Sebring stepped aside, moving to a low table where he found a glass of water and drained it in one go. Oppenheimer stood at the podium, gripping each side with one hand. “Hello everyone.”
The crowd murmured a greeting.
“It is not possible to be a scientist,” he said, “unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity.”
Charlie noticed that the man, as he spoke, had risen on his tiptoes.
“And that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge. And”—he gave all in the room a stern look—“are willing to take the consequences.”
Then he winked at them, as if to say yes, we all secretly share that willingness. He relinquished the podium and Sebring resumed his speech. “First, theory. Second, practice. Between them, an intermission.”
He smiled in feigned casualness, and continued without notes.
“If you place your hand in still water, it will look as though your wrist has broken. This is called refraction. If you play on a swing, at the peak of your height you experience weightlessness. You see, it is easy to find exceptions to what we consider natural laws. The only force that we currently know to be universal, from our labs to the theoretical reaches of outer space, is in the atom. Protons in acute vibration, electrons orbiting at the fastest speed that anything moves, and as scientists discovered not twelve years ago, neutral particles that give the atom mass and stability. Unlike light, which is easily bent, unlike gravity, which can be defied on a playground, the power that holds these tiny objects together has no exceptions, anywhere, from the alpha of the periodic table . . .” At this he touched a pointer to the top-left corner, occupied by hydrogen. “. . . to the omega.” Sebring hovered the pointer over the lower right, the heavy metals.
“Imagine if you could harness the energy that animates these atoms, indeed that animates everything in the universe. Suppose you could somehow slice these particles apart, and as they sundered, they made a small, a very small, pop. Are you with me?”
No one spoke. No one moved.
“For most of this chart, it is not possible to perform such a slicing. But when we investigate the heavier atoms—uranium, plutonium—we find less stability. In fact, people in this very room have successfully divided them into parts, using for a knife a single neutron moving at high speed. One uranium atom, if cut correctly, will divide into barium or radium or other things, with a minuscule pop. This we call fission. The division also throws off additional neutrons, which might slice other nearby uranium atoms. This we call a chain reaction. Pop pop pop. Do you follow me?”
Monroe leaned forward again. “Is this supposed to be the gunfight scene?”
“Shh,” Charlie said. “I’m trying to understand.”
Sebring glanced at them. “Is there a question?”
“’Scuse me, sir,” Monroe said. “Please go on.”
“Here is the crux of part one.” Sebring faced the full room again. “Food for thought during intermission: If you put enough of these heavy atoms close together, and trigger them with enough neutrons, the chain reaction pop will exceed in energy any other process known to mankind. For generating electricity, operating the heaviest machinery, or enabling weaponry whose force exceeds our imagination. Once again: exceeding in energy any other process known to mankind.”
Sebring left the podium to fetch another glass of water. In light of the enormity of what he had to say, Charlie thought the man was rather small.
The crowd dispersed onto the patio, with none of the hearty conversation that typified intermissions at Fuller Lodge events. Charlie and his pals wandered farther, across the grass to an empty basketball court. Monroe picked up a basketball and took a shot. It hit the rim and ricocheted straight back to him. “What do you fellas think?”
“Nomenclature,” Giles said.
“Sorry?” Monroe dribbled the ball once. Low on air, it barely bounced.
“Part one was about naming things. The frightening part is still ahead.”
“Maybe,” Monroe said. “Mister Charlie?”
“I’m digesting,” he answered. “My thing is math. Not atoms.”
“Yes,” Giles said. “Occhiolism.”
Monroe laughed. “How come you don’t ever use human people words?”
“It means an awareness of the smallness of your perspective.” Giles rapped his knuckles on the bark of a pine. “Tree, right?”
“Looks like one to me,” Monroe said.
“Yes. Made of atoms, collected in nice sturdy molecules. But if those atoms can be split? To make an explosive? Then it’s no longer only a tree. Everything contains the potential for violent transformation.”
Charlie tapped the basketball in Monroe’s hands. “What do you think?”
“Well,” he drawled. “I don’t rightly know.”
Giles made a face like a gambler who suspects he’s being bluffed. “Try.”
“All right.” He took another shot, but it went wide of the whole backboard, rolling away in the grass. “Always hated this dang game.”
“The innate athleticism of a scientist,” Giles said.
“Come on,” Charlie urged. “Tell us.”
“Fellas,” Monroe shook his head, “I am twenty-six years old, and don’t know a thing about any of this truck. But I do have a PhD in chemistry from the University of Kentucky, so fresh the ink ain’t dried. I predict, soon as we’re back in there, we’re gonna be hearing about beryllium.”
Charlie trotted off to fetch the ball. “Why is that?”
“Neutrons. That element’s a regular neutron factory.”
“Explicate,” Giles said.
“You know the knife he was yapping about? Neutrons to cut atoms apart? Beryllium’s a knife thrower. With nine arms.”
“Hey, guys?” It was one of Giles’s friends from Electronics, calling from the patio. “They’re starting up again.”
“Be right along,” Monroe yelled back.
They fell into stride beside one another. Giles was frowning and Monroe noticed. “Something in your craw?”
Giles nodded. “Charlie, you may want to skip this part.”
“And miss the application of the theory we just heard? Not a chance.”
“You may not like what you hear.”
Charlie slowed. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“In fact, yes,” Giles answered. “Everyone in Electronics does.”
Charlie’s face grew serious. “Do you think I’m not smart enough to understand?”
“Oh I wish.”
Monroe snorted. “What in hell does that mean?”
“That Charlie will understand more of Sebring’s talk than I wish he did.”
“Hey, fellas?” the guy on the patio yelled. “He’s starting.”
Sebring had already begun, as the boys crept across the front to their seats.
“The idea,” he was saying, standing beside a flip chart with a drawing that resembled a cannon, “is that adding one mass of uranium to another mass causes a chain reaction of great volatility. We call it ‘going critical.’ In a lab, we dipped a control rod into a pile, and instantly the activity was greater than our Geiger counters could measure. When we withdrew the control rod, the reaction ceased. This design,” he tapped the drawing, “modeled after a gun, shoots a plug of uranium into a mass that is just shy of critical. The result is explosive. Another secret lab, in Tennessee, is amassing uranium for such a device. Our task here is more complicated. Let’s peel it off in layers.”