“What do you need?”
“Electricity. Right now! There’s a line from our power company into your place for emergency power in case you need it. Now the emergency is the other way. If you’ll close the switch and put on your generators, your power will flow to us. Everybody is sound asleep in Arco, and the power company has already open-circuited all its lines except the one to us. So all the juice you can pump into that line will come right to the hospital. It was an emergency when the patient came in here. Now it’s life or death! We have three surgeons in town, and all three of them are with her in the operating room this minute. If the lights and power come on soon we may be able to save her. Otherwise, she’s gone!”
The doctor’s voice bespoke a condition of frantic urgency, of a critical concatenation of circumstance in which, suddenly and shockingly, unforeseen technological failure had brought human efforts to a standstill. This could not be a fake. The unworthy thought flashed into Richardson’s mind, was cast aside. The speaker’s distress was too genuine. In tiny Arco, he probably knew the patient well. It was not only a professional but a personal thing.
Richardson could feel a quickening of attention, the heightened awareness of imminent action, and, down underneath, the unmistakable scent of danger. It was a different sort of danger, but otherwise it was all so much like a few days ago, with the steam leak, or many years ago, with the enemy lifeboats in sight. Rich paused only long enough to get the doctor’s telephone number.
“Keith!” he barked. “Find the shore power switch. You can trace the line in from where it enters our compound. Figure out how to transform our four hundred and forty volts into whatever they need in Arco. Maybe the Arco power company can step it down. If not, maybe we can give it to them direct from the hundred and twenty volts AC end of our motor-generator sets. Take half of our electricians on watch to help you!”
“Got it, Skipper,” said Keith. He had been standing beside him during the whole of the telephone conversation.
“Buck, we’ve got to do this fast. Keith can’t do it all from that end. You take the rest of the electricians and start from the turbo-generator sets. Find out what’s the best way to pump power into that shore line, and meet Keith halfway!”
“Right!” Like Keith, Buck dashed away.
“Dan”—to the new trainee who had called them back from their hut—“you get on another phone and try to find Dusty. Maybe he’s gone somewhere for the weekend. Keep trying until you get him. He’s got to be somewhere near here, even if it is Sunday morning. Someone must know how to get in touch with him!”
The task of finding and communicating with Admiral Brighting, in Rhodes’ absence, Richardson had allocated to himself. But in this he was unsuccessful. There was no answer at Brighting’s Washington apartment; several hours would elapse before even the Sunday duty officer would be at his office. True to form, there was no executive officer or second-in-command, nor home telephone numbers of any of those in Washington who might be expected to have some useful information as to where Brighting was. Between efforts somehow to get in touch with him, Richardson lost himself in the welter of reports, impediments, suggestions and countersuggestions, interspersed with increasingly urgent calls from Dr. Danforth.
Three moments — two decisions and an instant of warm satisfaction — stood out. Wiring had to be improvised to bring the output from the turbo-generator sets around to the transformer; this took several hurried conferences with Keith and Buck, and their electricians, to determine the circuit. Then there was the decision to close the emergency power switch and build the paralleled generator sets to full power, so that current could begin to flow into the Arco line. As Rich gave the order, it was suddenly with much the same sense of commitment he remembered from combat long ago. This was the point after which there could be no turning back.
The instant of satisfaction occurred when he told Dr. Danforth there was now power on the line, and heard the gratitude in the doctor’s voice reporting that the operating room lights were functioning at last, the operation was proceeding normally, and the patient’s life would be saved.
“Everything’s fine now at the hospital,” Richardson reported to the nucleus of his working group. He was in the process of describing Danforth’s final call as Keith and Buck entered Rhodes’ office.
After all the others had left, Keith and Buck put into words the shadow lying in the back of his mind, the one flaw in the success. “Boss,” Keith said in a low tone, “did you ever get in touch with Brighting?”
During the months in Idaho, Richardson had many times pondered the clear dictum in the standing instructions for the site that under no circumstances whatever was power to be provided off-site. It might be brought in, in emergency, but never sent the other way. Dusty Rhodes’ explanation had been un-illuminating: “Far as anyone knows, he figures there’ll be a temptation to count on us as an area resource if we ever do anything like that. Then sometime when we might want to go down for overhaul or a drill or something, we might not be able to without their okay. It would cut into his complete control of this place.”
A life-or-death emergency clearly lay outside the scope or intent of Admiral Brighting’s instructions. Could he have been reached, he most certainly would have authorized provision of emergency assistance to the Arco hospital. Rich had done only what Brighting himself would have done, he mused uncomfortably, realizing the while that, unquestionably, he had disobeyed not only the written standing orders of the training site but also the personal order about leaving his rank and title outside the chain link fence enclosing the complex. He had done this twice recently, in fact. But Rhodes’ telephoned report of the repair of the steam leak under the hot reactor had not mentioned Richardson’s part in marshaling the repair effort. Likewise, no one (he hoped) had told Brighting yet that those present that night, at least the Navy people — and tonight as well — had automatically reverted to old training and addressed him as “Captain.”
This had not happened through any desire of Richardson’s. It had been a subconscious wish for and acceptance of leadership on the part of everyone. But in responding to one of Dr. Danforth’s anxious telephone calls before the power hookup was complete, Richardson had himself used his title as the quickest and simplest method of indicating his acceptance of responsibility. He was as guilty as the rest. More so. With the town of Arco and its power company involved, there was no way Brighting could fail to learn all the details almost immediately, wherever he was.
Rhodes, when he finally came to the telephone after being rousted from the duck blind in which he had barely settled for his first try at duck hunting in Idaho, was incredulous when he learned what Rich had done. “You know I’ll have to tell the old man,” he said unhappily. “There’s no way I can not tell him. Arco’s been trying to get us to agree to do this for years. They’ve even gone to the State Power Commission to try to force us. Now this will be all over the papers.”
It was a badly shaken Dusty Rhodes who greeted Richardson Monday morning. “He chewed me out all over the Bell Telephone System,” he said. “He already knew all about it. He must have spies everywhere. I didn’t even get a chance to talk at all. The way he carried on you’d have thought I had done it myself, instead of being off in a duck blind. Even early on a Sunday morning, I’ve got no right to be in a duck blind. Said I’m in charge and should have been here. So now I’ve got to move into the quonset alongside yours and be on board whenever the reactor is critical. To hell with family life. We’re critical for months at a time, and I’ll just have to stay on board. And the Navy calls this shore duty!” Rhodes audibly expelled his breath. “Also, I’ve got to tell you you can’t take the exam. It’s okay for Keith and Buck, but not you. He won’t even listen. Twice I tried to tell him how it was, and both times he said you were like the gunner of the Claymer, or something like that. What’s this Claymer business? And what’s it got to do with knocking you out of taking the operator’s exam? That’s all he’d say, except that he doesn’t want to talk to you.”