horst reactor was
that it lacked any automatic negative feedback system. If a
DH decided to go wild, it went wild. Fortunately that
rarely happened. The safe limits for reactions were quite wide,
(03:13):
wider usually than the reaction limits themselves, so that there
was always a margin of safety, and within the limits,
a nicety of control existed that made nucleonics almost an
esoteric branch of chemistry. Cookbook chemistry practically want deuterium recipe
to one point zero zero eight one three grams purest
hydrogen one adds slowly and with care one point zero
(03:35):
zero eight nine six grams fine grade neutrons. Cook until
well done in a Ditmar's Horst reactor. Yield two point
zero one four seven one gram's rare old deuterium plus
some two million million million ergs of raw energy. Now
you are cooking with gas. All you had to do
was keep the reaction going at a slow enough rate
so that the energy could be bled off, and there
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was nothing to worry about. Usually, but control of the
feeble elizer fields still wasn't perfect, because the fields that
enfeebled the reactions and made them easy to control weren't
yet too well understood. Peter de Hoaque turned into corridor
C and kept on running. There was plenty of airs
still in this corridor, and there was apparently little likelihood
of his needing his backsuit. But on the Moon, nobody
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responds to an emergency call without a vacksuit. He was
troubled about corridors A and B. The explosion must have
been pretty violent to have sealed off two of the
four corridors leading from the living quarters to the reaction labs.
Two corridors went directly to one of the reactors, two
went directly to the second. Two more connected the reactor
labs themselves, putting the labs in the living quarters at
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the corners of an equilateral triangle. Peter had never been
able to figure out why A and B corridors led
to reactor two while C and D led to reactor one.
Logically he thought it should have been the other way around.
Oh well, going down C meant that he'd have to
get to reactor too the long way around. What had
the damage been, he asked himself. Had anyone been hurt
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or killed? He pushed the questions out of his mind.
There was no point in speculating. He'd have the information
soon enough. He took the cut off to the left
at a sixty degree angle to Corridor C, which led
him directly to Corridor E by passing Reactor one. He
noticed as he went by that the operations lamp was out.
Nobody was working with Reactor one. As he pounded on
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down the empty corridor, he suddenly realized that he hadn't
seen anyone else running with him. There were five other
men in the reactor station, and so far he had
seen no one. He knew where Willows was, but where
were Ferguson, Metti, Lanyard and Quillan. He pushed those questions
out of his mind too for the time being. A
head popped out of the door at the far end
(05:40):
of the corridor. Guz Hurry guz de Hoaq didn't bother
to answer Willows. He was short of breath as it was.
He knew besides that no answer was expected. He had
known Willows for years and knew how he thought it
was Willows who had first tagged a Hoke with that
silly nickname Guzzle. Not because Peter was such a heavy drinker,
although he could hold it like a gentleman, but because
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he had thought Guzzle to Hoqu was so uproariously. Funny.
Nobody likes a guzzle as well as d'hoaque, he'd say,
with an idiot grin. As a result, everybody called Peter guzz.
Now the head had vanished back into the control room
of reactor too. De Hoque kept on running, his breath
rasping loudly in the confines of the fishbowl helmet. Running
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four hundred yards isn't the easiest thing in the world,
even if a man is in good physical condition. There
was less weight to contend with, but the mass that
had to be pushed along remained the same. The notion
that running on Luna was an effortless breeze was one
that only earth huggers clung to. He ran into the
control room and stopped panting heavily. What happened? Sam Willow's
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normally handsome face looked drawn. Something went wrong. I don't
know what. I was finishing up with Reactor one when
I heard the explosion. They are both, he gestured toward
the reactor. Both in there, still alive. I think so
one of em. Anyway, take a look. D'hoc went over
to the periscope and put his eyes to the binoculars.
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He could see two figures in heavy, dull gray radiation
proof suits. They were lying flat on the floor, and
neither was moving. To Hoak said as much. The one
on the left was moving his arm just a little,
Willows said, I'll swear he was. Something in the man's
voice made to'hoak turn his head away from the periscope's
eye pieces. Willow's face was gray, and a thin film
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of greasy perspiration reflected the light from the overhead plates.
The man was on the verge of panic. Calm down, Puss.
De' hoak said, gently, where's Quillan and Lanyard. They're in
their rooms, Willows said, in a tight voice. Trapped. The
bulkheads have closed them off in a no air in
the corridor. We'll have to dig em out. I called
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em both on the phone. They're all right, but they're trapped.
Did you call base. Yes, they haven't got a ship.
They sent three moon cats, though they ought to be
here by morning. De hoaque looked up at the chronometer
on the wall. Oh one twelve Greenwich time. Morning meant
any time between eight and noon. The position of the
sun up on the surface had nothing to do with
(08:06):
lunar time, as a matter of fact, there was a
full earth shining at the moment, which meant that it
wouldn't be dawn on the surface for a week yet.
If the cats from base get here by noon, will
be okay, won't wed'hoque asked, Look at the instruments, Willows said.
De'hoqu ran a practiced eye over the console and swallowed.
What were they running? Mercury two o three, Willows said,
(08:29):
half life forty six point five days beta and gamma
emitter converts to thallium two o three stable. What did
they want with a kilogram of the stuff? Special order
shipment to Earth for some reason? Have you checked the
end point? She's building up fast? No, no, I haven't.
He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.
(08:50):
Check it, saidd' hoque. Do any of the controls work?
I don't know. I didn't want to fiddle with them.
You start giving them a rundown. I'm going to get
into a suit and go pull those out of there,
if they're still alive. He opened the locker and took
his radiation proof suit out. He checked it over carefully
and began shucking his back suit. A few minutes delay
(09:10):
in getting to the men in the reactor's ante room
didn't matter much. If they hadn't been killed outright and
were still alive, they would probably live a good deal longer.
The shells of the radiation suits didn't look damaged, and
the instruments indicated very little radiation in the room. Whatever
it was that had exploded had done most of its
damage at the other end of the reactor. Evidently, a
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fisher had been opened to the surface forty feet above
a fissure big enough to let all the air out
of A and B corridors and activate the automatic bulkheads
to seal off the airless section. What troubled him was Willows.
If he hadn't known the man so well, de Hooke
would have verbally blasted him where he stood. His reaction
to trouble had been typical to Hook. Had already seen
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Willows in trouble three times, and each time the reaction
had been the same, near panic. Every time, his first
thought had been to scream for help, rather than to
do anything himself. Almost anyone else would have made one
call and then climbed into a radiation suit to get
Ferguson and Metti out of the ante room. There was
certainly no apparent immediate danger. But all that Willows had
done was yelled for someone to come and do his
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thinking and acting for him. He had called Base, he
had called d' hoque, he had called Quillan and lanyard,
but he hadn't done anything else. Now he had to
be handled with kid gloves. If d' hoaq didn't act calm,
if he didn't go about things just right, Willows might
very likely go over the line into total panic. As
long as he had someone to depend on, he'd be
all right. And to Hoaq didn't want to lose the
(10:34):
only help he had right now. Fermium two fifty six,
said Willows in a tight, flat voice. What de hoqu
asked calmly, fermium two fifty six, Willows repeated, that's what
the stuff is going to start building towards spontaneous fishin'
half life of three hours. He took a deep breath.
The reactor won't be able to contain it. We haven't
(10:56):
got that kind of bleed off control. No, to Hok agreed,
I suggest we stop it. The freezer control isn't functioning,
Willows said, I guess that's what they went in there
to correct I doubt it, to Hoak said carefully. They
wouldn't have needed suits for that. They must have had
something else bothering them. I'd be willing to bet they
went in to pull a sample and something went wrong.
(11:19):
Why what makes you think so if there had been trouble,
they'd have called for someone to stay here at the console.
Both of them wouldn't have gone in if there was
any trouble. Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right, He looked,
visibly relieved. What do you suppose went wrong? Look at
your meters? Four of them aren't registering, Willows looked. I
hadn't noticed. I thought they were just registering low. You're right, though, Yeah,
(11:43):
you're right. The surface bleed off hydrogen loss blue A
valve is all. Yeah, he grinned a little. Must have
been quite a volcano for a second or two to
hook grinned back at him. Yeah, must have give me
a hand with these clamps. Willows began fastening the clamps
on the heavy suit. Do you think Ferguson and Metti
(12:03):
are okay? Guz, he asked. Dehoaque noticed it was the
first time he had used the names of the two men.
