City on the Moon

Nobody paid any attention to him. The other seven looked at Arlene. Raptly. Sadly. The man with the pince-nez looked at her with a peculiarly childlike wistfulness. The bearded man, with his arm shutting off another man's breath, smiled at her benevolently. There was a man who looked at her with absolutely expressionless eyes. There was a man whose eyes were filled with tears.

Kenmore bristled; Arlene was in his care. And these eight men of the Laboratory did not look at him, or Moreau, or the chief. They gazed at Arlene, and each of them regarded her with absolute absorption and each in a different manner.

"Look here!" said Kenmore. He raised his voice by instinct, and the thickness of the air amplified it, so that he almost winced at the sound. He went on: "I came up here with orders for you to stop all experimenting. It's been found down on Earth that a new method of computation proves that you'll only get undesirable results." The man with the pince-nez averted his eyes from Arlene long enough to regard Kenmore with high amusement. "My dear Mr. Kenmore! As if we did not know!" He looked back at Arlene.

Kenmore snapped, "What's happening here? What's the matter with all of you?"

Nobody bothered to answer. Arlene swallowed and said hesitantly, shocked by the loudness of her words, "Something must have happened! What is it that someone wants to leave to us?"

Voices spoke together: "Whether to die now, or . . ." "Shall we prove the chain-reaction . . ." "Nobody has the right to . . ." "Let me tell her . . ."

Kenmore felt cold chills running up and down his spine. These were eight of the best brains of Earth, and they were acting like children. Intolerable tension and unending acrimony and dispute could be read into even the peculiar rapture with which they looked at Arlene. It was as if they felt the exact reverse of her homesickness when she found that Earth could no longer be seen. These men looked at her as if she represented to them all the things in life of which the Laboratory had been empty. As if she meant gentleness and home, and what was normal and natural and right, in an atmosphere where madness was the norm.

Kenmore pointed his finger at the man in the pince-nez glasses. Ordinarily he would have felt abashed to speak to him, because of his eminence. Now he said, "You! You tell us!"

That very great man took off his glasses and polished them, peering at Kenmore with near-sighted eyes as he did so. He smiled at Arlene.

"It is really very simple," he said apologetically. "We were sent here to make the crucial experiments with a field of force . . ."

There were warning cries of "Careful!"

"I will be careful," the appointed spokesman said severely. "It was known that the field affected neutrons; nothing else would. We hoped to use it as a lens, like the fields in electron microscopes, to concentrate a neutron beam instead of electrons to a focus—to a point."

A clamor rose. "You want them to go back . . ."

"Don't say any more . . ." The man with the pince-nez shook his head. "I shall tell them nothing critical." He went on, to Arlene. "But we have found that there is a critical point of concentration of a neutron beam . . . Then he said to the others, "You see?"

The man in the chair on the wall nodded happily. "Yes! We know what you mean, but nobody else ever will!"

"A critical concentration," repeated the man with the pince-nez, "which sets up a chain reaction. Bombardment with a cyclotron means that few transformations take place. The atomic nuclei which are targets are so small, and relatively so far apart, that millions of particles have to be fired for every nucleus hit. But we can concentrate a beam of neutrons so that no nucleus—no nucleus!—escapes destruction in its path. You see?"

Arlene said hesitantly, "I'm not sure. But I'm sure Joe does."

The eight laughed delightedly.

"Charming!" said the man with the pince-nez. Then he added. "But not only nuclei are split. With practical speeds, neutrons are split! They must be! And the bursting of a neutron must release absolutely unchained power and unlimited destruction! Neutrons and positrons— every subatomic particle must then be bathed in pure power. Everyone must break—and in breaking, break others . . . We have a chain reaction, in which every substance—even hydrogen—is an atomic explosive! If one single neutron bursts, destruction spreads by contagion. If this Laboratory were destroyed, the moon and Earth-all the cosmos—would follow it!"

Arlene smiled, with an effort. "Then I take it you do not intend to use it on Earth."

"We do not intend," said the man with the pince-nez, apologetically, "to use it at all. But we know how to do it—therefore, we do not go back to Earth; Sooner or later some fool, some madman, some maniac, would threaten to destroy the Earth unless it yielded to him. And" some other madman would confront him with a similar demand. Two madmen, or ten, or a hundred, each demanding all power on penalty of destruction for all-humanity would be destroyed!"

Then he beamed at her. The man with the metallic voice cried out savagely, half-choked, "You fools! You—"