Goddard, Come Home

by Gary D. Snyder

Part 10:

"Jimmy!" cried Carl. "You're awake!"

"How do you feel, Jimmy?" asked Libby.

"I've felt better," he answered, moving uncertainly across the floor towards them. "I feel like I've eaten way too much mushroom pizza."

"So what's the plan, Jimmy?" Sheen asked as Jimmy paused to steady himself. "Go to the park and get Goddard?"

Jimmy took a deep breath before answering. "Not yet. First I have to find what went wrong with the power system so I'll know how to fix it. Vox!" he called. "Specify cause of Goddard unit's power system failure!"

"Residual core magnetism has compromised integrity of the reaction containment field," Vox responded.

This announcement meant nothing to the others but was enough to make Jimmy drop heavily into a chair with a groan. "It's worse than I thought," he said. "It's not just Goddard that's in danger. It's all of us as well." He struggled to his feet again. "Help me get some things packed."

"What do you mean, 'all of us as well'?" Cindy demanded. "You mean us five?"

Jimmy retrieved his hypercube and began to sluggishly drop various gizmos and gadgets from shelves into it. "That too," was all he said.

Cindy, unsatisfied with this answer, stalked over to confront him. "Okay, science boy. What gives? What did you mean by us all being in danger?"

Jimmy paused and gave her a weary look. "I meant," he replied, "that the explosion will be a lot worse than I expected. If Goddard explodes, the explosion will get us as well." He resumed placing various objects in the hypercube.

"But Goddard's way over in the park," Sheen pointed out. "Just how big an explosion would it be?"

"Yes, Neutron. Just how big?" Cindy pressed.

Jimmy paused to rest again. "You know that house you like, the one with gingerbread trim that's about a block or so from here?"

"Ye-e-es," Cindy replied slowly, as if expecting some sort of catch.

"Well…I figure that anything about 20 miles past that should be beyond the primary blast radius."

"What?!" the others all shouted in unison.

"This is too slow!" said Jimmy in frustration. "Look, just help me put everything on these shelves in here. I don't have time to pick and choose." Still stunned, his friends moved to comply, tossing everything they could into the small cube.

"How could Goddard create an explosion 40 miles across?" Cindy asked at last. "The only thing that powerful would be an nuclear bomb." She gave Jimmy a sudden suspicious look. "He's not nuclear, is he?"

"No. Well, not really. Sort of."

Cindy let out a sigh of exasperation and gave him a long, disconcerting look.

"Okay," Jimmy relented. "He's not really nuclear. He doesn't use anything radioactive like uranium or plutonium or tritium. I wasn't able to get any of that when I first built him. About all I could get without much trouble was aluminum Purple Flurp cans."

Thank heaven for small favors, thought Cindy. Otherwise Retroville would have been a crater years ago.

"But I calculated that my energy cells wouldn't be enough to keep him powered for more than a week or so and I knew that Dad and Mom would complain about the electric bills whenever I recharged him. So…I cheated."

"You cheated?" asked Libby, who was goggle-eyed in disbelief.

"Go on," urged Cindy.

"The reason that some elements are unstable and can be used in fusion or fission reactions is mainly because of the forces inside the nucleus. The protons try to push each other away, and the neutrons try to hold them together. In some atoms there aren't enough neutrons to keep the protons together and the nucleus wants to split apart. That's fission. In others there are too many neutrons for the number of protons and the nucleus wants to merge with other nuclei. That's fusion. What determines how many protons and neutrons form a stable nucleus is the strength of the balancing forces in the nucleus. Since I couldn't get unstable elements for Goddard's power source I did the only thing I could. I invented a reactor that changes the strength of the strong nuclear force." Seeing Cindy's incredulous look he added hastily, "But just a little. Just enough to let me use aluminum as fuel for a fusion reaction."

"So that's why Goddard likes aluminum cans," Carl said.

"O-ka-a-ay," Sheen let out slowly as he continued to place items in the hypercube. "And what's gone wrong?"

"Like other fusion reactions I needed a powerful magnetic field to contain the reaction. But eventually the core itself becomes magnetized."

"Oh, like when you wind a wire around a nail and make and electromagnet. Afterwards the nail is a little magnetic even without power," Libby said.

"Exactly," Jimmy agreed. "The problem is that when the core becomes magnetized the magnetic field gets weaker because the two fields fight each other. If I leave it…because I left it…uncorrected, the field has weakened to the point where it can't keep the modified nuclear force localized. All the aluminum fuel and a lot of the other material inside Goddard will be used up in an uncontrolled fusion reaction. It will be like dropping a hydrogen bomb on Retroville unless I can get there and degauss Goddard in time."

"My computer monitor has that sort of thing built in." Cindy commented, trying to sound calm. "Degaussing him should be pretty simple."

"It is simple," replied Jimmy, but even through the fatigue in his voice the others could sense something odd in his tone. "You just apply an intense alternating magnetic field to counteract the residual magnetism."

"So why the long face?" asked Libby.

"It's not the degaussing that's the problem." He shook his head. "You heard the news report. Apparently Goddard has been attacking people, which means he's running on his basic behavioral algorithms and trying to protect himself. There are a lot of defensive systems built into him. I have to get past those and get close enough to him for the degausser to work. I may not have time to try reasoning with him." With the hypercube now fully packed he straightened and glanced at the video screen. "We only have seven minutes and twenty-two seconds left."

End of Part 10.