Krakatit/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
He dreamed that he heard a noise made by innumerable wheels. “It’s some factory or other,” he thought and ran up the steps. All at once he found himself standing in front of a large door, on which was a glass plate with the name: Plinius. Inordinately delighted, he went in. “Is Mr. Plinius in?” he asked of a girl sitting at a typewriter. “He’ll be here in a moment,” she answered and directly afterwards there appeared a tall, clean-shaven man with enormous circular spectacles. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
Prokop glanced inquiringly at his extraordinarily expressive face. His mouth was of the British variety, his forehead was covered with lines and had a wart the size of a sixpence, his chin was that of a cinema artist. “Are y—you Mr. Plinius?”
“Please,” said the tall man, and with an abrupt gesture indicated the way to his study.
“I am extremely . . . it’s a great honour for me,” stammered Prokop, taking a seat.
“What is it you want?” the tall man interrupted him.
“I’ve disintegrated matter,” announced Prokop. Plinius remained silent; he only played with a steel key and, behind his spectacles, closed his heavy lids.
“It’s like this,” began Prokop impetuously. “E-e-everything is disintegrating, you understand? Matter is fragile. But I can make it disintegrate all at once, bang! An explosion, if you comprehend me? Into smithereens. Into molecules. Into atoms. And I’ve also broken up atoms.”
“A pity,” said Plinius, after consideration.
“Why a pity?”
“It’s a pity to break anything. Even an atom. Well, go on.”
“I . . . break up the atom. I am aware that Rutherford has already . . . But that was only donkey work with radiation, you know. That’s nothing. The thing must be done en masse. If I were asked to I could explode a ton of bismuth in that way. It would blow up the whole world. Would you like me to?”
“Why would you do it?”
“It’s . . . scientifically interesting,” said Prokop, confused. “Wait, how shall I . . . It’s amazingly interesting.” He clutched his head. “One moment, my he-head’s splitting; it will be scientifically enormously interesting, eh? Aha!” he burst out, relieved, “now I can explain. Dynamite—dynamite smashes up matter into pieces, lumps, but benzoltrioxozonid reduces it to dust; it makes only a small hole but it disintegrates matter into submicroscopic fragments, see? That’s through the quickness of the explosion. Matter hasn’t time to get out of the way, it can’t even bl—break up, see? But I. . . I’ve accelerated the speed of detonation. Argonozonid. Chlorargonoxozonid. Tetrargon. And so on and on. And suddenly, after a certain speed, the power of explosion increases terribly. It increases . . . quadratically. I watch it, as if I were an idiot. Where does it come from, this energy?” demanded Prokop feverishly. “Tell me.”
“Well, perhaps from the atom,” suggested Plinius.
“Aha,” cried Prokop exultantly, and wiped the sweat away from his face. “That’s the amusing part of it. Simply from the atom. It throws the atoms together . . . and t-t-t—tears off the Beta layer . . . and the core disintegrates. It’s an Alpha explosion. Do you realize who I am? I am the first man, sir, who has overcome the coefficient of compressibility. I . . . I have extracted tantalum from bismuth. Listen, do you know the amount of power there is in one gramme of mercury? Four hundred and sixty-two millions of kilogramometres. Matter is frightfully powerful. Matter is a regiment which is marching without moving: one two, one two; but give it the right order and the regiment will attack. En avant! That’s the explosion, you understand? Hurrah!
Prokop was pulled up by his own exclamation; the beating in his head was so loud that he ceased to understand anything. “Excuse me,” he said, in order to cover his confusion, and with a shaking hand felt for his cigar case. “You smoke?”
“No.”
“Even the ancient Romans used to smoke,” Prokop assured him, and opened his case. Inside was nothing but some heavy fuses.
“Light up,” he urged, “this one’s a small Nobel Extra.” He himself bit off the end of a tetryl cartridge and looked round for matches. “Never mind,” he said, “but have you ever heard of explosive glass? A pity. Listen, I can make you explosive paper. You write a letter, someone throws it into the fire, and crash! The whole of the place collapses. Would you like that?”
“What for?” asked Plinius, raising his eyebrows.
