The door to Leslie Groves’ office was ajar. Jens rapped on the frosted glass panel set into the top part of it “Who’s there?” Groves demanded gruffly. Taking that as all the invitation he was likely to get, Jens went in. Surprise spread over Groves’ heavy features. He got up from behind his desk, stuck out a big, thick hand. “Dr. Larssen! We were beginning to be afraid you wouldn’t make it back. Come in, sit down.”
Mechanically, Jens shook hands. “Thanks,” he said, and sank into one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk. With a sigh, he shrugged off his pack.
“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Groves said, surveying him. He picked up the phone, dialed four numbers. “That you, Fred? Listen, send me up some fried chicken, maybe half a dozen of those nice rolls, and some honey to go with ’em. I’ve got a prodigal to feed here, so don’t waste time.” He slammed the receiver down on its cradle. Even in ordering up some supper, he was a man who brooked no nonsense.
Jens fell on the food like a starving wolf, even if all the choices had been Groves’ rather than his own. When he’d reduced it to gnawed bones and crumbs, Groves pulled a bottle of bourbon out of his desk drawer, took a snort, and passed it to him. He had a hefty swig himself, then gave it back.
“Okay, now that you’re not going to fall to pieces right before my eyes, tell me about your trip,” Groves said. “Tell me about this town in Washington you were supposed to be scouting. Did you actually manage to get there?”
“Yes, sir, I sure did.” Larssen looked at him with irritation the whiskey only fueled. He did his best to sound enthusiastic as he went on, “Hanford’s the perfect place to move the Met Lab, sir. The Columbia’s got all the water in the world in it, there aren’t any Lizards for hundreds of miles, and there’s a railhead into town. What more do we need?”
He waited for Groves to leap in the air, shoutWhoopee! and start moving people around with the same verve and aggressiveness he’d used in getting the fried chicken brought up. But instead, the Met Lab’s chief administrator said, “I appreciate all you did, and I sure as the devil congratulate you for getting there and coming back again. But things have changed since you left-”
“Changed how?” Jens demanded suspiciously. “What have you done, started turning out dental floss instead of atomic bombs?”
He wanted to make Groves mad, but the engineer just laughed. “Not quite,” he said, and explained. The more Jens heard, the less he liked. It wasn’t so much everything the Met Lab crew had accomplished while he was gone-good God, Groves was talking glibly about kilogram quantities of plutonium! What really grated was that the team had done all these important things, had come to the very edge of being able to fabricate a bomb,without Jens Larssen.
He wished Oscar hadn’t made him leave his rifle downstairs. He wanted to do some shooting now, starting with Groves and maybe ending with himself. If the Met Lab was going to stay here in Denver, everything he’d done since he rolled out of town was wasted effort-spinning his wheels in the most literal sense of the word. And they hadn’t missed him one single, solitary bit while he was gone, either.
“But, General,” he said, hearing the desperation in his own voice, “you don’t understand what a swell place Hanford really is, how perfect it would be for us to work there-” He hadn’t thought it was perfect when he rode into town. He’d thought it was a wide spot in the road, nothing better. But in retrospect, it was starting to take on aspects of the earthly paradise. He didn’t want to think he’d spent so much time in vain.
Gently, Groves said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Larssen, I truly am. But while you were away, we’ve put down deep roots here. We’d need months to make the move and get set up and producing again, and we don’t have months to spare. We don’t have days to spare; hell, Larssen, I grudge every inessential minute. We’re making the best of things here, and the best has turned out to be pretty good.”
“But-” Jens stared at the jumble of chicken bones on his plate. He’d have just as easy a time putting the meat back on them as he would of persuading Groves. He offered a new gambit: “I’ll take this up with Fermi and Szilard.”
“Go right ahead,” Groves said, accepting the move without a qualm. “If you can convince them, I’ll listen to you. But you won’t convince them, and I’ll bet money on that. They’ve got our second pile up and running under the stadium here, and the third won’t be far behind. And our reprocessing plant is doing just fine, separating plutonium from the uranium slugs where it’s made. We’d have to uproot that, too, if we headed for Washington State.”
Jens bit his lip. If things were as Groves said, the physicists wouldn’t want to move. Logically, rationally, he didn’t suppose he could blame them. They’d lost months once already, coming from Chicago to Denver. They wouldn’t want to lose more time, not when they were so close to the success the United States needed so badly.
Sometimes, though, you couldn’t go by logic and reason and nothing else. Clutching at straws, Larssen said, “What if the Lizards start a big overland push toward Denver? There’s nothing much to stand in their way-you couldn’t ask for better tank country than eastern Colorado.”
“I won’t say you’re wrong about that, but it hasn’t happened yet and I don’t think it will happen soon,” Groves answered. “It’s long since started snowing-you’d know more about that than I do, wouldn’t you? Last year, the Lizards didn’t do much once the snow started falling. They seem to be pretty predictable, so it’s a good bet they won’t get aggressive till spring. And by spring, we’ll give them enough other things to worry about that they won’t even be thinking of Denver.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Jens said bitterly.
“Oh, Lord, how I wish I did!” Groves rolled his eyes. “In case I haven’t said so, though, I’m damned glad to have you back. You’ll be able to ease the strain on a lot of people who’ve been stretched real thin for a long time.”
Jens heard that as,You’ll be a spare tire. We’ll put you on whenever we need to patch a blowout, and then we’ll heave you back in the trunk again. He almost told Groves just what he thought of him, just what he thought of the whole Met Lab: crew, project and all. But Groves held the whip hand here. Telling him off wouldn’t do anything but ruin the chance for revenge.
Voice tightly controlled, Jens asked, “How’s Barbara doing these days? Do you think there’s any chance she’d want to see me?”
“I really couldn’t tell you about that one way or the other, Dr. Larssen.” Groves sounded wary, which wasn’t like him. “The thing is, she and-and her husband left the Met Lab staff not long after you headed west. Yeager got a new assignment, and it was one where she could be useful, too, so she went along.”
“I-see,” Jens said. The first time he’d gone away, Barbara hadn’t waited for him to come home; she’d slid out of her skirt for that damn dumb ballplayer. Now when he went off to do something else for his country, she hadn’t wanted so much as to set eyes on him when he got back. Wasn’t the world a hell of a place? He asked, “Where did she-where did they-go?”
“Afraid I can’t tell you that,” Groves answered. “I couldn’t tell you even if you didn’t know either one of them. We do try to keep up security, no matter how irregular things get sometimes. And what with the troubles you’ve had, it’d be better f2or you and for them if you didn’t know where they were.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Jens didn’t believe it for a minute. It might be better for the whore who had been his wife and the bastard she was shacked up with, but for him? He shook his head. Getting his own back would be better for him. Changing the subject again, he asked, “Where are you going to put me up for the night?”