"Del.Rey,.Lester.-.Nerves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

He was almost relieved when they swung off the main road onto the private highway that led to the main gates. The sprawling, haphazard cluster of utilitarian buildings, offices and converter-housings covered acres of ground and was set back nearly a mile from the turnpike. Here the land was deserted, cared for only by the ground crews who kept down the weeds. Laws had already forced a safety zone around the plants, though it had been no great hardship to National. Behind the plant, lay a great tract of barren land, stretching back down a brackish little stream to a swamp further away. That, at least, was useful, since it served as a dumping ground for their wastes. Even the spur line from the main railroad was nearly two miles long.
Once it had been only a power plant, one of several built to feed electricity to St. Louis, modeled on the first successful commercial plant constructed by General Electric to use atomic power. But early in its life, two young scientists named Link and Hokusai had discovered a whole new field of atomics and had come here to try it out. It was known that atoms heavier than uranium—such as plutonium and neptunium—could be made but generally grew increasingly unstable with added weight. The two men had found, however, that if the packing of new particles could be continued, eventually a new level could be reached that was again fairly stable. Such atoms—super-heavies—had never existed in nature, but many proved far more valuable than the natural forms. National had grown to its present size on the development of the heavy isotopes, and power was now only a sideline, though the plant supplied all of Kimberly’s power requirements.
Ferrel saw Emma stiffen as they neared the gate, but Dick had remembered and was already braking. She had an almost pathological fear of going inside, based on an unrealistic belief that her second child was stillborn because of radiation here. Her worst nightmares centered around the plant. But Doc had long since given up any attempt to reason with her, and she had learned to accept his continuing employment there.
He got out, self-consciously shaking Dick’s hand, and watched them hurriedly drive off again. Then abruptly the solid familiarity of his surroundings snapped the blue funk he’d been in. The plant was a world by itself, busy and densely populated. Nothing could uproot it. He waved at the grinning guard and went inside, soaking up the sight, sound and smell of it.
The graveled walks were crowded with the usual nine-o’clock mass of young huskies just going on shift, and the company cafeteria was jammed to capacity with men seeking a last-minute cup of coffee. But the men made way for him good-humoredly as he moved among them. That pleased Doc, as always, and all the more because they didn’t bother to stop their horseplay as they might have done for another company official. He’d been just Doc to them too long for that.
He nodded back at them easily, pushed through, and went down the walk toward the Infirmary, taking his own time; at his age a man could begin to realize that comfort and relaxation were worth cultivating. Besides, he could see no reason for ruining the good food in his stomach by rushing around in a flurry that gave him no time to digest it. He let himself in the side entrance, palming his cigar out of long habit, though he’d had the No Smoking signs removed years ago, and passed through the surgery to the door marked:

ROGER T. FERREL
Physician in Charge.

As always, the little room was heavy with the odor of stale smoke and littered with scraps of this and that. His assistant was already there, rummaging busily through Ferrel’s desk with the brass that was typical of the man; Ferrel had no objection to it, though; Blake’s rock-steady hands and unruffled brain were always dependable in a pinch of any sort.
Blake looked up and grinned confidently. “Hi, Doc. Where the deuce do you keep your lighter fluid? Never mind, got it! . . . Thought you were taking the day off?”
“Fat chance.” Ferrel stuck the cigar back in his mouth and settled into the old leather chair, shaking his head. “Palmer phoned me at the crack of dawn. We’ve got an emergency again.”
“So you’re stuck with it. I don’t see why any of us has to show up here—nothing serious ever pops up. Look at yesterday. I had three cases of athlete’s foot—better send a memo down to the showers to use extra disinfectant—a boy with a running nose, the usual hypochondriacs, and a guy with a sliver in his thumb! They bring everything to us except their babies, and they’d have them here if they could. Nothing that couldn’t wait a week or a month.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I almost forgot. If you’re free tonight, Anne and I are celebrating sticking together ten years. She wants you and Emma with us. Let the kid handle the office tonight.”
“Sounds like a good idea. But you’d better stop calling Jenkins the kid.” Ferrel twitched his lips in a stiff smile, remembering the time when he’d been as dead-serious as the new doctor; after only a week of real practice it was too soon to learn that destiny hadn’t really singled him out to save the world. “He had his first real case yesterday. Handled it all by himself, so he’s now Doctor Jenkins, if you please.”