“Well, I don’t know. Power must out. I’ll tell you something. If you were to walk on the ceiling, what would happen to you? To begin with I have no use for the theory of valency. Everything is possible. Listen, you hear that noise outside? That’s the grass growing; nothing but little explosions. Every seed is an explosive cartridge which goes off. Poof, like a rocket. And those fools think that there is no such thing as tautomerism. I’ll show them such merotropy that they’ll go off their heads. Pure laboratory experience, my dear sir.”
Prokop suddenly had a dreadful feeling that he was babbling nonsense. He tried to extricate himself from his position, but only jabbered all the more quickly, mixing everything up. Plinius nodded his head seriously and finally inclined his body forward more and more, as if he were bowing. Prokop gabbled confused formule, unable to stop himself, his eyes fixed on Plinius who was swinging backwards and forwards with increasing speed, like a machine. The floor began to move and lift under him.
“But stop it, man,” roared Prokop, terrified, and woke up.
Instead of Plinius he saw Thomas who grunted, “Don’t shout, please,” without turning round from the table.
“I’m not shouting,” said Prokop, and closed his eyes. Inside his head the blows had become faster and more painful.
It appeared that he was moving with the minimum velocity of light; in some way his heart was compressed. But that was only the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, he explained to himself; soon he would become as flat as a pancake. And suddenly there appeared in front of him countless glass prisms; no, they were only endless, highly polished planes which intersected at sharp angles like models of crystals. He was thrown against the edge of one of them with terrible speed. “Look out!” he shouted to himself, for in a thousandth of a second he would be smashed to pieces; but at that moment he flew at an enormous speed towards the apex of a huge pyramid. Thrown back from this like a beam of light, he was cast against a wall as smooth as glass, slid along it, whizzed madly along walls set at angles, was hurled back against he knew not what. Cast away again he was falling on to a sharp angle, but at the last moment was thrown upwards again. Now he struck his head on a Euclidean plane and now fell headlong downwards, downwards into darkness. A sudden blow, a painful shuddering of his whole body, but he immediately picked himself up and took to flight. He tore along a labyrinthine passage and heard behind him the noise made by his pursuers; the passage became narrower and narrower, its walls came together with a frightful and inevitable movement; he became as thin as an awl, held his breath and dashed along in horror, so as to escape before the walls crushed him. They crashed behind him with a stony impact, while he whirled into a chasm. A frightful blow, and he lost consciousness. When he awoke he was in black darkness; he groped along the slimy stone walls and cried for help, but no sound came from his lips. Such was the darkness.
Shivering with fear, he stumbled about the bottom of the pit. He came upon a path along the side and followed it. Actually it consisted of steps, and above, an incredible distance away, there gleamed a tiny opening, as in a mine. Then he ran up endless and terribly steep stairs; but at the top there was nothing but a platform, a light metal platform which trembled above the dizzy abyss, and downwards there descended endless spiral steps of iron plates. And again he heard behind him the panting breath of his pursuers. Beside himself with fear he dashed down the twisting stairs, and behind him the steps of his enemies clanged upon the iron. Suddenly the spiral steps ended sharply in a void. Prokop shrieked, extended his arms and, still turning, fell into the gulf. His head spun, he saw and heard nothing; with legs that seemed to be bound he ran he knew not whither, dominated by a blind and terrible impulse to reach some place before it was too late. He ran more and more quickly along an endless vaulted corridor; from time to time the number changed on a semaphore, and always higher: 17, 18, 19. Suddenly he realized that he was running in a circle and that the numbers represented the circuits he had made. 40, 41! He was seized with the intolerable fear that he would never get away; he whizzed round at an insane speed, so that the semaphore moved like telegraph poles seen from an express train; and still more rapidly! Now the semaphore ceased to move and recorded at a lightning speed thousands and tens of thousands of revolutions, and still there was no exit from this tunnel, and the tunnel was smooth and polished and, as well, was itself rotating. Prokop sobbed with fear. This was Einstein’s universe and he must get there before it was too late! Suddenly there resounded a frightful cry. Prokop was aghast; it was the voice of his father, whom somebody was murdering. He tried to run still more quickly, the semaphore disappeared and everything was dark. Prokop felt along the walls and discovered a closed door, and behind it he again heard desperate wails and the noise of furniture being thrown about. Crying out with horror, he dug his nails into the door, scratched it and tore it into pieces, to find behind it the familar stairs which led him every day to his room when he was little. And upstairs his father was being suffocated, someone was strangling him and dragging him along the floor. Prokop flew upstairs, saw the familiar pail, his mother’s bread-cupboard, and the half-opened door into the kitchen, and there, inside, his father was making a rattling noise in his throat and begging someone not to kill him. Prokop wished to go to his aid, but some blind, mad force obliged him again to run in a circle, faster and faster, laughing convulsively, while the wailing of his father slowly died away. Incapable of escaping from this dizzy, senseless circle, he suddenly burst into a laugh of horror,
He woke up, covered with sweat, his teeth chattering. Thomas was standing over him in the act of laying another cold compress on his burning forehead.