Now that there was a chance that they were alive,
at least in his own mind. He was willing to
admit that they were men he knew. Willows didn't want
to think that anyone he knew had done such a
terrible thing as die. It hit too close to home.
The man wasn't thinking. He was willing to grasp at
(12:24):
anything that offered him a chance, dream Straws. The idea
was to keep him busy, keep his mind on trivia,
keep him from thinking about what was going on inside
that reactor. He should have known automatically that it was
building toward fermium two fifty six. It was the most logical, easiest,
and simplest way for a d H reactor to go
off the deep end. A Ditmar's Horst reactor took advantage
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of the fact that any number can be expressed as
a sum of powers of two, and the number of
nucleons in an atomic nucleus was no exception to that
mathematical rule. Building atoms by adding nucleons wasn't as simple
as putting marbles in a bag because of the energy differential,
but the energy derived from the fusion of the elements
lighter than iron fifty six could be compensated for by
(13:07):
using it to pack the nuclei heavier than that. The
trick was to find a chain of reactions that gave
the least necessary energy transfer. The method by which the
reactions were carried out might have driven amid twentieth century
physicist a trifle gaga, but most of the reactions themselves
would have been recognizable. There were several possible reactions which
Ferguson and Metty could have used to produce HG two three,
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but to Hope was fairly sure he knew which one
it was. The five branch double alpha addition scheme was
the one that was easiest to use, and it was
the only one that started the damnable doubling chain reaction,
where the nuclear weights went up exponentially under the influence
of the peculiar conditions within the reactor two four eight, sixteen,
thirty two, sixty four one, twenty eight, two fifty six.
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Hydrogen two and helium four were stable, so were oxygen
sixteen in sulfur thirty two. The reaction encountered a sticky
spot at beryllium eight, which is highly unstable, with a
half life of ten to the minus sixteen seconds. Spontaneously
fishing back into two helium four nuclei past sulfur thirty two.
There was a lot of positron emission as the nuclei
(14:12):
fought to increase the number of neutrons to maintain a
stable balance. Germanium sixty four is not at all stable,
and neither is neodymium one twenty eight, but the instability
can be corrected by positive beta emission. When two nuclei
of the resulting xenon one twenty eight are forced together,
the positron emission begins long before the coalescence is complete,
resulting in fermium two fifty six. But not even a
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Ditmar's Horst reactor can stand the next step, because matter
itself won't stand it, not even in a DH reactor.
The trouble is that a DH reactor tries mathematically. It
was assumed that the resulting nucleus did exist for an
infinitesimal instant of time, literally mathematically infinitesimal, so close to
zero that it would be utterly impossible to measure it.
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Someone had dubbed the hypothetical stuff in sa stantanium five twelve.
Whether instantanium five twelve had any real existence as an
argument for philosophers only. The results, in any case were catastrophic.
The whole conglomeration came apart in a grand splatter of neutrons, protons, negatrons, positrons, electrons, neutrinos,
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a whole slew of Greek lettered meisans, of various charges
and masses, and a fine collection of strange and ultrastrange
particles energy, just oodles and gobs. Peter de Hooqu had
heard about the results. He had no desire to experience
them firsthand. Fortunately, the reaction that led up to them
took time. It could be stopped at any time up
to the FM two fifty six stage. According to the instruments,
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that wouldn't be for another six hours yet, so there
was nothing at all to worry about. Even after that,
it could be stopped, provided one had a way to
get rid of the violently fishening fermium connections. Okay, Willows asked.
His voice came over the earphones inside the ponderous helmet
of the radiation suit. Fine, said to Hoque. He adjusted
the double periscope so that his vision was clear perfect.
(16:06):
He tested the controls, moving his arms and legs to
see if the suit, responded. The suit was so heavy
that without powered joints controlled by servo mechanisms, he would
have been unable to move even under lunar gravity. With
the power on, though it was no harder than walking
under water in a diving suit. All's well, Puss, he said,
I'll keep an eye on you, said Willows. Fine, Well,
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here goes Colossus de Hoque. He began walking toward the
door that led into the corridor which connected the reactor
ante room to the control room. It took time to
drag the two inert figures out of the ante room.
All d' hooque could do was grab them under the
arm pit supply power and drag them out. He went
out the same way he had come in, traversing the
separate chambers in reverse order. First came the decontamination chamber,
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where the radioactive dust that might have settled on the
suits was sluiced off by the detergent sprays. When the
radiation detectors registered low enough to hook, dragged Ferguson into
the outer chamber, then went back and got Metty and
put him through the same process. Then he dragged them
on into the control room, so that Willows could get
them out of the heavy suits. Can you help me,
guzz Willows asked. It was obvious that he didn't want
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to open the suits. He didn't want to see what
might be inside. D'hoaq helped him. They were both alive
but unconscious. Bones had been broken, and Metti appeared to
be suffering from concussion. They were badly damaged, but they'd live.
D'hoc and Willows made two trips down E and C corridors,
carrying the men on a stretcher to get them in bed.
D'hoaque splintered the broken bones as best he could and
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gave each of them a shot of narcodyne. He had
to do the medical work because Quillan, the medic, was
trapped in Corridor A. He called Quillan on the phone
to tell him what had happened. He described the signs
and symptoms of the victims as best he could, and
then did what Quillan told him to do. They ought
to be all right, Quillan said, with that dope in them,
they'll be out cold for the next twelve hours, and
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by that time the boys from base will just leave
them alone and don't move them anymore. Right, I'll call
you back later. Right now, Puss and I are going
to see what's wrong with the control linkages on number two,
right biod'hok and Willows walked back to the control room
of number two reactor in silence. Once inside the control room,
d'haque said, how are those control circuits? Willows was supposed
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to have been checking them while he'd been dragging Ferguson
and Metti out of the ante chamber. Well, I I'm
not sure. I'll show you what I've found so far. Guys,
you ought to take a look at them. I I'd
like you to take a look. See I think, he
gestured toward the console. I think they're all right, except
for the freezer vernie or and the pressure release control.
He doesn't trust his own work. De hooque thought, well,
(18:44):
that's all right, neither do I. Pain's takingly. The two
of them went over the checking circuits. Willows was right.
The freezer and pressure controls were inoperable, Damn, said to' hoque.
Double damn. They're probably both stuck at the firewall. Willows said,
sure where else. I'll have to go in there and
unstick 'em. Help me get back into that two legged
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tank again. He wished he knew more about what Ferguson
and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why
the two men had gone into the ante room in
the first place. He wished a lot of things, but
wishing was a useless pastime at this stage of the game.
If only one of the two men had been in
a condition to talk. He got back into his radiation
proof suit again, took one last look at the instruments
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on the console, and headed for the reactor through the
first radiation trap. Left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn,
through the cold room, through the second radiation trap, through
the decontamination chamber, and through the third radiation trap into
the ante room. Now that Ferguson and Metti were safely
out of the way, he could give his attention to
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the damage that had been done. Had Ferguson and Metti
actually come in to tap off a sample, as he
had suggested to Willows. He looked around at the wreckage
in the ante chamber. Quite obviously, the heavy door of
the sample chamber was wide open, and it certainly appeared
that the wreckage was scattered. From that point, cautiously, he
went over to look at the open sample chamber. It
(20:08):
looked all right, except that the bottom was covered with
a bright metallic dust. He rubbed his finger over it
and looked at the fingertip. A very fine dust, and
yet it hadn't been scattered very much by the explosion.
Heavy very likely osmium. Osmium one eighty seven was stable,
but it wasn't a normally used step toward mercury two
O three. Four successive alpha captures would give polonium two
(20:32):
O three, not mercury. Ditto for an oxygen fusion. It
could be iridium or platinum. Of course, whatever it was,
the instruments in his helmet told him it wasn't hot.
He had a hunch that Ferguson and Metty had been
building mercury two O three from halfnium one seventy nine
by the process of successive fusions with hydrogen three, and
that something had gone wrong with the H three production.
(20:54):
It appeared that the explosion had been a simple chemical
blast caused by the air oxidation of H two, but
the bleeder vent at the other end of the reactor
had apparently kicked at the same time. An enormous amount
of unused energy had been released, blowing the entire emergency
bleeder system out. Something didn't seem right, something stuck in
his craw and he couldn't figure out what it was.
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He opened up the conduit boxes that led through the
antechamber from the control console to the reactor beyond the firewall.