Blake had his own memories. “Yeah? Wonder when he’ll realize that everything he did by himself came from you? What was it, anyway?”
“Same old story—simple radiation burns. No matter how much we tell the men when they first come in, most of them can’t see why they should wear three ninety-five-percent efficient shields when the main converter shield cuts off all but one-tenth per cent of the radiation.” Mathematically, it was good sense that three added shields would cut the radiation down to a mere eighty-thousandth of full force, but it was hard to convince the men that multiplying poor shields by the one good one could make that difference. “He managed to leave off his two inner shields and pick up a year’s burn in six hours. Now he’s probably home, sweating it out and hoping we won’t get him fired.”
It had been at Number One, the first converter around which National Atomic had built its present control of artificial radioactives, back in the days before Wemrath at Caltech found a way to use some of the superheavy isotopes as ultra-efficient shielding. Number One had the old, immense concrete shield, but converters were expensive and they still kept it for the gentler reactions; if reasonable precautions were taken there was no serious danger.
Blake chuckled. “You’re getting old, Doc; you used to give them something to sweat about! Well, I’d better check up on the staff—someone might be a minute late, and then where’d we be?”
Ferrel followed him out, spotting young Jenkins in his office, intent over some book. The boy nodded a tight-lipped greeting. Doc returned it, being careful not to intrude on whatever he was studying. Jenkins was at least intelligent and willing to work. A week was too little to tell whether he had the stuff to stay on here or not, but he probably would if his nerves didn’t get in the way. He seemed to be nothing but sinews with taut skin drawn over them, and his shock of blond hair fell over the deepest-set blue eyes Doc had ever seen. He looked like a garret-starving young poet, and his nerves seemed as fine-drawn, but he had an amazingly good background of practical studies.
For a moment Doc considered going back to his office and catching a nap in the old chair. There was nothing to do that Blake couldn’t handle. The Infirmary was already run the way he wanted it, and he saw no need to change for inspection. He could catch a few winks before Palmer called him. He started to turn back, then hesitated at the sight of Jenkins. At his stage, the boy might not understand sleeping on the job.
“If anyone needs me, I’ll be at Palmer’s office,” he called out. Jenkins nodded, and Doc went through the side door and down the long walk toward the Administration building, overshadowed by the ugly bulk of the power-generating station—the oldest building on the grounds.
Palmer’s office had been designed to look like a proper place for an executive, including a built-in bar. But in the middle of it, serving as desk, was an old draftsman’s table, littered with graphs, stained with ink and loaded with baskets. One corner showed the years of whittling where Palmer had chipped off improvised toothpicks, before he got his complete plates. The man himself was like his office: Tasteful, expensive clothes, a well-barbered look and the obvious intelligence in the heavy face suggested the good executive. But now his suit coat lay on a leather couch and he was wearing a battered leather jacket. His hands bore the marks of hard labor, which had thickened the veins and swelled the knuckles; and he remained hard-muscled and active in body as a working construction engineer. He nodded Ferrel to a chair, but continued standing himself.
“Thanks for coming, Doc. I got the word late last night. There’s even an AEC inspector with them, ready to snatch our power license if we aren’t good boys. I don’t mind him; the AEC plays as straight as anyone in government can. But the rest of them—the Guilden reporters, anyhow—are probably looking for trouble. I need every good man here I can get.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Doc protested. “They can’t get along without the plants now; every hospital in the country would go crazy if we stopped production, and it’s just as bad with the other users. They can’t move the plants out where no workers would come.”
Palmer sighed wearily. “They couldn’t pass prohibition, either, Doc. But they did.”
“But atomic plants aren’t that dangerous!”
“Unfortunately, they could be,” Palmer said. He looked dead with fatigue, and his reddened eyes indicated that he’d probably had no sleep at all. “We’ve had atomic power for a quarter-century, now. That means some of the early plants, built before we knew what we were doing—I helped build some of them—are probably in bad condition. It also means a whole generation of engineers and workers have been taking atomics for granted and getting careless. Since that accident at Croton, inspections have shown too much radioactive contamination around half a dozen plants. They need policing.”
He dropped onto the couch, shoving piles of government bulletins aside, and massaging his temples. “I think we’re clean here, Doc. But it’s just our tough luck that old man Guilden got a tiny dose of poisoning from one of our early products he was misusing. He’s gunning for us, using this as a front, and he swings a lot of weight. Oh, hell, I didn’t want you for sympathy. I want to check on a probable ringer.”
