The mathematician frowned momentarily, as if he were not to be budged from the path of instruction. Then he grinned. “If our present political misadventuring continues, we will probably find out how many in the most pragmatic fashion. They will be dropped on us!”
The four graduate students laughed. Duff said, “Let’s hope most of them will miss.”
And he went on idly, “Of course, any nation that had only a few atomic bombs could easily smuggle them into this country and distribute them at ideal sites, to be exploded at the time chosen by that nation.”
“Easier said then done!”
“Why?” Duff asked. “Look at prohibition. Hundreds of tons of stuff brought across every border every week. Florida, here, was a center for it. Million bays, channels, waterways, lagoons, empty wastes of Everglades—”
“An atom bomb, Mr. Bogan, is pretty big. Very heavy.”
“It could be built in small pieces. Imported, so to speak, in sections.”
Hank Garvey, who intended to be a math teacher, said, “There’s radioactivity. How do you smuggle radioactive stuff?”
The professor scowled at Hank. “You really ought to know, Mr. Garvey, that neither plutonium nor the disintegrative isotope of uranium is radioactive enough to be detected readily. Oppenheimer pointed out that you’d need a screwdriver to find a bomb on a ship—
have to open every case aboard. Until you assemble a critical mass— enough of the stuff in one spot to set up a chain reaction — your plutonium or uranium would be comparatively easy to handle.”