Everything looked fine. That meant that whatever it was that
had fouled up the controls was on the other side
of the firewall. How does it look? Willow's voice came
worriedly over the earphones. Have I already said dam? De
Hooque asked you have, Willows said, with forced lightness. You
(21:38):
even said double dam factorial dam. Then said d' hooque,
what's the matter? Apparently the foul up is on the
other side of the firewall. Are you going in? I'll
have to, all right, watch yourself, I will. He went
over to the periscope that surveyed the part of the
reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked normal enough. He carefully
(22:02):
checked the pressure gage normal. Check the spectro for me,
will you, he asked, make sure that's just the normal
helium atmosphere in there? Sure a pause, nothing but helium, guz,
What were you expecting? I don't think i'd care to
walk into a hydrogen atmosphere at three hundred centigrade. Neither
would I. But how could there be hydrogen in there?
(22:24):
There shouldn't be. But there's something screwy going on here,
and I can't put my finger on it. Well, whatever
it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room. Okay,
stand by, I'm going in. He walked over to the
firewall door. On the other side of it was a
small chamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air
would be swept out before he opened the inner door
to go into the inner chamber itself. There was no
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need for an air lock, since small amounts of impurities
in the H E four didn't bother anything. It was
just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall
door that he realized his mistake. But it was too late.
The door jerked outward and a hot wind and picked
him up and slammed him against the far wall. There
was a moment of pain, then nothing. There was something
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familiar about the man who was turning the wheel, but
to Hoak couldn't place it. The man was wearing a
black hood as befitted a torturer and executioner. Idiot, said
the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a
little more pressure, explain the following. If a half plus
a half is equal to a hole, why is half
meum plus half meum not equal to holmium? Stretched as
(23:29):
he was on the rack, de hoqu could not think
straight because of the excruciating pain. Because a half is
eight point two eight percent heavier than a hole, said
d' hoqu, You are an idiot. None the less, said
the torturer. He gave the wheel another twistd' hook wanted
to scream, but he couldn't. Try again, said the torturer.
What is a half plus four plus four plus four
(23:52):
plus four plus stop, screamed d' hooque. Stop, stop at
the osmium. Ah. But it didn't stop at the osmium,
said the hooded man. It went on and on and
on plus four plus four plus four plus four plus four,
until there were so many plus fours in there that
the place looked like an old fashioned golf course. My
(24:12):
leg's hurt, said d' hoque. The man was no longer
wearing a hood, but de hook couldn't tell if it
was Willows or himself, We will all go together when
we go, said the man. D' Hooq. Turned his head
away and looked at the ceiling, and he realized that
it was the ceiling of the ante chamber. My legs hurt,
he repeated, and he could hear the horse whisper inside
(24:33):
the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on
his back. He had been jarred around quite a bit
in the suit. He wondered if he could sit up.
He managed to get both arms behind him and push
himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The
servos responded, he hurt all over, but a little experiment
told him that he was only bruised, nothing was broken.
(24:54):
He hadn't been hit as heart as Ferguson and Metti
had been. Willows, he said, Willows. There was no answer
from the earphones. He looked at the chronometer dial inside
his helmet. Oh two forty nine. He had been unconscious
less than ten minutes. The same glance brought his eyes
to two other dials. The internal radiation of the suit
(25:14):
was a little high, but nothing to worry about. But
the dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without
the protection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through
those ten minutes. Where was Willow's And then he knew,
and he pushed any thought of further help from that
quarter out of his mind. What had to be done
would have to be done by Peter de Hoaque alone.
He climbed to his feet. His head hurt, and he
(25:36):
swayed with nausea and pain. Only the massive weight of
the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and
he blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it.
He found he was holding his breath, and he let
it out. The trouble had been so simple, and yet
he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes, he had, He must
have subconsciously, Otherwise how would he have guessed that the
stuff in the sampling chamber was osmium one eighty seven.
(26:00):
Gugison and Metti had been trying to make mercury two
O three by adding eight successive tritium nuclei to halfnium
one seventy nine, progressing through tantalum one eighty two, tungsten
one eighty five, rhenium one eighty eight, osmium one ninety one,
iridium one ninety four, platinum one ninety seven and gold
two hundred, all of which were unstable, but the hydrogen
(26:21):
three reaction had gone wrong. The doubling had set in,
producing helium four. Successive additions of the alpha particles to
halfnium one seventy nine had produced first tungsten one eighty
three and then osmium one eighty seven, both of which
were stable. Ferguson had Metti, seeing that something was wrong,
drew off a sample and then reset the reaction to
produce the HG two O three they wanted. Then they
(26:43):
had come down to pick up the sample. They hadn't
realized that the helium production had gone wild. Much more
helium than necessary was being produced, and the bleeder valve
had failed. When they opened the sample chamber, they got
a blast of high pressure helium right in the face.
The shock of that sudden release had jarred the whole
atmosphere inside the reaction chamber, and the bleeder valve had
(27:04):
let go, But the violence of the pressure release had
caused a fault to the surface to open up and
had closed the valve again jammed it. Probably there had
been enough pressure left in there to blow to hook
up against the nearest wall. When he opened the door.
Since the pressure indicator system was connected to the release system,
when one had failed, the other had failed. That's why
the pressure gage had indicated normal, And of course it
(27:26):
had been the pressure differential that had caused the controls
to stick. Well, they ought to be all right now.
Then he decided he'd better take a look. The firewall
door was still open. He walked over to it and
stepped into the smaller chamber that led to the inner
reactor room. The inside door, much weaker than the outer
firewall door, had been blown off its hinges. He stepped
(27:46):
past it and went on in. What he saw made
him jerk his glance away from the periscope in his
helmet and check his radiation detectors again, not much change.
Relief swept over him as he looked back at the
reactor itself. Formerly dead black walls were glowing a dull red.
It was pure thermal heat. But it shouldn't be doing that.
Moving quickly, he went over to the place where the
(28:08):
control cables came in through the firewall. It took him
several minutes to assure himself that they would function from
the control room. Now there was nothing more to do
but get out of here and get that reaction damped.
He went out again, closing the firewall door behind him
and dogging it tight. There would be no more helium production. Now.
He went through the radiation trap to the decontamination chamber
(28:29):
to wash off whatever it was he had picked up.
The decontamination room was a mess. De Hoaque stared at
the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushed
out of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well.
He could still scrub himself off, except that the scrubbers
weren't working. He swore under his breath and twisted the
valve that was supposed to dispense detergent. It did, thank Heaven.
(28:53):
He doused himself good with it and then got under
the flowing water. The radiation level remained exactly where it was.
He walked over and pulled one of the brushes off
the defunct scrubber and sudst it up. It wasn't until
he started to use it that he got a good
look at his arms. He hadn't paid any attention before.
He walked over to the mirror to get a good look.
You look magnificent, he told his reflection. Acidly. The radiation
(29:18):
proof armor looked as though it had been chrome plated.
But to Hop knew better than that. He knew exactly
what had happened. He was nicely plaited all over with
a film of mercury which had amalgamated itself with the
metallic surface of the suit. He was thoroughly wet with
the stuff, and no amount of water and detergent would
take it off. There was something wrong with Number two reactor,
all right. It had leaked out some of the mercury
(29:39):
two O three that Ferguson and Metty had been making.
He thought a minute, It hadn't been leaking out just
before he opened the door in the firewall, because Willows
would certainly have noticed the bright mercury line when he
checked with the spectroscope. The stuff must have been released
when the pressure dropped. He walked back to the ante
room and looked at the sampling chamber. There were a
few drop of mercury around the inlet. Thus far, the
(30:02):
three pressure explosions had wrecked about everything that was wreckable,
he thought, No, not quite. There was still the chance
that the whole station would go if he didn't get
back into the control room and stop that powers of
two chain. The detonation of instantanium five twelve would finish
the job by doing what high pressure helium could never do.
He glanced at the thermometer. The temperature behind the firewall
(30:24):
had risen to two forty centigrade. It wasn't supposed to
be above two hundred. It wasn't too serious, really, because
a little heat like that wouldn't bother a Ditmar's Horst reactor,
but it indicated that things back there weren't working properly.
He turned away and walked back to the decontamination chamber.
There must be some way he could get the mercury
off the suit, because he couldn't take the suit off
(30:45):
until the mercury was gone. First, he tried scrubbing. That
was what showed him how upset he really was. He
had actually scrubbed the armor on his left arm free
of mercury when he realized what he was doing and
threw the brush down in disgust. It's your head to hoak,
he told himself. What good would it do to scrub
the stuff off of the few places he could reach
(31:06):
in the bulky armor. He was worse than muscle bound.
