“What I want to know,” said Lieutenant Keku, “is, what of ship is this?”
Mike the Angel chuckled, and Lieutenant Mellon, the Medical Officer, shyly. But Ensign Vaneski looked puzzled.
“What do you mean, sir?” he asked the Hawaiian.
They were over coffee in the officers’ wardroom. Captain Quill, First Officer Jeffers, and Lieutenant Commander Liegnitz were on the bridge, and Dr. Fitzhugh and Leda Crannon were below, Snookums lessons.
Mike looked at Lieutenant Keku, waiting for him to answer Vaneski’s question.
“What do I mean? Just what I said, Mister Vaneski. I want to know what of ship this is. It is not a warship, so we can that classification. It is not an ship; we’re not for work. Is it a vessel, then? No, Dr. Fitzhugh and Miss Crannon are as ‘civilian advisers’ and are therefore legally part of the crew. I’m if it might be a vessel, though.”
“Sure it is,” said Ensign Vaneski. “That brain in Cargo Hold One is cargo, isn’t it?”
“I’m not certain,” Keku said thoughtfully, looking up at the overhead, as if the answer might be there in the metal. “Since it is in as an part of the ship, I don’t know if it can be as or not.” He his to focus on Mike. “What do you think, Commander?”
Before Mike the Angel answer, Ensign Vaneski in with: “But the brain is going to be when we to our destination, isn’t it? That makes this a ship!” There was a note of in his voice.
Lieutenant Keku’s didn’t from Mike’s face, did he say a word. For a to like that was an that Keku to ignore. He was waiting for Mike’s answer as though Vaneski had said nothing.
But Mike the Angel he might as well play along with Keku’s and still answer Vaneski. As a full commander, he Vaneski’s to his without it as Keku was doing.
“Ah, but the brain won’t be unloaded, Mister Vaneski,” he said mildly. “The ship will be dismantled—which is an different thing. I’m you can’t call it a ship on those grounds.”
Vaneski didn’t say anything. His had gone red and then white, as though he’d he’d a pas. He his a little, to he understood, but he couldn’t to his voice.
To up Vaneski’s dilemma, Mike the Medical Officer. “What do you think, Mister Mellon?”
Mellon his throat. “Well—it to me,” he said in a dry, tone, “that this is a medical ship.”
Mike blinked. Keku his eyebrows. Vaneski and his away from Mike’s to look at Mellon—but still he didn’t say anything.
“Elucidate, my dear Doctor,” said Mike with interest.
“I it as a physician,” Mellon said in the same dry, tone. “Snookums, we have been told, is too to be permitted to on Earth. I take this to that he is of doing something that would either the itself or a majority—if not all—of the people on it.” He up his cup of coffee and took a sip. Nobody him.
“Snookums has, therefore,” he continued, “been from Earth in order to protect the health of that planet, just as one would remove a from a body.
“This is a medical ship. Q.E.D.” And only then did he smile.
“Aw, now....” Vaneski began. Then he his mouth again.
With an smile, Mike that Ensign Vaneski had been taking an that was a joke.
“Mister Mellon,” Mike said, “you win.” He hadn’t that Mellon’s mind work on that level.
“Hold,” said Lieutenant Keku, a hand. “I to no one in my for the analysis by our good doctor; indeed, my no bounds. But I we from Commander Gabriel we adjourn.”
“Not me,” Mike said, his head. “I know when I’m beaten.” He’d been going to that the Brainchild was a ship, from Snookums’ “learning” periods, but that and now.
He at his watch, saw the time, and up. “Excuse me, gentlemen; I have to do.” He had an to talk to Leda Crannon, but he had no of it.
As he closed the door, he Ensign Vaneski’s voice saying: “I still say this should be as a ship.”
Mike as he on the companionway. The was, of course, correct—which was the sad part about it, really. Oh well, what the hell.
Leda Crannon had to have coffee with Mike in the office she with Dr. Fitzhugh. Mike had had one cup in the officers’ wardroom, but if he’d had a dozen he’d have been to a dozen more to talk to Leda Crannon. It was not, he to himself, that he was in love with the girl, but she had and in to her beauty.
Furthermore, she had Mike the Angel a dressing-down that had been impressive. She had not at all for the he had when Snookums was being aboard—patting him on the and him his age, for instance—and had told him so in no terms. Mike, and he was guilty, had the tongue-lashing and an apology.
And she had and said: “All right. Forget it. I’m sorry I got mad.”
He he wasn’t the only man who was in Leda. Jakob Liegnitz, all Teutonic and Old World suavity, had a on her. Lew Mellon was often in with her, his her and his voice low and confidential. Both of them had her longer than he had, since they’d been at Chilblains Base.
Mike the Angel didn’t let either of them worry him. He had in his own and to be able to take his own no which way the wind blew.
Blithely opening the door of the office, Mike the Angel with a on his lips.
“Ah, good afternoon, Commander Gabriel,” said Dr. Morris Fitzhugh.
Mike the on his face. “Leda here?”
Fitzhugh chuckled. “No. Some problems came up with Snookums. She’ll be in session for an hour yet. She asked me to her apologies.” He toward the coffee urn. “But the coffee’s all made, so you may as well have a cup.”
