Perilous Panacea by Ronald Klueh Read Free Book Online

remote-machining operations.”
    Lormes had introduced Brian Applenu as the brains of Margine Nuclear Technology. Slim, a dark complexion, about Lormes’s height, five-ten or so, and Curt’s age, around thirty, his face was mostly black hair. Thick black curls on his head tumbled from his forehead to his eyebrows. A black mustache dribbled down the sides of his mouth into a short black beard that covered his chin and jaw like chocolate pudding around a messy kid’s mouth.
    “We’re going to be machining uranium and plutonium,” Applenu said. “Since you worked at the Y-12 weapons plant in Oak Ridge for three years, you’re used to machining those metals. We’ll also be machining non-radioactive components to extremely close tolerances. We need the computer techniques you described in your talk today.”
    “I haven’t worked with uranium or plutonium for over two years.”
    Applenu cocked his head like a curious animal, studying Curt as if he didn’t believe what he heard. “According to what you just told us and what you said in your talk today, you’ve made metal fabrication a science. You can develop a computer program to machine anything. If that’s so, you won’t have any more trouble with plutonium and uranium than you would with carbon steel.”
    Curt remembered his salesman’s motto: show the client confidence; talk a good game, even if clouds of doubt threaten peace of mind. Maybe it worked too well this time. Lormes’s earlier announcement completed his career package for the next step: an MIT professorship coupled with long-term consulting jobs with companies like Y-12 at Oak Ridge and Margine Nuclear Technology put him right where he wanted to be. Success. Right?
    A private company building atomic bombs? It was like the college junior designing an atom bomb for a class project that you read about. Just talk, anti-science talk. It had to be a joke. Curt had read articles about how easy it was to build an atomic bomb, but it had to be more complicated than that. “If you’re not government, why are you building atomic bombs?”
    “Let’s not worry about why we’re building bombs,” Applenu said. “We told you up front, so you wouldn’t be surprised later on. We need your expertise, and we will pay for it. Say two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars for about a month’s work.”
    “A quarter-of-a-million dollars?” That kind of money would accelerate his career plan by several years. “Are you kidding?” Are these guys al-Qaeda terrorists? Applenu, with the dark complexion: Is he Middle Eastern?
    Applenu shook his head, smiling. “A quarter-of-a-million dollars, cash…tax free. Of course, we’re also buying your silence. We know all about you. We found out that one of the reasons you’re going to MIT is because you’re into developing robots and you want to start a company. That money will go a long way toward getting you started. Patent lawyers are expensive.”
    Now he knew what was going on. It couldn’t be. “What are these bombs going to be used for? What kind of organization are you running?”
    “The less you know,” Lormes growled, “the less you’ll have to keep quiet about.” Like rays from a bright light, the lines in Lormes’s face emanated from his mouth.
    With the quarter-of-a-million dollar figure still rattling around his brain, Curt decided he didn’t want to know anything more about the job. He glanced around the room, trying to comprehend. A few minutes earlier the luxury of his surroundings had him thinking he had arrived at last, his reward for hard work at the ripe old age of thirty-one.
    Even before this, Lori kept telling him everything was moving too fast. On the plane down, he tried to reflect on the future: the move to MIT, his consulting business, Lori’s MBA degree and a possible job, and now, thrown in on top of it all, a new baby. Until he faced it on the plane, he hadn’t taken time to consider the baby beyond the hope that Lori would still have