naturally gives off high-energy particles. A few of those panicles won’t hurt you. Too many will
kill you. But so long as you keep those two chunks of uranium apart, they’re about as dangerous
as cookies and milk.”
“Now,” continued Groves, “the closer together the pieces, the more energy they give off, and
the more dangerous they are. If you set those chunks down next to each other you’ll get lots of
radiation, some heat and a little light. Deadly as hell, but no explosion. But if you slammed that
U-235 together quickly, with an explosive charge, the atoms would radiate their particles all at
once, literally blowing themselves apart. That gives you one hell of a bang. Those eight kilos of
U-235 are the explosive equivalent of forty million pounds of TNT.”
Finn looked at the gleaming metal and found such power hard to believe.
The experimenter on the stool flipped a switch on the unmarked box near the aquarium.
Immediately there was a distant crackling sound, like slow static. He called out a reading to the
men at the far side of the room.
“Same as before,” verified one of the men.
“What are they doing?” asked Finn.
“The aquarium holds salt water. If the Indianapolis goes down, we want to know how a dip in
the ocean will affect critical mass and chain reactions.”
The experimenter fiddled with the pulley that controlled the U-235 suspended over the
aquarium. The pulley gears were stuck, the result of too much water dripped onto them during a
night of experimentation.
“The larger piece of U-235 is at the bottom of the pond,” said Groves. “It’s about three times as
big as the piece hanging from the pulley. The two pieces are made to fit together like a baseball
in a glove.”
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The U-235 was attached to a pulley hook by a hastily rigged net. The experimenter unhooked the
net from the pulley, set aside the uranium, and cranked on the pulley impatiently. Without the
weight of the metal dragging down, the pulley worked fairly well.
Groves glanced at the experimenter and the two other men slumped on stools at the far end of
the room. In spite of their obvious fatigue, there was an air of anxiety about them. The
experimenter reattached the U-235 to the pulley.
“It’s their last chance to work with the metal before it’s shipped. No one has ever had this much
U-235 before. There are lots of theories to test and damn little time to do it in.”
The pulley stuck. The experimenter swore.
“Six twenty-five,” said one of the men at the back of the room.
The experimenter said nothing. He applied more pressure to the pulley. The net holding the
U-235 descended a few inches. The sound of static increased.
“What’s that?” asked Finn. “What is he doing?”
“The box is giving out the static,” said Groves. “It’s a radiation counter. It tells us how many
particles are being radiated. Remember, the closer the two pieces, the more particles are
knocked off. The more particles, the more danger.”
The man on the stool adjusted the radiation counter until the sound of static was reduced to a
series of slow clicks. He turned the crank on the pulley. The net holding the U-235 descended
two inches closer to its companion. Instantly the clicking sound increased. The man stopped,
made a note on his pad, read the notation aloud, and then readjusted the radiation counter. He
turned the crank again. It stuck. One of the men in the back of the room groaned.
“Goddamn it, not again!”
The experimenter ignored the complaint. He pressed and jiggled until the pulley gears came
unstuck and the isotope descended. The counter snarled. He readjusted it, calling out numbers.
“Every time he adjusts the radiation counter,” said Groves, “he decreases its sensitivity.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to measure anything beyond mild radioactivity without
overloading the machine.”
The scientist turned the crank. It balked, then responded. The U-235 dropped closer to the
larger piece of metal at the bottom of the aquarium. Clicking sounds blurred into a low howl.
“Radiation is like a germ,” Groves muttered. “You can’t see it but it can hurt you.”
The rapid signal of the counter reminded Finn of a rattlesnake’s warning, except that the
counter’s sound had a mechanical perfection that no animate life could attain. The difference was
subtle and pervasive; it made Finn uneasy. He understood dangerous snakes and dangerous
men, but the invisible danger of radiation was alien to him.
There was an abnormal intensity to the experimenter’s actions as he worked with the reluctant
pulley and measured the shrinking distance between the two pieces of U-238 – and between
himself and a lethal unknown.
“How much radiation can a man take?” asked Finn, not looking away from the table where the
two pieces of metal communicated with each other in a series of ascending clicks.