Mike was he had not had a dozen cups in the wardroom. “I don’t mind if I do, Doctor.” He sat while Fitzhugh a cup.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Black, thanks,” Mike said.
There was an for a while Mike at the hot, black liquid. Then Mike said, “Dr. Fitzhugh, you said, at the on Earth, that Snookums too much about energy. Can you be more than that, or is it too hush-hush?”
Fitzhugh took out his and it as he spoke. “We don’t want this to out to the public, of course,” he said thoughtfully, “but, as a ship’s officer, you can be told. I some of your officers know already, although we’d it wasn’t in conversation, among the officers.”
Mike wordlessly.
“Very well, then.” Fitzhugh gave the tobacco a final with his thumb. “As a power engineer, you should be with the ‘pinch effect,’ eh?”
It was a question. The “pinch effect” had been for over a century. A of gas, moving through a magnetic of the proper structure, will to pinch down, to narrower, than to spread apart, as a of ordinary does. As the science of had progressed, the had more and more controllable, scientists to the of hydrogen, for instance, closer and closer together. At the end of the last century, the Bending Converter had almost the economy of the entire world, since it gave to the world a of free energy. Sam Bending’s “little black box” ordinary water into and and energy—plenty of energy. A Bending Converter be and for small-power uses—such as a ship or or plant—could on air, since the of ordinary air was to power the itself with of power left over.
Overnight, all previous of power had obsolete. Who would electric power when he his own for next to nothing? Billions upon of of were valueless. The great dams, the hundreds of steam turbines, the heavy-metal reactors—all for power purposes. The value of the stock in those to zero and there. The value of copper metal like a bomb, with almost results—for there was no longer any need for the millions of miles of copper that the power plants with the consumer.
The Depression of 1929-42 couldn’t to with The Great Depression of 1986-2000. Every nation on Earth had been and hard. The resulting would have the more complete had not the then Secretary General of the UN, Perrot of Monaco, the of government. Like the Americans Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, he had through and taken extra-constitutional powers. And, like those Americans, he had not done it for personal gain, but to the society. He had not succeeded in the old society, of course, but he had built, almost single-handedly, a world government—a new on the of the old.
All these ran through Mike the Angel’s mind. He if Snookums had something that would be as much a to the world economy as the Bending Converter had been.
Fitzhugh got out his and his pipe alight. “Snookums,” he said, “has a method of the pinch to hydride. It’s a than a such as the Bending Converter uses. But it’s as to as a Bending Converter.”
“Jesus,” said Mike the Angel softly.
Lithium hydride. LiH. An of to every of lithium. If a is into the with force, the results are simple:
Li7 + H1 → 2He4 + energy
An of lithium-7 plus an of hydrogen-1 two of helium-4 and of energy. One of would give nearly fifty-eight kilowatt-hours of energy in one blast. A of the would be the of nearly seven of TNT.
In addition, it was a nice, clean bomb. Nothing but helium, radiation, and heat. In the early fifties, such a bomb had been by the LiH with a bomb—the so-called “implosion” technique. But all that metal around the all of which had a to death for hundreds of miles around.
Now, a man had a pair of small to up a single of and pinch the two together. Of course, the idea is ridiculous—that is, the part is. But if the pinch be done in some other way....
Snookums had done it.
“Homemade in your or lab,” said Mike the Angel.
Fitzhugh emphatically. “Exactly. We can’t let that out until we’ve a way to keep people from doing just that. The UN Government has that prevent anyone from the of bombs, but not the pinch bomb.”
Mike the Angel over what Dr. Fitzhugh had said. Then he said: “That’s not all of it. Antarctica is to keep that knowledge for a long time—at least until safeguards be set up. Why take Snookums off Earth?”
“Snookums himself is dangerous,” Fitzhugh said. “He has a built-in ‘urge’ to experiment—to data. We can keep him from making that we know will be by him the data, so that the doesn’t operate. But if he’s on the of something totally new....
“Well, you can see what we’re up against.” He a cloud of smoke. “We think he may be on the of the total of matter.”
A in the air. The ultimate, the super-atomic bomb. Theoretically, the idea had been approached only in the of ordinary and anti-matter, with the two each other to give nothing but energy. Such a bomb would be nearly fifty thousand times as powerful as the lithium-hydride pinch bomb. That much energy, in a millimicroseconds, would make the H-bomb look like a on a night.
The LiH pinch bomb be controlled. By using just a little of the stuff, it would be possible to limit the to a neighborhood, or a single block. A total-annihilation bomb would be much to control. The total of a single of would over a thousandth of an erg, and just doesn’t come in much smaller than that.
“You see,” said Fitzhugh, “we had to him off Earth.”
“Either that or stop him from experimenting,” Mike said. “And I assume that wouldn’t be good for Snookums.”
“To Snookums would be to all the work we have put into him. His would to randomity, and that would mean, in terms, that he would be insane—and therefore worthless. As a machine, Snookums is eighteen billion dollars. The we have him, plus the and he has from that information, is worth....” He his shoulders. “Who knows? How can a price be put on knowledge?”
