Hiroshima device for less than a fifth of the reaction mass — twenty-fivefold improvement in efficiency, ja? And we can improve that by almost a factor of ten.
“Now a really expert design team, with the proper facilities could advance that by another factor of… perhaps four. Modern warheads are the most elegant, the most fascinating—”
Two megatons?' Ghosn asked. Was it possible?
“We cannot do it here,” Fromm said, the sorrow manifest in his voice. “The available information is insufficient. The physics are straightforward, but there are engineering concerns, and there are no published articles to aid us in the bomb-design process. Remember that warhead tests are being carried out even today to make the bombs smaller and yet more efficient. One must experiment in this field, as with any other, and we cannot experiment. Nor do we have the time or money to train technicians to execute the design. I could come up with a theoretical design for a megaton-plus device, but in truth it would have only a fifty-percent likelihood of success. Perhaps a little more, but it would not be a practical undertaking without a proper experimental-test program.”
“What can you do?” Qati asked.
“I can make this into a weapon with a nominal yield of between four hundred and five hundred kilotons. It will be roughly a cubic meter in size and weigh roughly five hundred kilos.” Fromm paused to read the looks on their faces. “It will not be an elegant device, and it will be overly bulky and heavy. It will also be quite powerful.” It would be far more clever in design than anything American or Russian technicians had managed in the first fifteen years of the nuclear age, and that, Fromm thought, wasn't bad at all.
“Explosive containment?” Ghosn asked.
“Yes.” This young Arab was very clever, Fromm thought. “The first bombs used massive steel cases. Ours will use explosives — bulky but light, and just as effective. We will squirt tritium into the core at the moment of ignition. As in the original Israeli design, that will generate large quantities of neutrons to boost the fission reaction; that reaction in turn will blast additional neutrons into another tritium supply, causing a fusion reaction. The energy budget is roughly fifty kilotons from the primary and four hundred from the secondary.”
“How much tritium?” While not a difficult substance to obtain in small amounts — watchmakers and gunsight manufacturers used it, but only in microscopic quantities — Ghosn knew supplies over ten miligrams were virtually unobtainable, as he had just discovered himself. Tritium — not plutonium despite what Fromm had said — was the most expensive commercially available material on the planet. You could get tritium, but not plutonium.
“I have fifty grams,” Fromm announced smugly. ”Far more than we can actually use.'
“Fifty grams!” Ghosn exclaimed. “Fifty?”
“Our reactor complex was manufacturing special nuclear material for our own bomb project. When the socialist government fell, it was decided to give the plutonium to the Soviets — loyalty to the world socialist cause, you see. The Soviets didn't see things that way. Their reaction”—Fromm paused—“they called it… well, I will leave that to your imagination. Their reaction was so strong that I decided to hide our tritium production. As you know it is very valuable commercially — my insurance policy, you might call it.”
“Where?”
“In the basement of my home, concealed in some nickel-hydrogen batteries.”
Qati didn't like that, not one small bit. The Arab chieftain was not a well man, the German could see, and that did not help him conceal his feelings.
“I need to return to Germany in any case to get the machine tools,” he said.
“You have them?”
“Five kilometers from my home is the Karl Marx Astrophysical Institute. We were supposed to manufacture astronomical telescopes there, visual and X-ray telescopes. Alas, it never opened. Such a fine ‘cover’ wasted, eh? In the machine shop, in crates marked Astrophysical Instruments, are six high-precision, five-axis machines — the finest sort,” Fromm observed with a wolfish grin. “Cincinnati Milacron, from the United States of America. Precisely what the Americans use at their Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats, and Pantex fabrication plants.”
“What about operators?” Ghosn asked.
“We were training twenty of them, sixteen men and four women, each with a university degree… No, that would be too dangerous. It is not really necessary in any case. The machines are ‘user-friendly,’ as they say. We could do the work ourselves, but that would take too much time. Any skilled lensmaker — even a master gunsmith, as a matter of fact — can operate them. What was the business of Nobel Prize winners fifty years ago is now the work of a competent machinist,” Fromm said. “Such is the nature of progress, ja?”
“It could be, then again it could not,” Yevgeniy said. He'd been on duty for twenty hours straight, and only six hours of fitful sleep separated that from yet another, longer stint.
Finding it, if that indeed was what they'd done, had taken all of Dubinin's skill. He'd guessed that the American missile sub had headed south, and that her cruising speed was in the order of five knots. Next came environmental considerations. He'd had to stay close, within direct-path range, not allowing himself to come into a sonar convergence zone. The CZs were annular — donut — shaped areas around a vessel. Sound that went downward from a point within the convergence zone was refracted by the water temperature and pressure, traveling back and forth to the surface on a helical path at semi-regular intervals that in turn depended on environmental conditions. By staying out of them, relative to where he thought his target was, he could evade one means of detection. To do that meant that he had to stay within theoretical direct-path distance, the area in which sound simply traveled radially from its source. To accomplish that without detection, he had to remain on the top side of the thermocline layer — he figured that the American would remain under it — while allowing his towed- array sonar to hang below it. In this way, his own engine-plant noises would probably be deflected away from the American submarine.
Dubinin's tactical problem lay in his disadvantages. The American submarine was quieter than his, and possessed both better sonars and better sonar-operators. Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniy Nikolayevich Ryskov was a very bright young officer, but he was the only sonar expert aboard who might fairly be matched against the American counterparts, and the boy was burning himself out. Captain Dubinin's only advantage lay in himself. He was a fine tactician, and knew it. And his American counterpart was not, Dubinin thought, and didn't know it. There was a final disadvantage. By staying on top of the layer, he made counter-detection by an American patrol aircraft easier, but Dubinin was willing to run that risk. What lay before him was a prize such as no Russian submarine commander had ever grasped.
Both captain and lieutenant stared at a “waterfall” display, looking not at a strobe of light, but instead a disjointed, barely visible vertical line that wasn't as bright as it should have been. The American Ohio-class was quieter than the background noise of the ocean, and both men wondered if somehow environmental conditions were showing them the acoustical shadow of that most sophisticated of missile submarines. It was just as likely, Dubinin thought, that fatigue was playing hallucinatory games with both of their minds.
“We need a transient,” Ryskov said, reaching for his tea. “A dropped tool, a slammed hatch… a mistake, a mistake… ”
I could ping him… I could duck below the layer and hit him with a blast of active sonar energy and find out… NO! Dubinin turned away and nearly swore at himself. Patience, Valentin. They are patient, we must be patient.
“Yevgeniy Nikolay’ch, you look weary.”
“I can rest in Petropavlovsk, Captain. I will sleep for a week, and see my wife — well, I will not sleep entirely for that week,” he said with an exhausted grin. The lieutenant's face was illuminated by the yellow glow of the screen. “But I will not turn away from a chance like this one!”
“There will be no accidental transients.”
“I know, Captain. Those damned American crews… I know it's him, I know it's an Ohio! What else could it be?”
“Imagination, Yevgeniy, imagination and too large a wish on our part.”
Lieutenant Ryskov turned. “I think my captain knows better than that!”
“I think my lieutenant is right.” Such a game this is! Ship against ship, mind against mind. Chess in three dimensions, played in an ever-changing physical environment. And the Americans were the masters of the game. Dubinin knew that. Better equipment, better crews, better training. Of course, the Americans knew that, too, and two generations of advantage had generated arrogance rather than innovation… not in all, but certainly in some. A clever commander in the missile submarine would be doing things differently… If I had such a submarine, not all the world could find me!