“That’s good, that’s good,” mumbled Prokop, “now I shan’t sleep any more.” And he lay quietly and watched Thomas sitting near the lamp. George Thomas, he said to himself, and then Duras, and Honza Buchta, Sudik, Sudik, Sudik, and who else? Sudik, Trlica, Trlica, Pesek, Jovanovic, Madr, Holoubek, who wears spectacles, that was our year at chemistry. God, and who’s the other? Aha, Vedral, who was killed in ’sixteen, and behind him there sat Holoubek, Pacovsky, Trlica, Seba, all the men of the year. Then he suddenly heard the words: “Mr. Prokop to be examined.”
He became terribly frightened. At the desk sat Professor Wald, pulling with a dry hand at his beard, as usual. “Let’s hear,” said Professor Wald, “what you know about explosives.”
“Explosives, explosives,” began Prokop nervously, “their explosiveness lies in the fact that—that—that—that a large volume of gas is suddenly liberated which—which expands from the much smaller volume of the explosive mass . . . I beg your pardon, that’s not right.”
“What?” asked Wald severely.
“I—I—I’ve discovered alpha explosives. The explosion takes place, that is to say, through the disintegration of the atom. The parts of the atom fly . . . fly.”
“Rubbish,” the professor interrupted him. “There are no such things as atoms.”
“There are, there are, there are,” said Prokop through his teeth. “Please, I’ll demonstrate to you . . .”
“An obsolete theory,” said the professor grufly. “There are no such things as atoms, only gumetals. Do you know what a gumetal is?”
Prokop sweated with fear. He had never heard the word in his life. Gumetal? “I don’t know,” he said in confusion.
“There you are,” said Wald dryly. “And yet you presume to offer yourself for examination. What do you know about Krakatit?”
Prokop stopped uneasily. “Krakatit,” he whispered, “that is . . . that is . . . a completely new explosive, which . . . which up to the present . . .”
“How is it ignited? How? How does it explode?”
“By Hertzian waves,” croaked Prokop with relief.
“How do you know?”
“Because the Krakatit which I prepared exploded for no reason at all. Because . . . because there was no other reason. And because . . .”
“Well?”
“. . . I synthesized it . . . du-du-during high frequency oscillation. This isn’t yet explained, but I think that . . . that there were some sort of electromagnetic waves.”
“There were. I know. Now write down the chemical formula for Krakatit.”
Prokop took up a piece of chalk and scribbled his formula on the board.
“Read it.”
Prokop read the formula aloud. Then Professor Wald stood up and suddenly said in a voice which was somehow completely different: “How does it run?”
Prokop repeated the formula.
“Tetrargon?” inquired the professor rapidly. “How much Pb?”
“Two.”
“How is it prepared?” inquired the voice, this time extraordinarily close. “The method! How is it prepared? How? How do you prepare Krakatit?”
Prokop opened his eyes. Thomas was bending over him with a pencil and notebook in his hand and breathlessly watching his lips.
“What?” mumbled Prokop uneasily. “What do you want? How . . . is it prepared?”
“You’ve got some strange idea into your head,” said Thomas and hid the notebook behind his back. “Sleep, man, sleep.”