The Bramble Bush, Page 3

The suit was so heavy that, without powered joints,controlled by servomechanisms, he would have been unable to move, evenunder Lunar gravity. With the power on, though, it was no harder thanwalking underwater in a diving suit. "All's well, Puss," he said.

  "I'll keep an eye on you," said Willows.

  "Fine. Well, here goes Colossus de Hooch." He began walking toward thedoor that led into the corridor which connected the reactor anteroom tothe control room.

  * * * * *

  It took time to drag the two inert figures out of the anteroom. All deHooch could do was grab them under the armpits, apply power, and dragthem out. He went out the same way he had come in, traversing theseparate chambers in reverse order. First came the decontaminationchamber, where the radioactive dust that might have settled on the suitswas sluiced off by the detergent sprays. When the radiation detectorsregistered low enough, de Hooch dragged Ferguson into the outer chamber,then went back and got Metty and put him through the same process. Thenhe dragged them on into the control room so that Willows could get themout of the heavy suits.

  "Can you help me, Guz?" Willows asked. It was obvious that he didn'twant to open the suits. He didn't want to see what might be inside. DeHooch helped him.

  They were both alive, but unconscious. Bones had been broken, and Mettyappeared to be suffering from concussion. They were badly damaged, butthey'd live.

  De Hooch and Willows made two trips down E and C corridors, carrying themen on a stretcher, to get them in bed. De Hooch splinted the brokenbones as best he could and gave each of them a shot of narcodyne. He hadto do the medical work because Quillan, the medic, was trapped inCorridor A. He called Quillan on the phone to tell him what hadhappened. He described the signs and symptoms of the victims as best hecould, 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 by that time, theboys from Base will be here. Just leave 'em alone and don't move 'em anymore."

  "Right. I'll call you back later. Right now, Puss and I are going to seewhat's wrong with the control linkages on Number Two."

  "Right. By-o."

  De Hooch and Willows walked back to the control room of Number TwoReactor in silence.

  Once inside the control room, de Hooch said: "How are those controlcircuits?" Willows was supposed to have been checking them while he hadbeen dragging Ferguson and Metty out of the antechamber.

  "Well, I ... I'm not sure. I'll show you what I've found so far, Guz.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 rightexcept for the freezer vernier and the pressure release control."

  _He doesn't trust his own work_, de Hooch thought. _Well, that's allright. Neither do I._

  Painstakingly, the two of them went over the checking circuits. Willowswas right. The freezer and pressure controls were inoperable.

  "Damn," said de Hooch. "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 getback into that two-legged tank again." He wished he knew more about whatFerguson and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why the two men hadgone into the anteroom 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 atthe instruments 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 radiationtrap into the anteroom. Now that Ferguson and Metty were safely out ofthe way, he could give his attention to the damage that had been done.

  Had Ferguson and Metty actually come in to tap off a sample, as he hadsuggested to Willows? He looked around at the wreckage in theantechamber. Quite obviously, the heavy door of the sample chamber waswide open, and it certainly appeared that the wreckage was scatteredfrom that point. Cautiously, he went over to look at the open samplechamber. It looked all right, except that the bottom was covered with abright, metallic dust. He rubbed his finger over it and looked at thefingertip. A very fine dust. And yet it hadn't been scattered very muchby the explosion. Heavy. Very likely osmium. Osmium 187 was stable, butit wasn't a normally used step toward Mercury 203. Four successive alphacaptures would give Polonium 203, not mercury. Ditto for an oxygenfusion. It could be iridium or platinum, of course. Whatever it was, theinstruments in his helmet told him it wasn't hot.

  He had a hunch that Ferguson and Metty had been building Mercury 203from Hafnium 179 by the process of successive fusions with Hydrogen 3and that something had gone wrong with the H-3 production. It appearedthat the explosion had been a simple chemical blast caused by the airoxidation of H-2. But the bleeder vent at the other end of the reactorhad apparently kicked at the same time. An enormous amount of unusedenergy had been released, blowing the entire emergency bleeder systemout.

  Something didn't seem right. Something stuck in his craw, and hecouldn't figure out what it was.

  He opened up the conduit boxes that led through the antechamber from thecontrol console to the reactor beyond the firewall. Everything lookedfine. That meant that whatever it was that had fouled up the controlswas on the other side of the firewall.

  "How does it look?" Willows' voice came worriedly over the earphones.

  "Have I already said 'damn'?" de Hooch asked.

  "You have," Willows said with forced lightness. "You even said 'doubledamn'."

  "_Factorial_ damn, then!" said de Hooch.

  "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 thereactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked normal enough. Hecarefully checked the pressure gauge. Normal.

  "Check the spectro for me, will you?" he asked. "Make sure that's justthe 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 threehundred Centigrade."

  "Neither would I, but how could there be hydrogen in there?"

  "There shouldn't be. But there's something screwy going on here, and Ican't put my finger on it."

  "Well, whatever it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room."

  "O.K. Stand by. I'm going in."

  He walked over to the firewall door. On the other side of it was a smallchamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air would be swept outbefore he opened the inner door to go into the inner chamber itself.There was no need for an air lock, since small amounts of impurities inthe He-4 didn't bother anything.

  It was just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall door thathe realized his mistake.

  But it was too late.

  The door jerked outward, and a hot wind picked him up and slammed himagainst the far wall.

  There was a moment of pain.

  Then--nothing.

  * * * * *

  _There was something familiar about the man who was turning the wheel,but de Hooch couldn't place it. The man was wearing a black hood, asbefitted a torturer and executioner._

  _"Idiot," said the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a littlemore pressure, "explain the following: If a half plus a half is equal toa whole, why is halfnium plus halfnium not equal to wholmium?"_

  _Stretched as he was on the rack, de Hooch could not think straightbecause of the excruciating pain._

  _"Because a half is eight poi
nt two eight per cent heavier than a hole,"said de Hooch._

  _"You are an idiot, none the less," said the torturer. He gave the wheelanother twist. De Hooch wanted to scream, but he couldn't._

  _"Try again," said the torturer. "What is a half plus four plus fourplus four plus four plus--"_

  "Stop!" _screamed de Hooch_. "Stop! _Stop at the osmium!_"

  _"Ah! But it_ didn't _stop at the osmium," said the hooded man. "It wenton and on and on. Plus four plus four plus four plus four plusfour--until there were so many plus fours in there that the place lookedlike an old-fashioned