He couldn't touch any part of his back. He couldn't
bend far enough to touch his legs, his shoulders were inaccessible.
Even scrubbing was worse than useless. It was time wasting.
He picked up the brush again and began scrubbing at
the other arm. It gave him something to do while
he thought. While he was thinking, he wasn't wasting time.
(31:28):
What would dissolve mercury nitric acid? Good old h n
O three Fine, except that the hot lab was at
the other end of the reactor where the fissure had
let all the air out. The bulkheads had dropped, and
he couldn't get in, and naturally the nitric acid would
be in the lab. For the first time, he found
himself hating Willow's guts. If he were around, he could
(31:49):
get some acid from the cold lab, or even from
the other hot lab at number one. If Willows he
stood up and dropped the brush, dolt, boob, moron, idiot,
not himself. There was no reason on Earth or Luna
why he couldn't walk over to number one hot lab
and get the stuff himself. The habit of never leaving
the lab without thorough decontamination was so thoroughly ingrained in
(32:12):
him that he had simply never thought about it until
that moment. But what did a little contamination with radioactive
mercury mean at a time like this? He could take
F corridor to number one, use the decontamination chamber in
the acid from the lab, shuck off his armor there,
and come back through E corridor. F could be cleaned
up later. So simple. He went through the light trap
(32:32):
to the next chamber and turned the handle on the
sliding door. The door wouldn't budge. It had been warped
by the force of the helium blast, and it was
stuck in its grooves. Well, there were tools, the thing
could be unstuck. Peter de Hoque was a determined man,
a strong man, and a smart man. But the door
was more determined and stronger than he was, and his
(32:53):
intelligence didn't give him much of an edge. Right then,
after an hour's hard work, he managed to get the
door open about eighteen inches. Then it froze fast and
refused to move again. All the power and leverage he
could bring to bear was useless. The door had opened
all it was going to open. Beyond it, he could
see the next radiation trap and freedom eighteen inches would
(33:13):
have been plenty of space for him to get through
if he had not been wearing the radiation proof suit,
but he didn't dare take that suit off. By the
time he got out of the suit, the intensely radioactive
mercury on its surface would have made his death only
a matter of time, and not much time at that.
He told himself that if it were simply a matter
of running to the control room to shut off the
d H reactor, he'd do it. That could have been
(33:35):
done before he lost consciousness. But it wasn't that easy.
Damping the reaction took time and control. The stuff had
to be eased back slowly. Shutting off the Ditmar's horse
would simply blow a hole in the crust of Luna
and kill everyone if he did it. Now, there were
four or five men out there who would die if
he pulled anything foolish like that. The explosion wouldn't be
(33:55):
as powerful as the instantanium five twelve reaction would be,
but it would be none the less deadly. For all that,
there had to be either a way to scrape the
mercury off the suit or a way to open the
door another six inches or he added suddenly away to
get safely out of the suit. At the end of
another twenty minutes, he had still thought of nothing. He
wandered around the decontamination room, looking at everything, hoping he
(34:18):
might see something that would give him a clue. He didn't.
He went into the antechamber of the reactor and glared
at the door in the firewall. The instruments said that
things were getting pretty fierce on the other side of
that wall, temperature two ninety five and still rising pressure.
He carefully cracked the inlet of the sampling chamber and
got a soft hiss. The helium was expanding from the heat.
(34:41):
That was all part of the trouble with the reactor,
he thought, was the high percentage of oxygen and nitrogen
that had mixed in during the ten minutes or so
that the door was open. All hell was fixing to
bust loosen there, and he, Peter de Hoaque, was right
next to it. He walked back into the decontamination chamber.
What would dissolve mercury? Mercury would dissolve gold? Would gold
(35:02):
dissolve mercury? Very funny? He was like a turtle to Hoake,
thought perfectly safe as long as he was in his shell,
but take him out of it and he would die.
Hell of a way to spend the night, he thought
a knight in shining armor. That struck him as funny.
He began to laugh and laugh. He almost laughed himself
sick before he realized that it was fear and despair
(35:24):
that were driving him into hysteria, not a sense of humor.
He forced himself to calmness. He must be calm, he
must think, Yes, how do you go about getting rid
of a radioactive metal that is in effect welded to
the outside of your suit. The trouble was he was
a nucleonics engineer, not a chemist. He remembered quite a
bit of his chemistry, of course, but not as much
(35:45):
as he would have liked. Could the stuff be neutralized? Sure,
he told himself, very simple. All he had to do
was go climb into the reactor and let the reactor
do the job. Mercury two O three plus an alpha
particle gives nice stable lad two O seven. Just go
climb right into the Ditmar's horse and let the helium
four do the job. But the thoughts stuck in his mind.
(36:07):
He kept telling himself not to panic as Willows had done,
and several minutes later, chuckling to himself in a half
demented fashion, he opened the firewall door and went in
to let the helium do the job. It was nearly
eight in the morning Greenwich time when the three surface
vehicles with their wide caterpillar treads, lumbered to a halt
near the kiosk that marked the entrance to the underground
(36:27):
site of the laboratories. O K said one of the
men in the first machine, holding a microphone to his lips.
Let's go in. If what Willows said is true, the
whole place may blow any minute now, but I'm not
asking for volunteers. Nobody will be any safer up here
than they will down there, and we have to do
a job. Besides, Willows wasn't completely rational. Nobody would put
(36:49):
on a vacksuit and run away like that if he
was in his right mind, So we can discount a
lot of what he said when we picked him up
on the road. The five of us in this car
are going straight to Number one reactor to see what
can be done to stop whatever is going on. The
rest of you start trying to see if you can
get those trapped men out of A and B corridors.
All right, let's move in. Less than five minutes later,
(37:10):
five men went into the control room of number one reactor.
They found Peter de Hoak sound asleep in the control chair,
and the instruments showed that the Ditmar's Horse reactor was inactive.
One of the men shook to Hoak gently, awakening him
in the middle of a snore. What he said, groggily,
we're here, guzz Everything's okay, Sure, everything's okay. Nothing to it.
(37:33):
All I did was wait until the temperature got above
three fifty seven centigrade above the boiling point of mercury.
Then I went in and let the hot helium boil
the stuff off me nothing to it. Near boiled myself alive,
but it did the trick. What asked the man in
a puzzled voice, are you talking about? I am a
knight in dull armor, said Peter de Hoaq, dozing off again.
(37:55):
Then he roused himself a little and said, without opening
his eyes, AI, oh, quick, silver away. And he was
sound asleep again. And when he saw what he had
done with all his might and main, he jumped back
in that bramble bush and scratched them in again, End
of the Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett
The Bramble Bush by Randal Garrett. There was a man
in our town, and he was wondrous. Wise, he jumped
into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
Old nursery rhyme Peter de Hoque was dreaming that the
moon had blown up. When he awakened, the room was
dark except for the glowing night light near the door,
(00:22):
and he sat up, trying to separate the dream from reality.
He focused his eyes on the glow plate. What had
wakened him? Something had, he was sure, but there didn't
seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Now, the
explosion in his dream it seemed extraordinarily realistic. He could
still remember vividly the vibration and the crump of the noise,
(00:42):
but there was no sign of what might have caused
the dream sequence. Maybe something fell, he thought. He swung
his legs off his bed and padded barefoot over to
the light switch. He was so used to walking under
the light lunar gravity that he was no longer conscious
of it. He pressed the switch and the room was
suddenly flooded with light. He looked around. Everything was in place.
(01:03):
Apparently there was nothing on the floor that shouldn't be there.
The books were all in their places in the bookshelf.
The stuff on his desk seemed undisturbed. The only thing
that wasn't as it should be was the picture on
the wall. It was a reproduction of a painting by
Peter de Hoque, which he had always liked, aside from
the fact that he had been named after the seventeenth
century Dutch artist. The picture was slightly askew on the wall.
(01:26):
He was sleepily trying to figure out the significance of that.
When the phone sounded. He walked over and picked it up. Yeah, Guz,
guzz get over here quick. Sam Willow's voice came excitedly
from the instrument. What's the matter, Puss, he asked, blearily.
Number two just blue. We need help, guzz fast. I'm
(01:46):
on my way, to Hoak said, Take C corridor, Willows warned,
A and B caved in and the bulkheads have dropped.
