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consumption. And what that incredibly
intense bombardment impinges up is . . . is altered. Profoundly and obscurely
altered, so that the atmosphere
emitted from the crater is quite definitely no longer air as we know it. It
may be corrosive, it may be poisonous in
one or another of a hundred fashions, it may be merely new and different; but
it is no longer the air which we
human beings are used to breathing. And it is this fact, rather than the
destruction of the planet itself, which would
end the possibility of life upon Earth's surface.
It is difficult indeed to describe the appearance of a loose atomic vortex to
those who have never seen one; and,
fortunately, most people never have. And practically all of its frightful
radiation lies in those octaves of the
spectrum which are invisible to the human eye. Suffice it to say, then, that
it had an average effective surface
temperature of about fifteen thousand degrees absolute-two and one-half times
as hot as the sun of Tellus-and that
it was radiating every frequency possible to that incomprehensible
temperature, and let it go at that.
And Neal Cloud, scurrying in his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled
atmosphere, setting up equations
from the readings of his various meters and gauges and solving those equations
almost instantaneously in his
mathematical-prodigy's mind, sat appalled. For the activity level was, and
even in its lowest dips remained, far
above the level he had selected. His skin began to prickle and burn. His eyes
began to smart and to ache. He knew
what those symptoms meant; even the flitter's powerful screens were not
stopping all the radiation; even his
suit-screens and his special goggles were not stopping what leaked through.
But he wouldn't quit yet; the activity
might-probably wouldtake a nose-dive any instant. If it did, he'd have to be
ready. On the other hand, it might blow
up at any instant, too.
There were two schools of mathematical thought upon that point. One held that
the vortex, without any essential
change in its physical condition or nature, would keep on growing bigger.
Indefinitely, until, uniting with the other
vortices of the planet, it had converted the entire mass of the world into
energy.
The second school, of which the aforementioned Carlowitz was the loudest
voice, taught that at a certain stage of
development the internal energy of the vortex would become so great that
generation-radiation equilibrium could
not be maintained. This would, of course, result in an explosion; the nature
and consequences of which this Car-
lowitz was wont to dwell upon in ghoulishly mathematical glee. Neither school,
however, could prove its point-or,
rather, each school proved its point, by means of unimpeachable
mathematics-and each hated and derided the other,
loudly and heatedly.
And now Cloud, as he studied through his almost opaque defenses that
indescribably ravening fireball, that
esuriently rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the
deepest pit of the hottest hell of
mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn't seem
possible that anything could get any worse
than that without exploding. And such an explosion, he felt sure, would
certainly blow everything for miles around
into the smitheriest kind of smithereens.
The activity of the vortex stayed high" way too high. The tiny control room of
the Hitter grew hotter and hotter. His
skin burned and his eyes ached worse. He touched a communicator stud and
spoke.
"Phil? Better get me three more bombs. Like these" except up around. . . ."
"I don't check you. If you do that, it's apt to drop to a minimum and stay
there," the Lensman reminded him. "It's
completely unpredictable, you know."
"It may, at that . . . so I'll have to forget the five per cent margin and hit
on the nose or not at all. Order me up two
more, then-one at half of what I've got here, the other double it"" and he
reeled off the figures for the charge and
the casing of the explosive. "You might break out a jar of burn-dressing, too.
Some fairly hot stuff is leaking
through."
"We'll do that. Come down, fast!"
Cloud landed. He stripped to the skin and the observer smeared his every
square inch of epidermis with the thick"
gooey stuff that was not only a highly efficient screen against radiation, but
also a sovereign remedy for new
radiation burns. He exchanged his goggles for a thicker, darker, heavier pair.
The two bombs arrived and were
substituted for two of the original load.
"I thought of something while I was up there," Cloud informed the observers
then. "Twenty kilograms of duodec is
nobody's firecracker, but it may be the !east of what's going to go off. Have
you got any idea of what's going to
become of the energy inside that vortex when I blow it out?"
"Can't say that I have." The Lensman frowned in thought. "No data."
"Neither have I. But I'd say that you better go back to the new station-the
one you were going to move to if it kept
on getting worse."
"But the instruments . . :' the Lensman was thinking" not of the instruments
themselves, which were valueless in
comparison with life, but of the records those instruments would make. Those
records were priceless.
"I'll have everything on the tapes in the flitter," Cloud reminded.
"But suppose. . . ."
"That the flitter stops one, too--or doesn't stop it, rather? In that case,
your back station won't be there, either, so it
won't make any difference." How mistaken Cloud was!
"QX," the Chief decided. "We'll leave when you do just in case." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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