staring down at me, and there was Ambassador Oumansky, and he said he’d come on the show. He’s a nice man, with wonderful manners.”
“Fantastic! Terrific! Marry me!” Cleveland looked at his watch and passed a hand over his bristly face. The Bolshie ambassador himself! What luck! He jumped up, pulled the small girl into his arms, and gave her a kiss.
Madeline broke free, blushing darkly, glancing over her shoulder at the open door, and straightening her dress.
“You’re a doll, Madeline. Now listen. While I clean up, how about drafting an intro and some questions and bringing them to me in the dressing room?”
The ambassador arrived promptly. Hugh Cleveland had not met a Russian Communist in his life, and he was amazed at Oumansky’s excellent clothes, natural bearing, and smooth English. The consul was even smoother. The two Russians settled themselves, perfectly at ease, at the microphones.
“Mr. Ambassador, it is a privilege for me, and for
“Thank you very much. Since our two countries are now in a common struggle,” Oumansky said, “I welcome the opportunity to give the American people the assurance of my country’s fighting spirit on your popular program,
The consul handed Oumansky a typewritten document, to the horror of Cleveland, whose iron rule it was to cut off prepared statements.
“Well, Mr. Ambassador, if I may simply say—”
“Thank you. For brevity I have abridged the speech, but here are significant portions of Foreign Minister Molotov’s exact words:
Cleveland held up a hand and tried to speak, but the ambassador rolled right on: “
“Mr. Ambassador, about that treaty, if I may ask just one—”
“Excuse me, I shall continue, and perhaps if time permits we can have a discussion too,” Oumansky said with unruffled charm, and he went on reading sentences and paragraphs neatly underlined in purple ink. Cleveland made two more vain efforts to interrupt, which the ambassador pleasantly ignored, proceeding to the last lines on the last page:
“
“To these eloquent words,” said Oumansky, “I have little to add. I must return to my many official duties, and I thank you for this opportunity.”
He passed the paper to the consul, smiled at Cleveland, and moved as though to rise. Desperately, Cleveland stuck in, “Mr. Ambassador, I know how pressed you are in this tragic hour. I won’t detain you. Just tell me this. How will the American Communists react to the news? They’ve been violently advocating neutrality, you know. They campaigned tooth and nail against Lend-Lease. Are they going to make a fast about-face now?”
Oumansky sat back placidly. “Most certainly not. As you know, the working class all over the world is in its nature peace-loving. It has nothing to gain from war and everything to lose. The war began as a struggle between imperialistic powers, so the workers — as, for instance, the American Communist Party, as you just mentioned — opposed the war. But the Soviet Union has no empire and no colonies. It is simply a country of peasants and workers who want peace. In attacking us, the German Fascists threw off their mask and revealed themselves as the brutish common enemy of mankind. Therefore all peoples will now unite in solidarity to crush the German Fascist beasts. The American people too are a peace-loving people. The Soviet people will count on their support of our righteous battle.”
“Mr. Ambassador—”
“In this connection,” said Oumansky, “the historic British pledge of full support, which Mr. Churchill has just given, will be of decisive influence, since Winston Churchill is so justly admired in the United States for his heroic stand against Hitlerism. Good morning, and thank you very much.”
As Madeline escorted the Russians out of the studio, Cleveland was saying, looking after them with exasperation, “
The sunrise, coming to Chicago, was invisible; a thunderstorm was blanketing the city. Through dark pelting rain, Palmer Kirby was riding in a taxicab to a secret meeting of the President’s Uranium Committee, which was interviewing engineers from all over the country. The purpose of the committee was to find out, from the practical men who had to do it, whether enough U-235 could be produced within the predictable time span of the war — which was set at four or five more years — to make atomic bombs or power plants. Dr. Lawrence’s letter had asked him to bring a feasibility report on manufacturing certain giant electromagnets. The men were old friends; over the years Kirby had supplied the Nobel Prize winner with much specially built equipment for his cyclotron work.
Palmer Kirby worked on the borderline where commerce exploited science; he always referred to himself as a money-maker, but he had some scientific standing, because of his early work at the California Institute of Technology. Kirby knew what the giant electromagnets were for. His opinion on producing uranium for military purposes was definite. Not only could it be done; Kirby thought the Germans were well along to doing it. The invasion of Russia struck him as a scary corroboration of this.
Ordinary uranium looks like nickel. Chemically it is lively, but nothing can make it blow up. Its strange radioactivity will fog photographic plates; it may feel warmish; and very long exposure to it may give a human being slight burns. For better or worse, in the matter scattered through the universe, there is also a tiny trace of the stuff, chemically the same, but different in atomic structure: the explosive isotope U-235. We know all about this now, but in 1941 scientists only guessed that a U-235 bomb might work. It was all theory. The problem was first, to find out whether a controlled chain reaction of uranium fission was possible, or whether some unknown fact of nature would stop it; second — if the first answer was yes — to get enough pure uranium 235 to try exploding it; and third, if that worked, to produce enough of the stuff to cow the world. When he heard the news of Hitler’s attack on Russia, Kirby decided that
From his narrow vantage point, he saw the entire war as a race between Germans and Americans to make uranium 235 explode. Everything else — submarine sinkings, land campaigns, air battles — more and more looked to him like vain blood-spillings, inconclusive obsolete gestures before this one big showdown. Hitler’s plunge into Russia, opening a second front and releasing England from near doom, struck him as a madman’s mistake — unless the Germans had successfully created a controlled chain reaction. If Hitler had uranium bombs or could count on having them within a year or two, the war was decided, and the Germans were simply making a gigantic slave raid in Russia, preparatory to assuming the rule of the earth.
From the information Kirby had, this appeared likely. It was the Germans who had discovered uranium fission. In 1939 they had set aside the whole Kaiser Wilhelm Institut to work on military use of the discovery. In conquered Norway, intelligence reported, they were making large amounts of heavy water. There was only one possible military use of heavy water, the queer substance with the doubled hydrogen nucleus — as a neutron slower in uranium fission.
The United States had no nuclear reactors, no technique for building one, no scientist who was sure a chain reaction could be created. In the whole country there were not forty pounds of uranium suitable for experiments; there was no setup for producing ordinary uranium in quantity, let alone the very rare isotope 235 that might blow up; and for all the meetings of the Uranium Committee and the whisperings among scientists, the government had
