robe and walked down to the kitchen. It could have been worse. Both kids liked oatmeal, and actually preferred the flavored instant kind. She boiled the water for it, then turned the range to low heat while she walked back to wake the little ones up. Ten minutes later, Sally and Little Jack were washed and dressed on their way to the kitchen. Sally arrived first, setting the TV to the Disney Channel in time for Mousercise. Cathy took her ten minutes of peace to look at the morning paper and drink her coffee.
On the bottom right-hand side of the front page was an article about Russia. Well, maybe that's one of the things that's bothering Jack. She decided to read it. Maybe she could talk to him, find out why he was so… distracted? Was it just that, maybe?
“… disappointed with the ability of CIA to deliver data on the problem. There are further rumors of an underway investigation. An administration official confirms the rumors that a senior CIA official is suspected of financial misconduct and also of sexual improprieties. The name of this official has not been revealed, but he is reportedly very senior and responsible for coordinating information for the administration…”
Sexual improprieties? What did that mean? Who was it?
He.
Very senior and responsible for…
That was Jack. That was her husband. That was the phrase they used for someone at his level. In a quiet moment of total clarity, she knew that it had to be.
Jack… playing around? My Jack?
It wasn't possible.
Was it?
His inability to perform, his tiredness, the drinking, the distraction? Was it possible that the reason he didn't… someone else was exciting him?
It wasn't possible. Not Jack. Not her Jack.
But why else…? She was still attractive — everyone thought so. She was still a good wife — there was no doubt of that? Jack wasn't ill. She would have caught any gross symptoms; she was a doctor, and a good one, and she knew she would not have missed anything important. She went out of her way to be nice to Jack, to talk to him, to let him know that she loved him, and…
Perhaps it wasn't likely, but was it possible?
Yes.
No. Cathy set the paper down and sipped at her coffee. Not possible. Not her Jack.
It was the last hour of the last leg in the manufacturing process. Ghosn and Fromm watched the lathe with what looked like detachment, but was in both cases barely controlled excitement. The Freon liquid being sprayed on the rotating metal prevented their seeing the product whose final manufacture was underway. That didn't help, even though both knew that seeing would not have helped in the least. The part of the plutonium mass being machined was hidden from their sight by other metal, and even if that had been otherwise, they both knew that their eyes were too coarse an instrument to detect imperfections. Both watched the machine read-out of the computer systems. Tolerances indicated by the machine were well within the twelve angstroms specified by Herr Doktor Fromm. They had to believe the computer, didn't they?
“Just a few more centimeters,” Ghosn said, as Bock and Qati joined them.
“You've never explained the Secondary part of the unit,” the Commander said. He'd taken to calling the bomb “the unit”.
Fromm turned, not really grateful for the distraction, though he knew he should be. “What do you wish to know?”
“I understand how the Primary works, but not the Secondary,” Qati said, simply and reasonably.
“Very well. The theoretical side of this is quite straightforward, once you understand the principle. That was the difficult part, you see, discovering the principle. It was thought at first that making the Secondary work was simply a matter of temperature — that is what distinguishes the center of a star, ja? Actually it is not, the first theoreticians overlooked the matter of pressure. That is rather strange in retrospect, but pioneering work is often that way. The key to making the Secondary work is managing the energy in such a way as to convert energy into pressure at the same time as you use its vast heat, and also to change its direction by ninety degrees. That is no small task when you are talking about redirecting seventy kilotons of energy,” Fromm said smugly. “However, the belief that to make the Secondary function is a matter of great theoretical difficulty, that is a fiction. The real insight Ulam and Teller had was a simple one, as most great insights are. Pressure is temperature. What they discovered — the secret — is that there is no secret. Once you understand the principles involved, what remains is just a question of engineering. Making the bomb work is computationally, not technically, demanding. The difficult part is to make the weapon portable. That is pure engineering,” Fromm said again.
“Soda straws?” Bock asked, knowing that his countryman wanted to be asked about that. He was a smug bastard.
“I cannot know for sure, but I believe this to be my personal innovation. The material is perfect. It is light, it is hollow, and it is easily twisted into the proper configuration.” Fromm walked over to the assembly table and returned with one. “The base material is polyethylene, and as you see, we have coated the outside with copper and the inside with rhodium. The length of the 'straw' is sixty centimeters, and the inside diameter is just under three millimeters. Many thousands of them surround the Secondary, in bundles twisted one hundred eighty degrees into a geometric shape called a helix. A helix is a useful shape. It can direct energy while retaining its ability to radiate heat in all directions.”
Inside every engineer, Qati thought, was a frustrated teacher. “But what do they do?”
“Also… the first emission off the Primary is massive gamma radiation. Just behind that are the X-rays. In both cases, we are talking about high-energy photons, quantum particles which carry energy but which have no mass —”
“Light waves,” Bock said, remembering his Gymnasium physics. Fromm nodded.
“Correct. Extremely energetic light waves of a different — higher — frequency. Now, we have this vast amount of energy radiating from the Primary. Some we can reflect or warp towards the Secondary by use of the channels we have built. Most is lost, of course, but the fact is that we will have so much energy at our fingertips that we need only a small fraction of it. The X-rays sweep down the straws. Much of their energy is absorbed by the metallic coatings, while the oblique surfaces reflect some further down, allowing further energy absorption. The polyethylene also absorbs a good deal of energy. And what do you suppose happens?”
“Absorb that much energy, and it must explode, of course,” Bock said, before Qati could.
“Very good, Herr Bock. When the straws explode — actually they convert into plasma, but having split straws, we will not split hairs, eh? — the plasma expands radially to their axes, thus converting the axial energy from the Primary into radial energy imploding on the Secondary.”
The lightbulb went on in Qati's head. “Brilliant, but you lose half of the energy, that part expanding outward.”
“Yes and no. It still makes an energy barrier, and that is what we need. Next, the uranium fins around the body of the Secondary are also converted to plasma — from the same energy flux, but more slowly than the straws due to their mass. This plasma has far greater density, and is pressed inward. Within the actual Secondary casing, there is two centimeters of vacuum, since that space will be evacuated. So, we have a 'running start' for the plasma that is racing inward.”
“So, you use the energy from the Primary, redirected into a right-angle turn to perform the same function on the Secondary that is first done by chemical explosives?” Qati saw.
“Excellent, Commander!” Fromm replied, just patronizingly enough to be noticed. “We now have a relatively heavy mass of plasma pressing inward. The vacuum gap gives it room to accelerate before slamming into the Secondary. This compresses the Secondary. The secondary assembly is lithium-deuteride and lithium-hydride, both doped with tritium, surrounded by uranium 238. This assembly is crushed violently by the imploding plasma. It is also being bombarded by neutrons from the Primary, of course. The combination of heat, pressure, and neutron bombardment causes the lithium to fission into tritium. The tritium immediately begins the fusion process, generating vast quantities of high-energy neutrons along with the liberated energy. The neutrons attack the U238, causing a fast-fission reaction, adding to the overall Secondary yield.”
“The key, as Herr Fromm said,” Ghosn explained, “is managing the energy.”
