"No," Darcy replied with a smile. "Arctic City is pretty well built up. Conditions are a lot better here than they are in some of the mining centers farther north." He turned to Roger. "I'll be around tomorrow morning to show you the labs. Sometime around eight or eight thirty."
"I'll be ready," replied Roger. "It should be interesting to see the facilities here."
"I suppose the high temperature work will be most interesting to you," said Darcy. "I read your paper on molecular linkages. We'll sure be able to use you. We're having the devil's own time with the linings for the reaction chambers in the neutron pile."
"I hope I can help," said Roger. "The cooling problem should be quite a challenge without the extreme temperatures and high vacuum that we had at the moon labs."
"That's right. You did work on the first neutron pile, didn't you?" Darcy said as he prepared to leave. "That makes it much better. There are too few men with practical experience in neutron pile work."
It had long been known by physicists that tremendous amounts of energy could be released if matter could be collapsed to form neutrons. This step had been achieved in 2047 A. D., at the Lunar atomic laboratories. The Arctic City pile was the first attempt to apply it to industrial uses.
Up to this time (2054), man had been barred from the planets by the lack of a fuel cheap enough to make trips across interplanetary space economically feasible. Long, economical orbits could be used; but these brought on psychological problems resulting from living in cramped quarters for long periods of time, and problems of carrying enough supplies for such long trips. In shorter orbits, the profits would be burned up in excessive fuel consumption. The most efficient fuel was monatomic hydrogen, which is highly unstable unless dissolved in a catalyst to keep it from exploding at ordinary temperatures. The catalyst and the process for making the fuel were both expensive. Moon colonies were maintained only because the moon was the best known source of germanium; and its vacuum was a valuable location for astronomical observatories and atomic research laboratories.
The neutron pile applied to space travel would make an interplanetary civilization possible. The pile, releasing neutrons and ions at velocities approaching that of light, would make use of small amounts of inexpensive materials as fuels.
It also had frightening potentialities for mass destruction.
The ambassador of the South American Republic thought of the destructive possibilities as he rode the small monorail car toward the Government Center in Chicago, which was now the capital of the North American Union. The shore of Lake Michigan was studded with tall skyscrapers connected by streets with transparent coverings. At ground level, a system of conveyer walks ranging from the hundred mile per hour strips in the center to five mile per hour strips on the edges, whisked brightly clad people about their business. On the second level, monorail tracks carried the high speed freight and passenger traffic of the city. The ambassador's car pulled in at a second level siding near the loading platform for the Government Tower. As he stepped from his car, he was met by two secret service agents who escorted him to the office of the Secretary of State.