Astounding Science Fiction, February 1952 (British Edition) — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PROMETHEUS oe 47 prospect of a new power era was not dead, he contended; atomic energy was still in the picture, although no one had found any- thing better to do with it than hide it in bombs. Fast fission had never been con- trolled and even the piles were gone now, being too massive and demanding for this new ruralism. But hydrogen fusion! Let a solution be presented that eliminated the heavy atom starter and there might be a new beginning. Even Robin’s dream might come true then; Meanwhile Columbia still had a cyclotron and apparatus for the preparation of heavy water and Daniel experimented. “Behold the brilliant sun In all his splendor!’ The words of Madeleine’s song spoke in his own mind. Behold the brilliant sun! A little sun on earth! Clark’s Star! It burned underground the world over; even here, now, in Amber Grove, nourishing the ruralism it was intended to destroy. It burned to ashes Daniel’s ambitions, and Madeleine’s, and those of the whole Manhattan Clique. But how this small sun thrilled him when first it arose in his imagination! The idea came in a single intuition that the following weeks of calculation and experiment proved true. ' His associates in the Columbia Physics De- partment smiled at his first disclosures and then became equally fanatical. Robin walked in a dream. And then came the impossible task of building the thing. It was obvious that the Hydrogen Fusion Reactor was going to take an amount of. labor and special materials that were seem- ingly impossible to assemble in that decadent era. As this fact sank into Daniel’s conscious- ness, his first elation gave way to despair. But he counted without Robin Wark and the Manhattan Clique. Apart from the Columbians, probably the most ardent members of the Manhattan . Clique were those men who directed the industrial residue on the Jersey shore. These men, heirs of a dream of power and un- limited industrial enterprise, spoke of the old days as one speaks of sacred things. Robin, who had friends among them, arranged an appointment for Daniel with Martin Brennan. Daniel spent several days reducing his idea to a layman’s compre- hension. The meeting took place at one of those small cafés which still hung on in New York. Brennan was a great, hulking fellow who would hardly be distinguished from one of his own longshoremen, but he was a captain of industry, such as it was. Robin made the introduction. They ordered drinks and Brennan began at once: “To begin with, Dr. Clark, I’d like to tell you that I’ve already checked with Columbia and the people at the Physics Department there vouched for both you and your idea. I couldn’t be too sure of what Robin had to say. His enthusiasm sometimes carries him away.” Robin grinned and Brennan con-— tinued: . “T want to say also that PIl give you any help I can if it will start new blood flowing in the veins of this corpse they call a civilization. Suppose you tell me what you’re up to so I can understand it. I was trained at Columbia in design engineering; atomic physics is a little out of my line.” “TIl do my best. First do you happen to know the principle of the old hydrogen bomb?” “IT was supposed to know it in college of course, but that’s a long time ago.” “Well, the method is the old Atkinson- Houtermens-Gamow-Teller process,” even Daniel smiled at the string of names. “Sup- pose you had a large number of deuterons, that is, nuclei of heavy hydrogen atoms, as in a sample of heavy water. Imagine that they are exposed in a region of high energy flux such as exists in the neighborhood of a plutonium bomb explosion, for instance. What will happen is this: Two deuterons which have acquired high energies of trans- lation will collide at high speed and fuse to form an isotope of helium with the release of three million electron volts of energy. A neutron is also formed in the process and transfers its energy to another deuteron by collision. The process repeats itself and there is a Chain reaction.” “In other words,” said Brennan, hydrogen bomb.” Daniel nodded. Brennan smiled. “The three million electron volts sound interesting but it seems to me that a plutonium bomb explosion is a little extreme for industrial operation.” Robin broke in: ‘“There’s where Dan’s idea comes in. He’s got it down to the dimensions of a bubble!” Daniel gasped at his friend’s understate- ment. “It'll be a big bubble! Look at it this way, Mr. Brennan: the real problem is to supply the energy to the deuterium nuclei so that the high-speed collisions can take place. In fact, the sustaining point of the reaction is in the neighborhood of eight hundred thousand degrees centigrade—” “the Eomichbooksrco