“We don’t know.”
“Then how do you know if you’ve gotten too much?”
“Skin lesions form that look like burns. Bruises form. Nausea. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Hair loss.
Fever. Bad fever.”
“Is too much radiation fatal?”
“Yes.”
“How long does it take?”
Silence. Then, reluctantly. “There have been accidents. Only one death, thank God. It took four
days.”
“But it could be slower? Or faster?”
“Probably, depending on the man and the dosage. We just don’t know. No guarantees, Captain.
Not one.”
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Finn stood without moving, measuring the increasing tension as the experimenter adjusted the
radiation counter again, causing the buzz to slow into separate clicks. The man gingerly moved
the pulley handle, made notes, called out numbers, and eased the small piece of U-238 closer to
its mate at the bottom of the aquarium.
The counter came alive again with a low buzzing sound. Tension coiled invisibly around the
experimenter, jjut his voice was steady as he read off a series of numbers for his colleagues at the
back of the lab. His words issued from the ceiling speaker grille like a disembodied counterpart
to the counter’s metallic buzz.
“We did it differently before,” said Groves. “We used a contraption we called a guillotine to test
critical mass. But we didn’t have this much pure isotope then.”
General Groves’ words faded as the counter’s voice strenghtened. The man on the stool was
cranking the pulley again. It moved under the man’s careful urging, then stuck. The man pressed
lightly. The pulley did not budge; its mechanism was gummed by repeated exposure to salt
water. The uranium bullet hung about four inches above the target. The experimenter pushed
harder on the crank, to no effect.
“We’re supposed to have it ready to ship by 6:30,” said one of the observers in a tight voice.
“It’s 6:28.”
“I know. I know!” The experimenter swore and pressed harder on the crank. Then he backed up
the pulley and lowered it quickly. It balked again at the same spot. He backed up further and
lowered again, knowing there was not enough time to dismantle the mechanism again. It must
work now.
The scientist’s concentration gave way to frustration. He cranked the pulley all the way to the
top, then reversed it with rapid, angry motions, again and again. The pulley reached the same
spot and balked, again and again, until the last time when something snapped and the U-235
plunged down into the aquarium and came to rest fitted against its mate.
The radiation counter screamed.
Instinctively, the scientist tried to separate the U-235 with his bare hands. The pieces were
smooth, heavy, infinitely slippery and fitted too well with each other.
“Jesus Christ!” cried the scientist. He clawed at the two pieces of metal until they finally
separated and he could drag one deadly piece out of the pond, stopping the chain reaction.
The radiation counter’s scream died to a whisper as the scientist set aside the smaller piece of
U-235 that he had retrieved from the aquarium. He sagged against the table, breathing raggedly,
like a man at the end of a long run. Less than four seconds had passed since the pulley had
broken.
“Stay away from there!” said Groves as Finn leaped toward the door leading to the lab. Groves’
hand clamped around Finn’s wrist with surprising strength. “Listen to me!” cried Groves as
Finn jerked free. “There’s nothing you can do. He’s poisoned, and if you get too close you could
be poisoned too!”
Behind the glass, one man rushed toward a phone, the other toward the scientist who was
slumped over the table, staring at his wet hands as though he had never seen them before. He
groaned and let his hands drop to the table.
The radiation counter sang as his hands passed near the sensitive probe. The scientist jerked
back his hands. The counter became quiet. He brought his hands close to the probe once more.
The counter sang of deadly radiation.
With a strangled noise, the scientist lunged away from the counter. The other two men looked at
each other, then at everything except the experimenter’s deadly hands.
Finn stared at each man’s face, a rictus of terror and sickness overlaid with sweat. He had seen
such expressions before, Marines watching helplessly as children plummeted onto rocks far
below. He knew that feeling, the worst shade of green in all of the jungle’s green hells.
And he knew he looked like the men behind the glass, sweating and afraid.
“That counter goes with me,” said Finn, turning his back on the lab. “I’m not going to sit on a
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bomb I can’t hear ticking.”
