"How much longer will we have?" Blane asked.
The scientist shook his head. "I don't know, Jerry, and I'm not good enough a physicist to find out."
V
The return was a letdown, after the tension they had been building between them. Blane put the ferry away, leaving no traces of the trip in it, and slipped quietly back into the hub. Things looked miserable now, cramped and forced together, after the spaciousness and richness of equipment on the other station. But he forced that bitterness from his mind.
A Congressman had stated the official policy years before. "Sure, they got something bigger and stronger. But we got the old American spirit. Didn't our boys conquer the whole British navy with nothing but little wooden sailing ships once?" And hence, of course, it didn't matter how badly matched the stations might be. Nobody bothered to comment that the American fleet had grown strong by freebooting, that both sides were using little wooden ships, and that there was never more than a small fraction of the British navy along the American coast. Facts merely got in the way of good sentiment. The Congressman had been elected three times since then and still fought hard to keep any money from getting into space, though he yelled loud and often for the need of teaching the enemy a good lesson.
Blane went to his little room, to bathe in water that was at least hot and clean, and to change into fresh shorts. He had been gone for nearly nine hours, and fatigue had made him look older, but it wasn't too much different from his looks after a sound sleep. He went into the office, yawning. The secretary glanced up, shoved a new mountain of complaints and thunder-scripts at him, and went on answering the phone. Apparently, he hadn't been too much missed. It wasn't flattering, but he'd expected it.
Routine held him for hours, while he listened to the news from Earth. The Russians were announcing that they had never asked for help from the American supply ships, that the Tsiolkovsky was quite safe, and that under no conditions would any political deals be made under threats and pressure. It was done with a nastiness that lent a ring of sincerity to it.
And somewhere, the rumors seemed to indicate, America had modified her stand, and was now making overtures toward helpfulness, which were brusquely refused. There had been an obvious loss of support from some of the smaller nations in the UN, and that must have hurt.
Peal came in, looking more haggard than Blane. The scientist shook his head wearily. "The count is up in the bomb bay. I've been trying to sound some of the chemists out about ways to test, but I don't think we can do it. We don't know what to do or to look for. But I'm convinced now that something is going on inside those casings. It must be some new isotope being created from the uranium by the action of cosmic radiation. Those energies are high enough to cause transmutation. Whatever isotope it is, it must be a neutron emitter, and it's stirring up the uranium, just as increasing the mass does. The temperature around the casings is rising."