Invisible Things by Jenny Davidson Read Free Book Online

wasn’t an accident, it’s a pity they didn’t think of it sooner; surely it is all so long ago by now that it will be impossible to get to the bottom of what happened!”
    “What sort of rumors were there, though, about the missing plans,” asked Mikael, digging a spoonful of cream out of his mug and giving the implement a meditative lick, “and what have you been able to learn since?”
    “The first we heard of the plans actually came by way of Sophie herself,” Arne said.
    “Wait a minute,” Sophie said slowly. “You’re talking about the images that we saw on the pantelegraph machine in Edinburgh, aren’t you? The ones that made you have a fit?”
    Mikael looked puzzled, and Sophie realized she had never mentioned them to him, so she quickly filled him in: one day near the end of term back in Edinburgh, a mysterious incident had taken place in which a mechanical drawing had somehow been transmitted from the ether to the facsimile machine Sophie had been operating in chemistry class, to the teacher’s all too evident surprise and dismay.
    “That was the first harbinger—then Nobel put the word out that he would be interested in seeing further materials from that set of plans, and soon enough the arms dealers were all abuzz with it. Nobody had actually laid eyes on them, but it sounded as though the documents included details about an explosive process that could unleash exponentially more power than nitroglycerin, along with instructions for safely producing the raw materials needed and initiating the chain reaction.”
    “That sounds familiar,” said Mikael, and Sophie gave him an inquisitive look.
    “Indeed,” Arne said, “and this brings me to our most recent concern. The process I’ve mentioned, the one in the plans, the one designed to produce an explosion more powerful than anything known to man—”
    “Yes? What?” Sophie asked. Arne had the most terribly roundabout way of explaining things that she had ever heard!
    “It’s almost the identical process that Frisch and Meitner have just discovered—the one they were talking about this morning in the lunchroom. They’ve come up with the idea more or less independently, though they had read a few papers Sophie’s father published as a postdoctoral student, and it was Bohr’s letter earlier this week on the new reaction that led Nobel to order me to leave at once for København.”
    “Does that mean that Mr. Nobel doesn’t need the old plans after all?” Sophie asked.
    “On the contrary,” Arne said grimly. “If they should fall into the wrong hands, the consequences could be literally devastating. The thought of their free circulation will be especially troubling if war is declared, as Nobel expects it to be at any moment.”
    It occurred to Sophie that several weeks had passed since she’d looked at a newspaper. She could understand only about a third of the Danish radio broadcasts that Mikael and his mother listened to, and somehow it was almost always the inconsequential joining-together words rather than the substantive ones.
    People had been talking of war for so long now—all of her conscious life, really—that even all the recent alarm had not quite brought it home to Sophie what profound changes might ensue if hostilities were declared. Sophie was in Denmark only as a visitor, though with the approval of the appropriate consulates and embassies; would she even be allowed to stay in the country, or might she be detained or interned as a foreign national in the event of war?
    “I can only hope,” Arne added, looking painfully worried, “that Professor Bohr will have the sense to keep a lid on what’s going on here. It’s pretty much hopeless, though—he has been rhapsodizing about these new discoveries to everyone he meets!”
    “Yes,” said Mikael, impatiently and with considerable sarcasm, “there’s no doubt that this very idealistic notion about science being international and free to all comers in the spirit