The Bramble Bush Read online

golf course."_

  _"My legs hurt," said de Hooch. The man was no longer wearing a hood,but de Hooch couldn't tell if it was Willows or himself._

  _"We will all go together when we go," said the man._

  _De Hooch turned his head away and looked at the ceiling._

  And he realized that it was the ceiling of the antechamber.

  "My legs hurt," he repeated. And he could hear the hoarse whisper insidethe helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on his back. He had beenjarred around quite a bit in the suit.

  He wondered if he could sit up. He managed to get both arms behind himand push himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. Theservos responded. He hurt all over, but a little experiment told himthat he was only bruised. Nothing was broken. He hadn't been hit as hardas Ferguson and Metty had been.

  "Willows?" he said. "Willows?"

  There was no answer from the earphones.

  He looked at the chronometer dial inside his helmet. Oh two forty-nine.He had been unconscious less than ten minutes.

  The same glance brought his eyes to two other dials. The internalradiation of the suit was a little high, but nothing to worry about. Butthe dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without theprotection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through those tenminutes.

  Where was Willows?

  And then he knew, and he pushed any thought of further help from thatquarter out of his mind. What had to be done would have to be done byPeter de Hooch alone. He climbed to his feet.

  His head hurt, and he swayed with nausea and pain. Only the massiveweight of the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and heblinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He found he was holdinghis breath, and he let it out.

  The trouble had been so simple, and yet he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes, hehad! He _must_ have, subconsciously. Otherwise, how would he haveguessed that the stuff in the sampling chamber was Osmium 187? Fergusonand Metty _had_ been trying to make Mercury 203 by adding eightsuccessive tritium nuclei to Hafnium 179, progressing through Tantalum182, Tungsten 185, Rhenium 188, Osmium 191, Iridium 194, Platinum 197,and Gold 200, all of which were unstable.

  But the Hydrogen 3 reaction had gone wrong. The doubling had set in,producing Helium 4. Successive additions of the alpha particles toHafnium 179 had produced, first, Tungsten 183, and then Osmium 187, bothof which were stable.

  Ferguson and Metty, seeing that something was wrong, drew off a sampleand then reset the reaction to produce the Hg-203 they wanted. Then theyhad come down to pick up the sample.

  They hadn't realized that the helium production had gone wild. Much morehelium than necessary was being produced, and the bleeder valve hadfailed. When they opened the sample chamber, they got a blast ofhigh-pressure helium right in the face. The shock of that sudden releasehad jarred the whole atmosphere inside the reaction chamber, and thebleeder valve had let go. But the violence of the pressure release hadcaused a fault to the surface to open up and had closed the valveagain--jammed it, probably. There had been enough pressure left in thereto blow de Hooch up against the nearest wall when he opened the door.Since the pressure indicator system was connected to the release system,when one had failed, the other had failed. That's why the pressure gaugehad indicated normal.

  And, of course, it had been the pressure differential that had causedthe controls to stick. Well, they ought to be all right now, then. Hedecided he'd better take a look.

  * * *

  The firewall door was still open. He walked over to it and stepped intothe small chamber that led to the inner reactor room. The inside door,much weaker than the outer firewall door, had been blown off its hinges.He stepped past it and went on in.

  What he saw made him jerk his glance away from the periscope in hishelmet and check his radiation detectors again. Not much change. Reliefswept over him as he looked back at the reactor itself. The normallydead black walls were glowing a dull red. It was pure thermal heat, butit shouldn't be doing that.

  Moving quickly, he went over to the place where the control cables camein through the firewall. It took him several minutes to assure himselfthat they would function from the control room now. There was nothingmore to do but get out of here and get that reaction damped.

  He went out again, closing the firewall door behind him and dogging ittight. There would be no more helium production now.

  He went through the radiation trap to the decontamination chamber towash off whatever it was he had picked up.

  The decontamination room was a mess.

  De Hooch stared at the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushedout of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well, hecould still scrub himself off.

  Except that the scrubbers weren't working.

  He swore under his breath and twisted the valve that was supposed todispense detergent. It did, thank Heaven. He doused himself good with itand then got under the flowing water.

  The radiation level remained exactly where it was.

  He walked over and pulled one of the brushes off the defunct scrubberand sudsed it up. It wasn't until he started to use it that he got agood look at his arms. He hadn't paid any attention before.

  He walked over to the mirror to get a good look.

  "You look magnificent," he told his reflection acidly.

  The radiation-proof armor looked as though it had been chrome plated.

  But de Hooch knew better than that. He knew exactly what had happened.He was nicely plated all over with a film of mercury, which hadamalgamated itself with the metallic surface of the suit. He wasthoroughly wet with the stuff and no amount of water and detergent wouldtake it off.

  There was something wrong with Number Two Reactor, all right. It hadleaked out some of the Mercury 203 that Ferguson and Metty had beenmaking.

  He thought a minute. It hadn't been leaking out just before he openedthe door in the firewall, because Willows would certainly have noticedthe bright mercury line when he checked with the spectroscope. The stuffmust have been released when the pressure dropped.

  He walked back to the anteroom and looked at the sampling chamber. Therewere a few droplets of mercury around the inlet.

  Thus far, the three pressure explosions had wrecked about everythingthat was wreckable, he thought. No, not quite. There was still thechance that the whole station would go if he didn't get back into thecontrol room and stop that "powers of two" chain. The detonation ofInstantanium 512 would finish the job by doing what high-pressure heliumcould never do.

  He glanced at the thermometer. The temperature behind the firewall hadrisen to two-forty Centigrade. It wasn't supposed to be above twohundred. It wasn't too serious, really, because a little heat like thatwouldn't bother a Ditmars-Horst reactor, but it indicated that thingsback there weren't working properly.

  He turned away and walked back to the decontamination chamber. Theremust be some way he could get the mercury off the suit--because hecouldn't take the suit off until the mercury was gone.

  * * * * *

  First, he tried scrubbing. That was what showed him how upset he reallywas. He had actually scrubbed the armor on his left arm free of mercurywhen he realized what he was doing and threw the brush down in disgust.

  "Use your head, de Hooch!" he told himself. What good would it do toscrub the stuff off of the few places he could reach? In the bulkyarmor, he was worse than muscle-bound. He couldn't touch any part of hisback; he couldn't bend far enough to touch his legs. His shoulders wereinaccessible, even. Scrubbing was worse than useless--it wastime-wasting.

  He picked up the brush again and began scrubbing at the other arm. Itgave him something to do while he thought. While he was thinking, hewasn't wasting time.

  What would dissolve mercury? Nitric acid. Good old HNO{3}. Fine. Exceptthat the hot lab was at the other end of the reactor, where the fissurehad let all the air out. The bulkheads had dropped, and he couldn't getin. And, naturally, the nitric aci
d would be in the lab.

  For the first time, he found himself hating Willows' guts. If he werearound, he could get some acid from the cold lab, or even from the otherhot lab at Number One. If Willows--

  He stood up and dropped the brush. "Dolt! Boob! Moron! Idiot!" NotWillows. Himself. There was no reason on earth--or Luna--why he couldn'twalk over to Number One hot lab and get the stuff himself. The habit ofnever leaving the lab without thorough decontamination was so thoroughlyingrained in him that he had simply never thought about it until thatmoment. But what did a little contamination with radioactive mercurymean at a time like this? He could take F corridor to Number One, usethe decontamination chamber and the acid from the lab, shuck off hisarmor there, and come back through E corridor. F could be cleaned uplater.

  So simple.

  He went through the light trap to the next chamber and turned the handleon the sliding door. The door wouldn't budge. It had been warped by theforce of