During the early days the companies had been plagued by suits alleging ruined health from radiation poisoning. A few had been legitimate, but most had been phonies trying to force a settlement with the threat of publicity for the company—ringers.
“Plant worker?” Doc asked. They were the hardest to check, since almost any worker would have some slight trace of contamination.
“Delicatessen worker in Kimberly. I talked to her at her place last night, and I think she believes she’s been poisoned. But somebody’s using her. Expensive lawyer. He wouldn’t give her doctor’s name. I got her to give her symptoms—and she looks sick.”
He passed over a piece of paper, covered with his square, heavy writing. Ferrel studied it, trying to make sense out of what a layman considered the facts. Yet there was something of a pattern there. “I’d need more than that, at least a good blood sample, as a start,” he protested.
“I’ve got it. I had that nurse of yours—Dodd—come with me, posing as my secretary. She bullied the woman into giving a sample while I was outside pretending settlement with the lawyer. Here!” He handed over a bottle, and Doc could see that Dodd had been careful to make a good job of it. She would, just as she’d be able to persuade the woman to do anything. “I’ll expect a report on that, after this inspection mess. But what’s your guess now?”
Doc gave it reluctantly. “It might be radiation. We can’t police every place that uses our stuff. But it’s probably leukemia. If she found some slipshod doctor who’d stopped keeping up with progress as well as with professional ethics, he might decide it could fool a jury. It wouldn’t, of course.”
“It wouldn’t have to. We can’t take a thing like this to court now. The publicity would ruin us, even if we were proved innocent later. And we can’t settle, that would only make us look as if we were guilty.” Palmer got up and started pacing about. “That’s the trouble, Doc. One little accident that happens—or that might happen—is enough to prove danger. But there’s no way to prove the absence of danger in a spectacular fashion that will hit the press. And I can’t even swear that there is no danger! . . . Leukemia . . . cancer of the blood cells. . . .”
“Well, something like that. It used to be one hundred percent fatal. It still will be if she has it and doesn’t get treatment soon.”
Palmer breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Whew! At least there’s a chance, then. If that’s it, we can get a specialist who’ll scare her with the facts. She ought to jump at a chance to ditch her lawyer for free treatment. Thanks, Doc. And let me know as soon as you find out for sure.”
Ferrel went back to the Infirmary, frowning. If some unethical quack was trying to use the woman, he wanted the man’s name. It took only a few of those to ruin the carefully built reputation of the whole profession! He was almost to the corner of the building before he saw Jenkins. He was outside, arguing with Jorgenson, one of the top production engineers. The man was huge, built like an ox, and almost as strong, from the stories told about him, but his mind wasn’t secondary to his body.
Jenkins said something quickly, indicating a piece of paper in his hands, but Jorgenson brushed it aside with a flip of his finger. “And I say to hell with you, sonny, until you can make it stick. Go peddle your nostrums!”
The engineer swung around and stalked off. Jenkins stared after him tensely, then stepped back into the Infirmary.
Doc could make no sense of it, but he didn’t like it. If the boy was a troublemaker . . . Still, he had nothing to go on. Until he knew more, it was none of his business.
By the time Ferrel was inside, Jenkins had settled back to his usual stiff calm. He looked up at Doc, and his voice was normal. “I’ve told the nurses to expect more minor accidents already, Dr. Ferrel,” he said. “I knew you’d want that, after seeing Mr. Palmer.”
Ferrel studied the young man. “Why? Just what was I supposed to have seen Palmer about, anyhow?”
Jenkins controlled his impatience with the older man’s obtuseness by an effort, but his voice was respectful. “The inspection, of course. It’s all over the plant grapevine. I heard about it when I first came in. It isn’t hard to know what that will do to the accident rate.”
“Yeah.” Doc grimaced at his own stupidity. He had been obtuse. “Good work, son. You were quite right.”
There’d be accidents, all right. With men getting a major inspection under these conditions, they’d be under constant tension, and there was no better breeding ground for mistakes. With luck, there might only be the routine mishaps. But there was no way of being sure of such good fortune. Almost anything could happen.
Palmer had indicated that one accident could prove their lack of safety. They certainly couldn’t afford any black marks on the books of the committee now. But with any operation as complicated as the creation of the superheavy isotopes, something was sure to go wrong when the men were on edge.
He should have told Palmer to go to hell and stayed home!