Los Alamos
88 Hours Before Trinity
Heat from the desert floor a mile below twisted up the plateau’s rugged sides. Walking out of
Omega Building was like walking onto a griddle. General Groves wiped his face, but it was
more than heat that made him sweat. The laboratory accident had delayed the uranium’s
departure. There was still ample time to drive it to Hunter’s Point – he had allowed for
everything, even accidents – but that did not make him sweat any less.
If there were any more long delays, he would be forced to fly the uranium to San Francisco. That
was something he was determined to avoid. There was too much country in the west. If the plane
went down, the uranium could be lost forever. He had a horror of that, of the uranium falling
out of the sky, disappearing into the cracks of the empty land. So long as the canister stayed on
roads, he felt reasonably reassured; if something came apart, he would know where it had
happened to the nearest yard. The ocean was a different proposition, more difficult to control,
more dangerous. He had done what he could about that – Finn.
Behind the General, strapped to a dolly, the nickel canister burned in the sun. The soldier
pushing the dolly was sweating freely. Even on wheels, the canister was unwieldy, unreasonably
heavy for its size.
Behind the soldier walked a man in civilian clothes – business suit, hat and tie. He carried a
Thompson submachine gun with professional ease. He watched everything but the canister itself,
his dark eyes as restless as his body was calm.
The small procession stopped in Omega Building’s loading area. Five cars were parked on the
asphalt. None had military markings. All but the first car carried four men. The first car had
three. The middle car’s trunk was open, revealing a steel framework. The framework was welded
to the car’s body.
“Load it,” said Groves.
Two men from the middle car got out and hoisted the canister off the dolly. Though both men
were strong, the canister was difficult to handle. Metal rang against metal as the canister landed
in its specially built cradle. One of the men swore and rubbed skinned knuckles while his partner
locked the canister into place. The car settled on its heavy springs.
Groves watched the locks close and the trunk lid slam down, locking automatically. The keys to
the cradle and trunk were already in Hunter’s Point. Anyone who wanted to remove the canister
before then would need a cutting torch and a lot of patience.
The man who had guarded the uranium on its short trip from the lab got into the back seat of
the first car. The open door revealed two more submachine guns in a rack on the floorboard.
The driver looked up at Groves. The General made a curt gesture. The first car drove off.
Precisely three minutes later, the second, third and fourth cars left. The third car contained the
uranium. Three minutes later, the last car left. All cars were in continuous radio contact with one
another. They would check in with the General at frequent, predetermined intervals. There was
no way the car or canister could be lost.
Yet Groves stared at the road a long time after the last car had disappeared. He hated knowing
that the uranium was physically out of his grasp.
Juarez
75 Hours Before Trinity
The eye of god was dusty. Tiny flecks of desert grime had settled on the god’s eye over the years,
blurring the sharp geometric patterns woven at the center of the design. The tiny tassles at each
point of the diamond-shaped framework were dirty, their bright colors made drab by time and
neglect.
Kestrel stared at the single eye, admiring its symmetry and symbolism… and the irony of its
Page 23
position over one of the busiest beds in Juarez. Perhaps the Aztec god whose eye hung there
found the prepaid writhings of two or more bodies amusing, but Kestrel doubted it. Even the
benign gods of his own Buddhist upbringing looked upon prostitution with displeasure.
As for himself, Kestrel felt like a man condemned to a curious penance in one of hell’s more
grubby anterooms.
Voyeurism was foreign to his nature, but he had spent many hours crouched in a tiny, concealed
alcove just off Rubia’s crib. Through the imported Indian screen, Kestrel had seen a procession
of straining buttocks and heard a quantity of practiced moans and lusty grunts.
Kestrel eased his cramped muscles by flexing his body subtly, using the discipline of karate that
had become second nature to him. The discipline was mental as well as physical. It helped him to
endure all of this in order to learn what Japan must know.
With a sigh, Kestrel looked from the dead god’s eye to the intricately carved screen nine inches
from his face. The figures on the screen depicted all the coital permutations that flexible,
determined human bodies could attain. Kestrel wished that reality had one-tenth the elegance of
the screen’s stylized matings. He had learned that viewing the unvarnished sex act was more
