“What has happened? Did they get Henley-Davenport out of the wreck?”
“No, there’s no hope of that, Jack. He’s dead; and the best thing one can say is that he must have been killed instantaneously. But he’s done the trick for us, if we can only follow his track. He evidently tapped atomic energy of some kind or other. Did you notice the sharpness of the explosion before you were knocked out? There’s never been anything like it.”
“What’s going to happen now?” I was still unable to think clearly.
“I’ve sent Mitchell down to Henley-Davenport’s house to look at his last notes—he kept them there and he promised me to indicate each day what he proposed to do next, so that we’d have something to go on if anything like this happened. Mitchell will ring up as soon as he has found them.”
I heard afterwards that among the ruins of the laboratory Nordenholt had been struck by a falling beam and had just escaped with his life; but his voice gave no hint of it. I think that his complete concentration upon the main problem prevented him from realising that he might be badly hurt.
The telephone bell rang suddenly and Nordenholt went to the receiver.
“Yes, Mitchell. … You’ve got the notes? … Good. … You can repeat what he was doing? … No doubt about it? … All right. Start at once. We must have it immediately, cost what it may. … Come round here before you begin; but get going at once. There isn’t a minute to spare.”
Nordenholt replaced the receiver.
“I thought I could trust Henley-Davenport,” he said. “He’s left everything in order, notes written up to lunchtime complete and a full draft of his last experiment, which will allow Mitchell to carry on.”
A few minutes later, Mitchell himself appeared and gave us some further details. In his jottings, Henley-Davenport had suggested some possible modifications of the experiment which had ended so disastrously; and Mitchell proposed to try the effect of these alterations in the conditions. Before he left us, he sat down at Nordenholt’s desk and made a few notes of the process he intended to try, handing the paper to Nordenholt when he had finished. I can still remember his alert expression as he wrote and the almost finical care with which he flicked the ash from the end of the cigarette as he rose from the desk. It was the last time any of us saw him.
“Well, that’s all. I’m off.”
Nordenholt rose stiffly from his chair and shook hands with Mitchell as he went out. Then he passed to the telephone and rang up a number.
“Is that you, Kingan? Go across to the South Wing of the Chemistry place. Mitchell is there. See all that he does and then clear out before he tries the experiment. We must keep track of things, come what may. If he goes down, you will take on after him. Goodbye.”
Just after seven o’clock, there was another tremendous explosion; but this time the concussion seemed less violent than before. Mitchell himself was not killed outright; but he suffered injuries which proved fatal within a few days. Meanwhile the work went on. One after another, the Chemistry section of Nordenholt’s young men went into the furnace, some to be killed instantaneously, others to escape alive, but blasted almost out of recognition by the forces which they unchained. Yet none of them faltered. Link by link they built up the chain which was to bring safety to the Area; and each link represented a life lost or a body crippled. Day after day the work went on, interrupted periodically by the rending crash of these fearful explosions, until at last it seemed almost beyond hope that the problem would ever be solved. But ten days later Barclay staggered into Nordenholt’s room, smothered in bandages, with one arm useless at his side, and gasped out the news that he had been successful.
Looking back on that moment, I sometimes wonder that we were not almost hysterical with joy; but as a matter of fact, none of us said anything at all. Probably we did not really grasp the thing at the time. I know that I was busy getting a drink ready for Barclay, who had collapsed as soon as he gave his news; and all that I remember of Nordenholt is a picture of him standing looking out of the window with his back to us. Certainly it wasn’t the kind of scene one might have imagined.
XIX
The Breaking-Strain
Although Barclay’s work furnished us with the means of tapping the stores of energy which lie imprisoned within the atoms of elementary matter, it did not place us immediately in a position to utilise these immense forces for practical purposes. To tell the truth, we were in much the same position as a savage to whom a dynamite cartridge has been given, ready fitted with a detonator. We could liberate the energy, but at first we could not bring it under control.
The next few weeks were spent in planning and building machine after machine. All the best talent of Nordenholt’s group of engineers was brought to bear on the problem; but time after time we had to admit failure. Either the engines were too fragile for the power which they employed or there was some radical defect in their construction which could only be detected on trial. Thus the days passed in a series of disappointments, until it seemed almost as though hope of success was fading before our eyes.
During that period, Nordenholt himself grew visibly older. It was the last lap in his great race against Time; and I think that this final strain
