Free The Wonder Effect by Frederik Pohl Page B

I do think that Herr Faesch might have astonished even Wells. Certainly he astonished me. On the second day of my convalescence, I found myself strong enough to be up and walking about.
    Say that I was prying. Perhaps I was. It was oppressively hot-I dared not venture outside-and yet I was too restless to lie abed waiting for Herr Faesch’s return. I found myself examining the objects on his-camp table and there were, indeed, nuggets. But the nuggets were not gold. They were a silvery metal, blackened and discolored, but surely without gold’s yellow hue; they were rather small, like irregular lark’s eggs, and yet they were queerly heavy. Perhaps there was a score of them, aggregating about a pound or two.
    I rattled them thoughtfully in my hand, and then observed that across the tent, in a laboratory jar with a glass stopper, there were perhaps a dozen more-yes, and in yet another place in that tent, in a pottery dish, another clutch of the things. I thought to bring them close together so that I might compare them. I fetched the jar and set it on the table; I went after the pellets in the pottery dish.
    Herr Faesch’s voice, shaking with emotion, halted me. “Mr. Lewes!” he whispered harshly. “Stop, sir!”
    I turned, and there was the man, his eyes wide with horror, standing at the flap of the tent. I made my apologies, but he waved them aside.
    “No, no,” he croaked, “I know - you meant no harm. But I tell you, Mr. Lewes, you were very near to death a moment ago.”
    I glanced at the pellets. “From these, Herr Faesch?”
    “Yes, Mr. Lewes. From those.” He tottered into the tent and retrieved the pottery dish from my hands. Back to its corner it went; then the jar, back across the tent again. “They must not come together. No, sir,” he said, nodding thoughtfully, though I had said nothing with which he might have been agreeing, “they must not come together.”
    He sat down. “Mr. Lewes,” he whispered, “have you ever heard of uranium?” I had not. “Or of pitchblende? No? Well,” he said earnestly, “I assure you that you will. These ingots, Mr. Lewes, are uranium, but not the standard metal of commerce. No, sir. They are a rare variant form, indistinguishable by the most delicate of chemical tests from the ordinary metal, but possessed of characteristics which ‘are-I shall merely say ‘wonderful,’ Mr. Lewes, for I dare not use the term which comes first to mind.”
    “Remarkable,” said I, feeling that some such response was wanted.
    He agreed. “Remarkable indeed, my dear Mr. Lewes! You really cannot imagine how remarkable. Suppose I should tell you that the mere act of placing those few nuggets you discovered in close juxtaposition to each other would liberate an immense amount of energy. Suppose I should tell you that if a certain critical quantity of this metal should be joined together, an explosion would result. Eh, Mr. Lewes? What of that?”
    I could only say again, “Remarkable, Herr Faesch.” I knew nothing else to say. I was not yet one-and-twenty, I had had no interest in making chemists’ stinks, and much of what he said was Greek to me- or was science to me, which was worse, for I should have understood the Greek tolerably well. Also a certain apprehension lingered in my mind. That terrible white face, those fired eyes, his agitated speech-I could not be blamed, I think. I believed he might be mad. And though I listened, I heard not, as he went ^on to tell me of what his discovery might mean.
    The next morning he thrust a sheaf of manuscript at me. “Read, Mr. Lewes!” he commanded me and went off to his mine; but something went wrong. I drowsed through a few pages and made nothing of them except that he thought in some way his nuggets had affected his health. There was a radiant glow in the mine, and the natives believed that glow meant sickness and in time death, and Herr Faesch had come to agree with the natives. A pity, I thought absently, turning in for a