would I, but how could there be hydrogen in there?"
"There shouldn't be. But there's something screwy going on here, and I can't put my finger on it."
"Well, whatever it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room."
"O.K. Stand by. I'm going in."
He walked over to the firewall door. On the other side of it was a small chamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air would be swept out before he opened the inner door to go into the inner chamber itself. There was no need for an air lock, since small amounts of impurities in the He-4 didn't bother anything.
It was just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall door that he realized his mistake.
But it was too late.
The door jerked outward, and a hot wind picked him up and slammed him against the far wall.
There was a moment of pain.
Then—nothing.
There was something familiar about the man who was turning the wheel, but de Hooch couldn't place it. The man was wearing a black hood, as befitted a torturer and executioner.
"Idiot," said the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a little more pressure, "explain the following: If a half plus a half is equal to a whole, why is halfnium plus halfnium not equal to wholmium?"
Stretched as he was on the rack, de Hooch could not think straight because of the excruciating pain.
"Because a half is eight point two eight per cent heavier than a hole," said de Hooch.
"You are an idiot, none the less," said the torturer. He gave the wheel another twist. De Hooch wanted to scream, but he couldn't.
"Try again," said the torturer. "What is a half plus four plus four plus four plus four plus—"
"Stop!" screamed de Hooch. "Stop! Stop at the osmium!"
"Ah! But it didn't stop at the osmium," said the hooded man. "It went on and on and on. Plus four plus four plus four plus four plus four—until there were so many plus fours in there that the place looked like an old-fashioned golf course."
"My legs hurt," said de Hooch. The man was no longer wearing a hood, but de Hooch couldn't tell if it was Willows or himself.
"We will all go together when we go," said the man.
De Hooch turned his head away and looked at the ceiling.
And he realized that it was the ceiling of the antechamber.
"My legs hurt," he repeated. And he could hear the hoarse whisper inside the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on his back. He had been jarred around quite a bit in the suit.
He wondered if he could sit up. He managed to get both arms behind him and push himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The servos responded. He hurt all over, but a little experiment told him that he was only bruised. Nothing was broken. He hadn't been hit as hard as Ferguson and Metty had been.
"Willows?" he said. "Willows?"
There was no answer from the earphones.
He looked at the chronometer dial inside his helmet. Oh two forty-nine. He had been unconscious less than ten minutes.
The same glance brought his eyes to two other dials. The internal radiation of the suit was a little high, but nothing to worry about. But the dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without the protection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through those ten minutes.
Where was Willows?
And then he knew, and he pushed any thought of further help from that quarter out of his mind. What had to be done would have to be done by Peter de Hooch alone. He climbed to his feet.
His head hurt, and he swayed with nausea and pain. Only the massive weight of the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and he blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He found he was holding his breath, and he let it out.
The trouble had been so simple, and yet he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes, he had! He must have, subconsciously. Otherwise, how would he have guessed that the stuff in the sampling chamber was Osmium 187? Ferguson and Metty had been trying to make Mercury 203 by adding eight successive tritium nuclei to Hafnium 179, progressing through Tantalum 182, Tungsten 185, Rhenium 188, Osmium 191, Iridium 194, Platinum 197, and Gold 200, all of which were unstable.
But the Hydrogen 3 reaction had gone wrong. The doubling had set in, producing Helium 4. Successive additions of the alpha particles to Hafnium 179 had produced, first, Tungsten 183, and then Osmium 187, both of which were stable.
Ferguson and Metty, seeing that something was wrong, drew off a sample and then reset the reaction to produce the Hg-203 they wanted. Then they had come down to pick up the sample.
They hadn't realized that the helium production had gone wild. Much more helium than necessary was being produced, and the bleeder valve had failed. When they opened the sample chamber, they got a blast of high-pressure helium right in the face. The shock of that sudden release had jarred the whole atmosphere inside the reaction chamber, and the bleeder valve had let go. But the violence of the pressure release had caused a fault to the surface to open up and had closed the valve again—jammed it, probably. There had been enough pressure left in there to blow de Hooch up against the nearest wall when he opened the door. Since the pressure indicator system was connected to the release system, when one had failed, the other had failed. That's why the pressure gauge had indicated normal.
And, of course, it had been the pressure differential that had caused the controls to stick. Well, they ought to be all right now, then. He decided he'd better take a look.
The firewall door was still open. He walked over to it and stepped into the small chamber that led to the inner reactor room. The inside door, much weaker than the outer firewall door, had been blown off its hinges. He stepped past it and went on in.
What he saw made him jerk his glance away from the periscope in his helmet and check his radiation detectors again. Not much change. Relief swept over him as he looked back at the reactor itself. The normally dead black walls were glowing a dull red. It was pure thermal heat, but it shouldn't be doing that.
Moving quickly, he went over to the place where the control cables came in through the firewall. It took him several minutes to assure himself that they would function from the control room now. There was nothing more to do but get out of here and get that reaction damped.
He went out again, closing the firewall door behind him and dogging it tight. There would be no more helium production now.
He went through the radiation trap to the decontamination chamber to wash off whatever it was he had picked up.
The decontamination room was a mess.
De Hooch stared at the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushed out of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well, he could still scrub himself off.
Except that the scrubbers weren't working.
He swore under
