Tilting the Balance

That was before I realized how much you knew about it, Teerts thought. He wondered how he was going to escape with his integument intact. He knew he couldn’t lie to the Nipponese; he didn’t know how much they knew, and the only way to find out-getting caught-would involve the painful penetration of that integument.

He said, “I do know that atomic weapons do not necessarily use uranium alone. Some involve, I am not sure how, hydrogen as well-the very first element. ” Let the Japanese chew on that paradox for a while, he thought: how could a weapon involve the lightest and heaviest elements at the same time?

After Okamoto interpreted, the team of Big Ugly scientists chattered for a while among themselves. Then Nisbina, who seemed to be their spokesman, put a question to Okamoto. The major translated for Teerts: “The uranium explosion, then, is hot enough to make hydrogen act as it does in the sun and convert large amounts of matter to energy? ”

Horror filled Teerts. Every time he tried to escape from this hideous mess in which he found himself, he sank deeper instead. The Big Uglies knew about fusion. To Teerts, the product of a civilization that grew and changed at a glacial pace, knowing about something was essentially the same as being able to do it. And If the Tosevites could make fusion bombs…

Major Okamoto knocked him out of his appalled reverie by snapping, “Answer the learned Dr. Nishina! ”

“I beg your pardon, superior sir, ” Teerts said. “Yes, everything the learned, doctor says is true. ”

There. He’d done it Any day now, he feared, the Nipponese would start using nuclear weapons against the Race on the mainland-which still struck Teerts as nothing more than a big island; he was used to water surrounded by land, not the other way around.

He heard Okamoto say “Honto, ” confirming his answer to the Nipponese scientist’s question. The cold of the interrogation room sank deeply into his spirit. The Nipponese hardly seemed to need him. By their questions, they had all the answers already, just waiting to be put into practice.

Then Nishina spoke again: “We return to the question of getting the lighter uranium, the kind which is explosive, out of the o