Make it snappy. I'm gone already, to Hoak said, dropping
the phone back into placebbed his vacuum suit from its
hangar and got into it, as though his own room
had already sprung an air leak. Number two is blown.
He thought that would be the one that Ferguson and
(02:09):
Metti were working on. What had they been cooking, he
couldn't remember right off the bat. Something touchy, he thought,
something pretty hot, But that wouldn't cause an atomic reactor
to blow it. Obviously hadn't been a nuclear blow up
of any proportions, or he wouldn't be here now, zipping
up the front of his vacksuit. Still, it had been
powerful enough to shake the lunar crust a little, or
he wouldn't have been wakened by the blast. These new
(02:31):
reactors could get out a lot more power, and they
could do a lot more than the old ones could,
but they weren't as safe as the old heavy metal
reactors by a long shot. None had blown up yet quite,
but there was still the chance. That's why they were
built on Luna instead of on Earth. Considering what they
could do to Hooke often felt that it would be
safer if they were built out on some nice, safe asteroid,
(02:51):
preferably one in the Jovian Trojan sector. He clamped his
fish bowl lawn tight, opened the door, and sprinted toward
Corridor Sea. The trouble with the Ditmars Horst reactor was
that it lacked any automatic negative feedback system. If a
DH decided to go wild, it went wild. Fortunately that
rarely happened. The safe limits for reactions were quite wide,
(03:13):
wider usually than the reaction limits themselves, so that there
was always a margin of safety, and within the limits,
a nicety of control existed that made nucleonics almost an
esoteric branch of chemistry. Cookbook chemistry practically want deuterium recipe
to one point zero zero eight one three grams purest
hydrogen one adds slowly and with care one point zero
(03:35):
zero eight nine six grams fine grade neutrons. Cook until
well done in a Ditmar's Horst reactor. Yield two point
zero one four seven one gram's rare old deuterium plus
some two million million million ergs of raw energy. Now
you are cooking with gas. All you had to do
was keep the reaction going at a slow enough rate
so that the energy could be bled off, and there
(03:56):
was nothing to worry about. Usually, but control of the
feeble elizer fields still wasn't perfect, because the fields that
enfeebled the reactions and made them easy to control weren't
yet too well understood. Peter de Hoaque turned into corridor
C and kept on running. There was plenty of airs
still in this corridor, and there was apparently little likelihood
of his needing his backsuit. But on the Moon, nobody
(04:17):
responds to an emergency call without a vacksuit. He was
troubled about corridors A and B. The explosion must have
been pretty violent to have sealed off two of the
four corridors leading from the living quarters to the reaction labs.
Two corridors went directly to one of the reactors, two
went directly to the second. Two more connected the reactor
labs themselves, putting the labs in the living quarters at
(04:38):
the corners of an equilateral triangle. Peter had never been
able to figure out why A and B corridors led
to reactor two while C and D led to reactor one.
Logically he thought it should have been the other way around.
Oh well, going down C meant that he'd have to
get to reactor too the long way around. What had
the damage been, he asked himself. Had anyone been hurt
(04:58):
or killed? He pushed the questions out of his mind.
There was no point in speculating. He'd have the information
soon enough. He took the cut off to the left
at a sixty degree angle to Corridor C, which led
him directly to Corridor E by passing Reactor one. He
noticed as he went by that the operations lamp was out.
Nobody was working with Reactor one. As he pounded on
(05:20):
down the empty corridor, he suddenly realized that he hadn't
seen anyone else running with him. There were five other
men in the reactor station, and so far he had
seen no one. He knew where Willows was, but where
were Ferguson, Metti, Lanyard and Quillan. He pushed those questions
out of his mind too for the time being. A
head popped out of the door at the far end
(05:40):
of the corridor. Guz Hurry guz de Hoaq didn't bother
to answer Willows. He was short of breath as it was.
He knew besides that no answer was expected. He had
known Willows for years and knew how he thought it
was Willows who had first tagged a Hoke with that
silly nickname Guzzle. Not because Peter was such a heavy drinker,
although he could hold it like a gentleman, but because
(06:02):
he had thought Guzzle to Hoqu was so uproariously. Funny.
Nobody likes a guzzle as well as d'hoaque, he'd say,
with an idiot grin. As a result, everybody called Peter guzz.
Now the head had vanished back into the control room
of reactor too. De Hoque kept on running, his breath
rasping loudly in the confines of the fishbowl helmet. Running
(06:22):
four hundred yards isn't the easiest thing in the world,
even if a man is in good physical condition. There
was less weight to contend with, but the mass that
had to be pushed along remained the same. The notion
that running on Luna was an effortless breeze was one
that only earth huggers clung to. He ran into the
control room and stopped panting heavily. What happened? Sam Willow's
(06:43):
normally handsome face looked drawn. Something went wrong. I don't
know what. I was finishing up with Reactor one when
I heard the explosion. They are both, he gestured toward
the reactor. Both in there, still alive. I think so
one of em. Anyway, take a look. D'hoc went over
to the periscope and put his eyes to the binoculars.
(07:03):
He could see two figures in heavy, dull gray radiation
proof suits. They were lying flat on the floor, and
neither was moving. To Hoak said as much. The one
on the left was moving his arm just a little,
Willows said, I'll swear he was. Something in the man's
voice made to'hoak turn his head away from the periscope's
eye pieces. Willow's face was gray, and a thin film
(07:25):
of greasy perspiration reflected the light from the overhead plates.
The man was on the verge of panic. Calm down, Puss.
De' hoak said, gently, where's Quillan and Lanyard. They're in
their rooms, Willows said, in a tight voice. Trapped. The
bulkheads have closed them off in a no air in
the corridor. We'll have to dig em out. I called
(07:45):
em both on the phone. They're all right, but they're trapped.
Did you call base. Yes, they haven't got a ship.
They sent three moon cats, though they ought to be
here by morning. De hoaque looked up at the chronometer
on the wall. Oh one twelve Greenwich time. Morning meant
any time between eight and noon. The position of the
sun up on the surface had nothing to do with
(08:06):
lunar time, as a matter of fact, there was a
full earth shining at the moment, which meant that it
wouldn't be dawn on the surface for a week yet.
If the cats from base get here by noon, will
be okay, won't wed'hoque asked, Look at the instruments, Willows said.
De'hoqu ran a practiced eye over the console and swallowed.
What were they running? Mercury two o three, Willows said,
(08:29):
half life forty six point five days beta and gamma
emitter converts to thallium two o three stable. What did
they want with a kilogram of the stuff? Special order
shipment to Earth for some reason? Have you checked the
end point? She's building up fast? No, no, I haven't.
He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.
(08:50):
Check it, saidd' hoque. Do any of the controls work?
I don't know. I didn't want to fiddle with them.
You start giving them a rundown. I'm going to get
into a suit and go pull those out of there,
if they're still alive. He opened the locker and took
his radiation proof suit out. He checked it over carefully
and began shucking his back suit. A few minutes delay
(09:10):
in getting to the men in the reactor's ante room
didn't matter much. If they hadn't been killed outright and
were still alive, they would probably live a good deal longer.
The shells of the radiation suits didn't look damaged, and
the instruments indicated very little radiation in the room. Whatever
it was that had exploded had done most of its
damage at the other end of the reactor. Evidently, a
(09:31):
fisher had been opened to the surface forty feet above
a fissure big enough to let all the air out
of A and B corridors and activate the automatic bulkheads
to seal off the airless section. What troubled him was Willows.
If he hadn't known the man so well, de Hooke
would have verbally blasted him where he stood. His reaction
to trouble had been typical to Hook. Had already seen
(09:52):
Willows in trouble three times, and each time the reaction
had been the same, near panic. Every time, his first
thought had been to scream for help, rather than to
do anything himself. Almost anyone else would have made one
call and then climbed into a radiation suit to get
Ferguson and Metti out of the ante room. There was
certainly no apparent immediate danger. But all that Willows had
done was yelled for someone to come and do his
(10:13):
thinking and acting for him. He had called Base, he
had called d' hoque, he had called Quillan and lanyard,
but he hadn't done anything else. Now he had to
be handled with kid gloves. If d' hoaq didn't act calm,
if he didn't go about things just right, Willows might
very likely go over the line into total panic. As
long as he had someone to depend on, he'd be
all right. And to Hoaq didn't want to lose the
(10:34):
only help he had right now. Fermium two fifty six,
said Willows in a tight, flat voice. What de hoqu
asked calmly, fermium two fifty six, Willows repeated, that's what
the stuff is going to start building towards spontaneous fishin'
half life of three hours. He took a deep breath.
