The Complete Stories (Page 174)

"The knife. Don’t hold it in front of me. I can’t stand looking at it." Darrity said, "Why not?" He held it out. "Anything wrong with it? It’s a good knife."

Ralson lunged. Darrity stepped back and his left hand came down on the other’s wrist. He lifted the knife high in the air. "What’s the matter, Ralson? What are you after?"

Grant cried a protest but Darrity waved him away.

Darrity said, "What do you want, Ralson?"

Ralson tried to reach upward, and bent under the other’s appalling grip. ;He gasped, "Give me the knife."

"Why, Ralson? What do you want to do with it?"

"Please. I’ve got to-" He was pleading. "I’ve got to stop living."

"You want to die?"

"No. But I must."

Darrity shoved. Ralson flailed backward and tumbled into his cot, so that it squeaked noisily. Slowly, Darrity bent the blade of his penknife into its sheath and put it away. Ralson covered his face. His shoulders were shaking but otherwise he did not move.

There was the sound of shouting from the corridor, as the other prisoners reacted to the noise issuing from Ralson’s cell. The guard came hurrying down, yelling, "Quiet!" as he went.

Darrity looked up. "It’s all right, guard."

He was wiping his hands upon a large white handkerchief. "I think we’ll get a doctor for him."

Dr. Gottfried Blaustein was small and dark and spoke with a trace of an Austrian accent. He needed only a small goatee to be the layman’s caricature of a psychiatrist. But he was clean-shaven, and very carefully dressed. He watched Grant closely, assessing him, blocking in certain observations and deductions. He did this automatically, now, with everyone he met.

He said, "You give me a sort of picture. You describe a man of great talent, perhaps even genius. You tell me he has always been uncomfortable with people; that he has never fitted in with his laboratory environment, even though it was there that he met the greatest of success. Is there another environment to which he has fitted himself?"

"1 don’t understand."

"It is not given to all of us to be so fortunate as to find a congenial type of

company at the place or in the field where we find it necessary to make a living. Often, one compensates by playing an instrument, or going hiking, or joining some club. In other words, one creates a new type of society, when not working, in which one can feel more at home. It need not have the slightest connection with what one’s ordinary occupation is. It is an escape, and not necessarily an unhealthy one." He smiled and added, "Myself, I collect stamps. I am an active member of the American Society of Philatelists."

Grant shook his head. "I don’t know what he did outside working hours. I doubt that he did anything like what you’ve mentioned."

"Um-m-m. Well, that would be sad. Relaxation and enjoyment are wherever you find them; but you must find them somewhere, no?"

"Have you spoken to Dr. Ralson, yet?"

"About his problems? No."

"Aren’t you going to?"

"Oh, yes. But he has been here only a week. One must give him a chance to recover. He was in a highly excited state when he first came here. It was almost a delirium. Let him rest and become accustomed to the new environment. I will question him, then."

"Will you be able to get him back to work?"

Blaustein smiled. "How should I know? I don’t even know what his sickness is."

"Couldn’t you at least get rid of the worst of it; this suicidal obsession of his, and take care of the rest of the cure while he’s at work?"

"Perhaps. I couldn’t even venture an opinion so far without several interviews."

"How long do you suppose it will all take?"

"In these matters, Dr. Grant, nobody can say."

Grant brought his hands together in a sharp slap. "Do what seems best then. But this is more important than you know."

"Perhaps. But you may be able to help me, Dr. Grant."

"How?"

"Can you get me certain information which may be classified as top secret?"

"What kind of information?"

"I would like to know the suicide rate, since 1945, among nuclear scientists. Also, how many have left their jobs to go into other types of scientific work, or to leave science altogether."

"Is this in connection with Ralson?"

"Don’t you think it might be an occupational disease, this terrible unhap-piness of his?"

"Well-a good many have left their jobs, naturally."

"Why naturally, Dr. Grant?"

"You must know how it is, Dr. Blaustein, The atmosphere in modem

atomic research is one of great pressure and red tape. You work with the government; you work with military men. You can’t talk about your work; you have to be careful what you say. Naturally, if you get a chance at a job in a university, where you can fix your own hours, do your own work, write papers that don’t have to be submitted to the A.E.C., attend conventions that aren’t held behind locked doors, you take it."

"And abandon your field of specialty forever."

"There are always non-military applications. Of course, there was one man who did leave for another reason. He told me once he couldn’t sleep nights. He said he’d hear one hundred thousand screams coming from Hiroshima, when he put the lights out. The last I heard of him he was a clerk in a haberdashery."

"And do you ever hear a few screams yourself?"

Grant nodded. "It isn’t a nice feeling to know that even a little of the responsibility of atomic destruction might be your own."