Critical Mass

  “It’s going … it’s going … it’s GONE, folks! Craffany has pulled one out of the fire again! And that wraps it up for him, as Hockins sends one way out over centerfield and into the stands…” The guard looked out, rosily beaming, and waved them on. He would have waved them on if they had worn beards and carried ticking bombs; he was a Craffany rooter from way back, and now in an ecstasy of delight.

  “Craffany did it, then,” said Walter Chase sagely.

  “I thought when he benched Hockins and moved Little Joe Fliederwick to-“

  “Oh, shut up, Chase.” said Denzer. “Maggie, I’m buying drinks. You want to come along, Venezuela?”

  “I think not, Mr. Denzer,” said the research man. “I’m late now. Statist. Analysis Trans. is expecting me.”

  “Chase?” Politeness forced that one out of him. But Chase shook his head.

  “I just remembered an old friend here in town,” said Chase. He had had time for some quick thinking. If the nation was going over to a non-shelter philosophy-if cave-dwelling was at an end and a dynamic new program was going to start-maybe a cement degree wasn’t going to be the passport to security and fame he had imagined. Walter Chase had always had a keen eye for the handwriting on the wall. “A-young lady friend,” he winked. “Name of Douglasina Baggett. Perhaps you’ve heard of her father; he’s quite an important man hi H. E. and W.”

  The neutron, properly placed, had struck the nucleus; and the spreading chain was propagating rapidly through their world. What was it going to be from now on? They did not know; does a fissioned atom know what elements it will change into? It must change; and so it changes. “I guess we did something, eh?” said Denzer. “But … I don’t know. If it hadn’t been us, I expect it would have been someone else. Something had to give.” For it doesn’t matter which nucleus fissions first. Once the mass is critical the chain reaction begins; it is as simple as that.

  “Let’s get that drink, Denzer,” said Maggie Frome.

  They flagged a cab, and all the way out to Arlington-Alex it chuckled at them as they kissed. The cab spared* them its canned thoughts, and that was as they wished it. But that was not why they were in each other’s arms.

  AFTERWORD

  Some person who is not me will have to decide how great a writer Cyril Kornbluth was. I was too close to him, as collaborator hi many ways, and as friend.

  In all, we wrote four science-fiction novels together*, plus three novels which were not science fiction and, in various permutations, with and without other collaborators, several dozen stories.

  There are still in my files a few fragments of stories, and one huge chunk of a novel, not science fiction, about the Civil War. For technical reasons I do not think the novel is likely ever to be finished and published by anybody. None of the other fragments have enough in them to go on, and so unless some unexpected treasure trove turns up there will be no more.

  So I think that this volume, which contains stories published as long as a decade and a half after his death, contains the last of the work of Cyril Kornbluth which is ever likely to see print; and I regret very much the loss to all of us, and personally and particularly to myself, of this bright and rewarding talent.

  *There was a fifth, Marschild, which began as a short story of mine but was otherwise written almost entirely by Cyril and my then wife, Judith Merril.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FREDERIK POHL has been called (by Kingsley Amis, in New Maps of Hell) “the most consistently able writer science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced.” He has won four Hugos, and is the only person ever to have won this coveted science fiction award both as editor and as writer. His work includes not only science fiction, in which he is an acknowledged master, but work as disparate as feature articles for Playboy and Family Circle and scholarly treatises, such as his biography of the Roman emperor Tiberius in the Encyclopaedia Bri-tatmica. In addition, he has lectured in Russia and at some two hundred and fifty colleges and has appeared on more than four hundred radio and television programs. He was recently President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and is the author (with C. M. Kornbluth) of The Space Merchants, recognized as one of the all-time classics of science fiction. He is presently science fiction editor at Bantam Books, and makes his home in Red Bank, New Jersey.

  CYRIL KORNBLUTH began writing science fiction for publication at the age of fifteen, and kept it up until his sadly early death in his midthirties. In his own right he was the author of four science fiction novels, including The Syndic, a number of works outside the science-fiction field and several score of the brightest and most innovative shorter science-fiction pieces ever written. Some of his short stories and novelettes have been mainstays for the anthologists ever since and have been adapted for television production, as for example The Little Black Bag and The Marching Morons. His collaboration with Fredefik Pohl has been described as “the finest sf collaborating team hi history.” Together they wrote seven novels and more than thirty short stories, among their works such classics as The Space Merchants, which has been translated into more than thirty-five languages and has appeared on most lists of the most important science fiction novels ever written.