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Germany had been so critical Every minute lost at the 2025 end would equate to
more thai three hours lost in 1940. No wonder all the planning, and most o the
meetings and conferences had taken place in Germany, no Brazil. But there was
more to it than just that.
He looked at Hailman, his eyes deadly serious now. "We can't afford to fool
with the CN,"
he said. "There isn't time. Do you realize what this means? Time is running
two hundred times faster in the world we've come here from. For every two days
that we spend talking here, over a year will pass by there-in a world where
civilization is being overwhelmed and nations crushed by a form of barbarism
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that you people in your comfortable world here are incapable of imagining. But
it was your world here that unleashed it. The bombs for 1942 are being readied
here right now! Can you imagine that, Dr. Hallman? Can you imagine turning
madmen with nuclear weapons loose in the world of a hundred years ago? Well,
that's exactly what you've done. Now tell us again that we should just hand it
over to Security and wait for somebody to talk to the CN."
A strained silence followed Scholder's outburst. Then Hallman nodded curtly.
"Let's go and talk to Pfanzer."
CHAPTER
39
THE NEWS THAT CONTACT had been lost after Winslade, Anna, and Scholder
disappeared into the Gatehouse machine with an American colonel had naturally
caused great concern among
Churchill's group in England. When over two weeks went by with nothing further
of them, the concern turned to consternation.
With the likely outcome of Ampersand far from certain, the development of a
Western atomic bomb to counterbalance the Nazi threat immediately assumed
crucial importance; since. most of the experts in America were trying to find
out what had gone wrong at Gatehouse, the focus of atomic research shifted for
the time being to Britain. The main centers of the British program were the
universities of London, where a Professor Thomson was experimenting with fast
and slow neutrons at
Imperial College, supported by the Air Ministry; Liverpool, under James
Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron; and Birmingham.
At Birmingham, Lindemann introduced Gordon Selby to the group working on
uranium fission under a Professor Rudolf Pejeris and Dr. Otto Frisch-the same
Otto Frisch who had brought the news from Sweden to Copenhagen in December
1938, of the Hahn-Strassmann experiment performed in Berlin.
298
He had been visiting England at the outbreak of war and elected to stay. One
quick result of this collaboration was a realization by the Birmingham group
that the critical mass of uranium
235 (the minimum amount needed for a workable bomb) was measured not in tons,
as they had previously imagined, but in pounds. This altered radically their
whole outlook regarding atomic weapons' feasibility. In response to a paper by
Peierls and Frisch, and under heavy prodding from
Lindemann, the, government established a group that came to be known as the
Maud Committee to monitor and supervise further nuclear work. Lindemann
explained to the surprised British researchers that he had obtained Selby
temporarily on an exchange deal that he'd worked with the
Americans. "You'd be surprised what they're doing over there," he told them.
"Some of the people they've got are way ahead of their time!" At least it was
being honest.
Meanwhile, the Russo-Finnish war, which in the Proteus world had gone on until
June, ended
"prematurely," taking the planners of the proposed Norwegian campaign by
surprise. Apparently, the
Stalin-Hitler pact that had been concluded in this world had freed the
Russians to send more troops to Finland, which resulted in a speedier
decision. Thus, the main pretext for intervening in Scandinavia had gone away.
Undeterred, Churchill pressed for a decision to proceed with the
Norwegian landings, anyway.
"To hell with the Finnish business!" he growled at the next meeting of the War
Cabinet.
"We'll put mines in the Leads and go in when the Germans react. And if the
Germans fail to react, then to hell with them, too. We'll go in anyway!" His [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]