The reactor won't be able to contain it. We haven't
(10:56):
got that kind of bleed off control. No, to Hok agreed,
I suggest we stop it. The freezer control isn't functioning,
Willows said, I guess that's what they went in there
to correct I doubt it, to Hoak said carefully. They
wouldn't have needed suits for that. They must have had
something else bothering them. I'd be willing to bet they
went in to pull a sample and something went wrong.
(11:19):
Why what makes you think so if there had been trouble,
they'd have called for someone to stay here at the console.
Both of them wouldn't have gone in if there was
any trouble. Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right, He looked,
visibly relieved. What do you suppose went wrong? Look at
your meters? Four of them aren't registering, Willows looked. I
hadn't noticed. I thought they were just registering low. You're right, though, Yeah,
(11:43):
you're right. The surface bleed off hydrogen loss blue A
valve is all. Yeah, he grinned a little. Must have
been quite a volcano for a second or two to
hook grinned back at him. Yeah, must have give me
a hand with these clamps. Willows began fastening the clamps
on the heavy suit. Do you think Ferguson and Metti
(12:03):
are okay? Guz, he asked. Dehoaque noticed it was the
first time he had used the names of the two men.
Now that there was a chance that they were alive,
at least in his own mind. He was willing to
admit that they were men he knew. Willows didn't want
to think that anyone he knew had done such a
terrible thing as die. It hit too close to home.
The man wasn't thinking. He was willing to grasp at
(12:24):
anything that offered him a chance, dream Straws. The idea
was to keep him busy, keep his mind on trivia,
keep him from thinking about what was going on inside
that reactor. He should have known automatically that it was
building toward fermium two fifty six. It was the most logical, easiest,
and simplest way for a d H reactor to go
off the deep end. A Ditmar's Horst reactor took advantage
(12:46):
of the fact that any number can be expressed as
a sum of powers of two, and the number of
nucleons in an atomic nucleus was no exception to that
mathematical rule. Building atoms by adding nucleons wasn't as simple
as putting marbles in a bag because of the energy differential,
but the energy derived from the fusion of the elements
lighter than iron fifty six could be compensated for by
(13:07):
using it to pack the nuclei heavier than that. The
trick was to find a chain of reactions that gave
the least necessary energy transfer. The method by which the
reactions were carried out might have driven amid twentieth century
physicist a trifle gaga, but most of the reactions themselves
would have been recognizable. There were several possible reactions which
Ferguson and Metty could have used to produce HG two three,
(13:29):
but to Hope was fairly sure he knew which one
it was. The five branch double alpha addition scheme was
the one that was easiest to use, and it was
the only one that started the damnable doubling chain reaction,
where the nuclear weights went up exponentially under the influence
of the peculiar conditions within the reactor two four eight, sixteen,
thirty two, sixty four one, twenty eight, two fifty six.
(13:51):
Hydrogen two and helium four were stable, so were oxygen
sixteen in sulfur thirty two. The reaction encountered a sticky
spot at beryllium eight, which is highly unstable, with a
half life of ten to the minus sixteen seconds. Spontaneously
fishing back into two helium four nuclei past sulfur thirty two.
There was a lot of positron emission as the nuclei
(14:12):
fought to increase the number of neutrons to maintain a
stable balance. Germanium sixty four is not at all stable,
and neither is neodymium one twenty eight, but the instability
can be corrected by positive beta emission. When two nuclei
of the resulting xenon one twenty eight are forced together,
the positron emission begins long before the coalescence is complete,
resulting in fermium two fifty six. But not even a
(14:35):
Ditmar's Horst reactor can stand the next step, because matter
itself won't stand it, not even in a DH reactor.
The trouble is that a DH reactor tries mathematically. It
was assumed that the resulting nucleus did exist for an
infinitesimal instant of time, literally mathematically infinitesimal, so close to
zero that it would be utterly impossible to measure it.
(14:57):
Someone had dubbed the hypothetical stuff in sa stantanium five twelve.
Whether instantanium five twelve had any real existence as an
argument for philosophers only. The results, in any case were catastrophic.
The whole conglomeration came apart in a grand splatter of neutrons, protons, negatrons, positrons, electrons, neutrinos,
(15:19):
a whole slew of Greek lettered meisans, of various charges
and masses, and a fine collection of strange and ultrastrange
particles energy, just oodles and gobs. Peter de Hooqu had
heard about the results. He had no desire to experience
them firsthand. Fortunately, the reaction that led up to them
took time. It could be stopped at any time up
to the FM two fifty six stage. According to the instruments,
(15:42):
that wouldn't be for another six hours yet, so there
was nothing at all to worry about. Even after that,
it could be stopped, provided one had a way to
get rid of the violently fishening fermium connections. Okay, Willows asked.
His voice came over the earphones inside the ponderous helmet
of the radiation suit. Fine, said to Hoque. He adjusted
the double periscope so that his vision was clear perfect.
(16:06):
He tested the controls, moving his arms and legs to
see if the suit, responded. The suit was so heavy
that without powered joints controlled by servo mechanisms, he would
have been unable to move even under lunar gravity. With
the power on, though it was no harder than walking
under water in a diving suit. All's well, Puss, he said,
I'll keep an eye on you, said Willows. Fine, Well,
(16:28):
here goes Colossus de Hoque. He began walking toward the
door that led into the corridor which connected the reactor
ante room to the control room. It took time to
drag the two inert figures out of the ante room.
All d' hooque could do was grab them under the
arm pit supply power and drag them out. He went
out the same way he had come in, traversing the
separate chambers in reverse order. First came the decontamination chamber,
(16:51):
where the radioactive dust that might have settled on the
suits was sluiced off by the detergent sprays. When the
radiation detectors registered low enough to hook, dragged Ferguson into
the outer chamber, then went back and got Metty and
put him through the same process. Then he dragged them
on into the control room, so that Willows could get
them out of the heavy suits. Can you help me,
guzz Willows asked. It was obvious that he didn't want
(17:14):
to open the suits. He didn't want to see what
might be inside. D'hoaq helped him. They were both alive
but unconscious. Bones had been broken, and Metti appeared to
be suffering from concussion. They were badly damaged, but they'd live.
D'hoc and Willows made two trips down E and C corridors,
carrying the men on a stretcher to get them in bed.
D'hoaque splintered the broken bones as best he could and
(17:37):
gave each of them a shot of narcodyne. He had
to do the medical work because Quillan, the medic, was
trapped in Corridor A. He called Quillan on the phone
to tell him what had happened. He described the signs
and symptoms of the victims as best he could, and
then did what Quillan told him to do. They ought
to be all right, Quillan said, with that dope in them,
they'll be out cold for the next twelve hours, and
(17:58):
by that time the boys from base will just leave
them alone and don't move them anymore. Right, I'll call
you back later. Right now, Puss and I are going
to see what's wrong with the control linkages on number two,
right biod'hok and Willows walked back to the control room
of number two reactor in silence. Once inside the control room,
d'haque said, how are those control circuits? Willows was supposed
(18:21):
to have been checking them while he'd been dragging Ferguson
and Metti out of the ante chamber. Well, I I'm
not sure. I'll show you what I've found so far. Guys,
you ought to take a look at them. I I'd
like you to take a look. See I think, he
gestured toward the console. I think they're all right, except
for the freezer vernie or and the pressure release control.
He doesn't trust his own work. De hooque thought, well,
(18:44):
that's all right, neither do I. Pain's takingly. The two
of them went over the checking circuits. Willows was right.
The freezer and pressure controls were inoperable, Damn, said to' hoque.
Double damn. They're probably both stuck at the firewall. Willows said,
sure where else. I'll have to go in there and
unstick 'em. Help me get back into that two legged
(19:06):
tank again. He wished he knew more about what Ferguson
and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why
the two men had gone into the ante room in
the first place. He wished a lot of things, but
wishing was a useless pastime at this stage of the game.
