The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.