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“Why?”

“It would cut your refining time in the cascades by a factor of ten.”

Martin thought it over while Daddy Lomax puffed.

“Then when would you calculate Iraq could have those thirty-five kilograms of pure uranium?”

“Depends when they started with the calutrons.”

Martin thought. After the Israeli jets destroyed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, Baghdad operated on two policies: dispersal and duplication, scattering the laboratories all over the country so they could never all be bombed again; and using a cover-all-angles technique in purchasing and experimentation. Osirak had been bombed in 1981.

“Say they bought the components on the open market in 1982 and assembled them by 1983.”

Lomax took a stick from the ground near his feet and began to doodle in the dust.

“These guys got any problem with supplies of yellowcake, the basic feedstock?” he asked.

“No, plenty of feedstock.”

“Suppose so,” grunted Lomax. “Buy the damn stuff in K-mart nowadays.

After a while he tapped the photo with his stick.

“This photo shows about twenty calutrons. That all they had?”

“Maybe more. We don’t know. Let’s assume that’s all they had working.”

“Since 1983, right?”

“Basic assumption.”

Lomax kept scratching in the dust.

“Mr. Hussein got any shortage of electric power?”

Martin thought of the 150-megawatt power station across the sand From Tarmiya, and the suggestion from the Black Hole that the cable ran underground into Tarmiya.

“No, no shortage of power.”

“We did,” said Lomax. “Calutrons take an amazing amount of electrical power to function. At Oak Ridge we built the biggest coal-fired power station ever made. Even then we had to tap into the public grid. Each time we turned ’em on, there was a brown-out right across Tennessee—soggy fries and brown light bulbs—we were using so much.”

He went on doodling with his stick, making a calculation, then scratching it out and starting another in the same patch of dust.

“They got a shortage of copper wire?”

“No, they could buy that on the open market too.”

“These giant magnets have to be wrapped in thousands of miles of copper wire,” said Lomax. “Back in the war, we couldn’t get any. Needed for war production, every ounce. Know what old Lawrence did?”

“No idea.”

“Borrowed all the silver bars in Fort Knox and melted it into wire. Worked just as well. End of the war, we had to hand it all back to Fort Knox.” He chuckled. “He was a character.”

Finally he finished and straightened up.

“If they assembled twenty calutrons in 1983 and ran the yellowcake through them till ’89 ... and then took thirty-percent-pure uranium and fed it into the centrifuge cascade for one year, they’d have their thirty-five keys of ninety-three percent bomb-grade uranium ... November.”

“Next November,” said Martin.