If only one of the two men had been in
a condition to talk. He got back into his radiation
proof suit again, took one last look at the instruments
(19:27):
on the console, and headed for the reactor through the
first radiation trap. Left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn,
through the cold room, through the second radiation trap, through
the decontamination chamber, and through the third radiation trap into
the ante room. Now that Ferguson and Metti were safely
out of the way, he could give his attention to
(19:48):
the damage that had been done. Had Ferguson and Metti
actually come in to tap off a sample, as he
had suggested to Willows. He looked around at the wreckage
in the ante chamber. Quite obviously, the heavy door of
the sample chamber was wide open, and it certainly appeared
that the wreckage was scattered. From that point, cautiously, he
went over to look at the open sample chamber. It
(20:08):
looked all right, except that the bottom was covered with
a bright metallic dust. He rubbed his finger over it
and looked at the fingertip. A very fine dust, and
yet it hadn't been scattered very much by the explosion.
Heavy very likely osmium. Osmium one eighty seven was stable,
but it wasn't a normally used step toward mercury two
O three. Four successive alpha captures would give polonium two
(20:32):
O three, not mercury. Ditto for an oxygen fusion. It
could be iridium or platinum. Of course, whatever it was,
the instruments in his helmet told him it wasn't hot.
He had a hunch that Ferguson and Metty had been
building mercury two O three from halfnium one seventy nine
by the process of successive fusions with hydrogen three, and
that something had gone wrong with the H three production.
(20:54):
It appeared that the explosion had been a simple chemical
blast caused by the air oxidation of H two, but
the bleeder vent at the other end of the reactor
had apparently kicked at the same time. An enormous amount
of unused energy had been released, blowing the entire emergency
bleeder system out. Something didn't seem right, something stuck in
his craw and he couldn't figure out what it was.
(21:15):
He opened up the conduit boxes that led through the
antechamber from the control console to the reactor beyond the firewall.
Everything looked fine. That meant that whatever it was that
had fouled up the controls was on the other side
of the firewall. How does it look? Willow's voice came
worriedly over the earphones. Have I already said dam? De
Hooque asked you have, Willows said, with forced lightness. You
(21:38):
even said double dam factorial dam. Then said d' hooque,
what's the matter? Apparently the foul up is on the
other side of the firewall. Are you going in? I'll
have to, all right, watch yourself, I will. He went
over to the periscope that surveyed the part of the
reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked normal enough. He carefully
(22:02):
checked the pressure gage normal. Check the spectro for me,
will you, he asked, make sure that's just the normal
helium atmosphere in there? Sure a pause, nothing but helium, guz,
What were you expecting? I don't think i'd care to
walk into a hydrogen atmosphere at three hundred centigrade. Neither
would I. But how could there be hydrogen in there?
(22:24):
There shouldn't be. But there's something screwy going on here,
and I can't put my finger on it. Well, whatever
it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room. Okay,
stand by, I'm going in. He walked over to the
firewall door. On the other side of it was a
small chamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air
would be swept out before he opened the inner door
to go into the inner chamber itself. There was no
(22:46):
need for an air lock, since small amounts of impurities
in the H E four didn't bother anything. It was
just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall
door that he realized his mistake. But it was too late.
The door jerked outward and a hot wind and picked
him up and slammed him against the far wall. There
was a moment of pain, then nothing. There was something
(23:07):
familiar about the man who was turning the wheel, but
to Hoak couldn't place it. The man was wearing a
black hood as befitted a torturer and executioner. Idiot, said
the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a
little more pressure, explain the following. If a half plus
a half is equal to a hole, why is half
meum plus half meum not equal to holmium? Stretched as
(23:29):
he was on the rack, de hoqu could not think
straight because of the excruciating pain. Because a half is
eight point two eight percent heavier than a hole, said
d' hoqu, You are an idiot. None the less, said
the torturer. He gave the wheel another twistd' hook wanted
to scream, but he couldn't. Try again, said the torturer.
What is a half plus four plus four plus four
(23:52):
plus four plus stop, screamed d' hooque. Stop, stop at
the osmium. Ah. But it didn't stop at the osmium,
said the hooded man. It went on and on and
on plus four plus four plus four plus four plus four,
until there were so many plus fours in there that
the place looked like an old fashioned golf course. My
(24:12):
leg's hurt, said d' hoque. The man was no longer
wearing a hood, but de hook couldn't tell if it
was Willows or himself, We will all go together when
we go, said the man. D' Hooq. Turned his head
away and looked at the ceiling, and he realized that
it was the ceiling of the ante chamber. My legs hurt,
he repeated, and he could hear the horse whisper inside
(24:33):
the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on
his back. He had been jarred around quite a bit
in the suit. He wondered if he could sit up.
He managed to get both arms behind him and push
himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The
servos responded, he hurt all over, but a little experiment
told him that he was only bruised, nothing was broken.
(24:54):
He hadn't been hit as heart as Ferguson and Metti
had been. Willows, he said, Willows. There was no answer
from the earphones. He looked at the chronometer dial inside
his helmet. Oh two forty nine. He had been unconscious
less than ten minutes. The same glance brought his eyes
to two other dials. The internal radiation of the suit
(25:14):
was a little high, but nothing to worry about. But
the dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without
the protection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through
those ten minutes. Where was Willow's And then he knew,
and he pushed any thought of further help from that
quarter out of his mind. What had to be done
would have to be done by Peter de Hoaque alone.
He climbed to his feet. His head hurt, and he
(25:36):
swayed with nausea and pain. Only the massive weight of
the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and
he blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it.
He found he was holding his breath, and he let
it out. The trouble had been so simple, and yet
he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes, he had, He must
have subconsciously, Otherwise how would he have guessed that the
stuff in the sampling chamber was osmium one eighty seven.
(26:00):
Gugison and Metti had been trying to make mercury two
O three by adding eight successive tritium nuclei to halfnium
one seventy nine, progressing through tantalum one eighty two, tungsten
one eighty five, rhenium one eighty eight, osmium one ninety one,
iridium one ninety four, platinum one ninety seven and gold
two hundred, all of which were unstable, but the hydrogen
(26:21):
three reaction had gone wrong. The doubling had set in,
producing helium four. Successive additions of the alpha particles to
halfnium one seventy nine had produced first tungsten one eighty
three and then osmium one eighty seven, both of which
were stable. Ferguson had Metti, seeing that something was wrong,
drew off a sample and then reset the reaction to
produce the HG two O three they wanted. Then they
(26:43):
had come down to pick up the sample. They hadn't
realized that the helium production had gone wild. Much more
helium than necessary was being produced, and the bleeder valve
had failed. When they opened the sample chamber, they got
a blast of high pressure helium right in the face.
The shock of that sudden release had jarred the whole
atmosphere inside the reaction chamber, and the bleeder valve had
(27:04):
let go, But the violence of the pressure release had
caused a fault to the surface to open up and
had closed the valve again jammed it. Probably there had
been enough pressure left in there to blow to hook
up against the nearest wall. When he opened the door.
Since the pressure indicator system was connected to the release system,
when one had failed, the other had failed. That's why
the pressure gage had indicated normal, And of course it
(27:26):
had been the pressure differential that had caused the controls
to stick. Well, they ought to be all right now.
Then he decided he'd better take a look. The firewall
door was still open. He walked over to it and
stepped into the smaller chamber that led to the inner
reactor room. The inside door, much weaker than the outer
firewall door, had been blown off its hinges. He stepped
(27:46):
past it and went on in. What he saw made
him jerk his glance away from the periscope in his
helmet and check his radiation detectors again, not much change.
Relief swept over him as he looked back at the
reactor itself. Formerly dead black walls were glowing a dull red.
It was pure thermal heat. But it shouldn't be doing that.
Moving quickly, he went over to the place where the
(28:08):
control cables came in through the firewall. It took him
several minutes to assure himself that they would function from
the control room. Now there was nothing more to do
but get out of here and get that reaction damped.
He went out again, closing the firewall door behind him
and dogging it tight. There would be no more helium production. Now.
He went through the radiation trap to the decontamination chamber
(28:29):
to wash off whatever it was he had picked up.
The decontamination room was a mess. De Hoaque stared at
the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushed
out of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well.
He could still scrub himself off, except that the scrubbers
weren't working. He swore under his breath and twisted the
valve that was supposed to dispense detergent. It did, thank Heaven.
(28:53):
He doused himself good with it and then got under
the flowing water. The radiation level remained exactly where it was.
He walked over and pulled one of the brushes off
the defunct scrubber and sudst it up. It wasn't until
he started to use it that he got a good
look at his arms. He hadn't paid any attention before.
He walked over to the mirror to get a good look.
You look magnificent, he told his reflection. Acidly. The radiation
(29:18):
proof armor looked as though it had been chrome plated.
But to Hop knew better than that. He knew exactly
what had happened. He was nicely plaited all over with
a film of mercury which had amalgamated itself with the
metallic surface of the suit. He was thoroughly wet with
the stuff, and no amount of water and detergent would
take it off. There was something wrong with Number two reactor,
all right. It had leaked out some of the mercury
(29:39):
two O three that Ferguson and Metty had been making.
He thought a minute, It hadn't been leaking out just
before he opened the door in the firewall, because Willows
would certainly have noticed the bright mercury line when he
checked with the spectroscope. The stuff must have been released
when the pressure dropped. He walked back to the ante
room and looked at the sampling chamber. There were a
few drop of mercury around the inlet. Thus far, the
(30:02):
three pressure explosions had wrecked about everything that was wreckable,
he thought, No, not quite. There was still the chance
that the whole station would go if he didn't get
back into the control room and stop that powers of
two chain. The detonation of instantanium five twelve would finish
the job by doing what high pressure helium could never do.
He glanced at the thermometer. The temperature behind the firewall
(30:24):
had risen to two forty centigrade. It wasn't supposed to
be above two hundred. It wasn't too serious, really, because
a little heat like that wouldn't bother a Ditmar's Horst reactor,
but it indicated that things back there weren't working properly.
He turned away and walked back to the decontamination chamber.
There must be some way he could get the mercury
off the suit, because he couldn't take the suit off
(30:45):
until the mercury was gone. First, he tried scrubbing. That
was what showed him how upset he really was. He
had actually scrubbed the armor on his left arm free
of mercury when he realized what he was doing and
threw the brush down in disgust. It's your head to hoak,
he told himself. What good would it do to scrub
the stuff off of the few places he could reach
(31:06):
in the bulky armor. He was worse than muscle bound.
He couldn't touch any part of his back. He couldn't
bend far enough to touch his legs, his shoulders were inaccessible.
Even scrubbing was worse than useless. It was time wasting.
He picked up the brush again and began scrubbing at
the other arm. It gave him something to do while
he thought. While he was thinking, he wasn't wasting time.
(31:28):
What would dissolve mercury nitric acid? Good old h n
O three Fine, except that the hot lab was at
the other end of the reactor where the fissure had
let all the air out. The bulkheads had dropped, and
he couldn't get in, and naturally the nitric acid would
be in the lab. For the first time, he found
himself hating Willow's guts. If he were around, he could
(31:49):
get some acid from the cold lab, or even from
the other hot lab at number one. If Willows he
stood up and dropped the brush, dolt, boob, moron, idiot,
not himself. There was no reason on Earth or Luna
why he couldn't walk over to number one hot lab
and get the stuff himself. The habit of never leaving
the lab without thorough decontamination was so thoroughly ingrained in
(32:12):
him that he had simply never thought about it until
that moment. But what did a little contamination with radioactive
mercury mean at a time like this? He could take
F corridor to number one, use the decontamination chamber in
the acid from the lab, shuck off his armor there,
and come back through E corridor. F could be cleaned
up later. So simple. He went through the light trap
(32:32):
to the next chamber and turned the handle on the
sliding door. The door wouldn't budge. It had been warped
by the force of the helium blast, and it was
stuck in its grooves. Well, there were tools, the thing
could be unstuck. Peter de Hoque was a determined man,
a strong man, and a smart man. But the door
was more determined and stronger than he was, and his
(32:53):
intelligence didn't give him much of an edge. Right then,
after an hour's hard work, he managed to get the
door open about eighteen inches. Then it froze fast and
refused to move again. All the power and leverage he
could bring to bear was useless. The door had opened
all it was going to open. Beyond it, he could
see the next radiation trap and freedom eighteen inches would
(33:13):
have been plenty of space for him to get through
if he had not been wearing the radiation proof suit,
but he didn't dare take that suit off. By the
time he got out of the suit, the intensely radioactive
mercury on its surface would have made his death only
a matter of time, and not much time at that.
He told himself that if it were simply a matter
of running to the control room to shut off the
d H reactor, he'd do it. That could have been
(33:35):
done before he lost consciousness. But it wasn't that easy.
Damping the reaction took time and control. The stuff had
to be eased back slowly. Shutting off the Ditmar's horse
would simply blow a hole in the crust of Luna
and kill everyone if he did it. Now, there were
four or five men out there who would die if
he pulled anything foolish like that. The explosion wouldn't be
(33:55):
as powerful as the instantanium five twelve reaction would be,
but it would be none the less deadly. For all that,
there had to be either a way to scrape the
mercury off the suit or a way to open the
door another six inches or he added suddenly away to
get safely out of the suit. At the end of
another twenty minutes, he had still thought of nothing. He
wandered around the decontamination room, looking at everything, hoping he
(34:18):
might see something that would give him a clue. He didn't.
He went into the antechamber of the reactor and glared
at the door in the firewall. The instruments said that
things were getting pretty fierce on the other side of
that wall, temperature two ninety five and still rising pressure.
He carefully cracked the inlet of the sampling chamber and
got a soft hiss. The helium was expanding from the heat.
(34:41):
That was all part of the trouble with the reactor,
he thought, was the high percentage of oxygen and nitrogen
that had mixed in during the ten minutes or so
that the door was open. All hell was fixing to
bust loosen there, and he, Peter de Hoaque, was right
next to it. He walked back into the decontamination chamber.
What would dissolve mercury? Mercury would dissolve gold? Would gold
(35:02):
dissolve mercury? Very funny? He was like a turtle to Hoake,
thought perfectly safe as long as he was in his shell,
but take him out of it and he would die.
Hell of a way to spend the night, he thought
a knight in shining armor. That struck him as funny.
He began to laugh and laugh. He almost laughed himself
sick before he realized that it was fear and despair
(35:24):
that were driving him into hysteria, not a sense of humor.
He forced himself to calmness. He must be calm, he
must think, Yes, how do you go about getting rid
of a radioactive metal that is in effect welded to
the outside of your suit. The trouble was he was
a nucleonics engineer, not a chemist. He remembered quite a
bit of his chemistry, of course, but not as much
(35:45):
as he would have liked. Could the stuff be neutralized? Sure,
he told himself, very simple. All he had to do
was go climb into the reactor and let the reactor
do the job. Mercury two O three plus an alpha
particle gives nice stable lad two O seven. Just go
climb right into the Ditmar's horse and let the helium
four do the job. But the thoughts stuck in his mind.
(36:07):
He kept telling himself not to panic as Willows had done,
and several minutes later, chuckling to himself in a half
demented fashion, he opened the firewall door and went in
to let the helium do the job. It was nearly
eight in the morning Greenwich time when the three surface
vehicles with their wide caterpillar treads, lumbered to a halt
near the kiosk that marked the entrance to the underground
(36:27):
site of the laboratories. O K said one of the
men in the first machine, holding a microphone to his lips.
Let's go in. If what Willows said is true, the
whole place may blow any minute now, but I'm not
asking for volunteers. Nobody will be any safer up here
than they will down there, and we have to do
a job. Besides, Willows wasn't completely rational. Nobody would put
(36:49):
on a vacksuit and run away like that if he
was in his right mind, So we can discount a
lot of what he said when we picked him up
on the road. The five of us in this car
are going straight to Number one reactor to see what
can be done to stop whatever is going on. The
rest of you start trying to see if you can
get those trapped men out of A and B corridors.
All right, let's move in. Less than five minutes later,
(37:10):
five men went into the control room of number one reactor.
They found Peter de Hoak sound asleep in the control chair,
and the instruments showed that the Ditmar's Horse reactor was inactive.
One of the men shook to Hoak gently, awakening him
in the middle of a snore. What he said, groggily,
we're here, guzz Everything's okay, Sure, everything's okay. Nothing to it.
(37:33):
All I did was wait until the temperature got above
three fifty seven centigrade above the boiling point of mercury.
Then I went in and let the hot helium boil
the stuff off me nothing to it. Near boiled myself alive,
but it did the trick. What asked the man in
a puzzled voice, are you talking about? I am a
knight in dull armor, said Peter de Hoaq, dozing off again.
(37:55):
Then he roused himself a little and said, without opening
his eyes, AI, oh, quick, silver away. And he was
sound asleep again. And when he saw what he had
done with all his might and main, he jumped back
in that bramble bush and scratched them in again, End
of the Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett
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