Page 14 of Daikon

If it was, the enrichment surely could not be very high, considering that the ring stack weighed twenty-five kilos and the upper range of Dr. Nishina’s estimate for a supercritical mass was only ten.

It would be possible to test them if he had use of the 26-inch cyclotron at the Riken.

But it had been damaged in the fire in April, and in any event was more than 700 kilometers away.

A patter overhead on the tin roof. It was starting to rain.

Kan took no notice. He was considering the rest of the assembly, his mind completely absorbed.

The outermost piece and by far the largest was the steel plug that screwed into the cavity in the nose, the threads spiraling down its sides catching the light from the naked bulbs overhead.

It was really quite a beautiful piece of machined metal.

Next to it was nestled a smaller steel disk, dinner-plate-sized where it rested against the outer plug, then angling down to the width of the tube that ran through the object.

On top of this was another disk, same diameter but a different substance.

It was dark gray with flecks of green, like the sleeve inside the nose cavity of the object.

More sintered tungsten carbide? And then the six rings…

If they were enriched uranium, and assuming this was a gun-type bomb, then there would be a second uranium mass inside the tube, situated near the tail in front of the charges of cordite.

Kan peered again into its depths with the flashlight.

There did seem to be something down there, a long way inside, backed up deep in the hole.

He ran the wand of the Geiger-Müller counter along the length of the object. It gave an elevated response two-thirds of the way toward the tail.

He set the wand aside and looked around until he spotted a broom.

He used the handle to probe the nose cavity, extending his arm partway in, but couldn’t reach the end.

He tried again, using a longer pole Yagi dug from a pile of wood in the corner.

This time he encountered an obstruction at over two meters, in the back third of the object, around where the counter had made a slightly increased buzz.

He removed the pole, measured the depth, and wrote it down.

The rain was picking up, a steady drumming now on the roof.

Kan moved to the rear end of the bomb—he was thinking of it now as a bomb—and inserted the pole into the opposite end of the tube.

It descended to a depth of just under a meter.

Subtracting these two distances from the overall length, he calculated that the obstruction was approximately fifty centimeters long.

He bent down and peered into the tube, using Yagi’s flashlight.

Whatever was in there caught the beam and reflected it back.

He got down on his knees and inserted his hand into the hole.

He couldn’t help wincing as he did so, for it was like reaching into an animal’s burrow.

What was inside? A yellow-toothed rodent?

An angry badger? A coiled-up snake? This was an entirely man-made construction of metal, not an earthen embankment, but Kan couldn’t help thinking that something with sharp fangs was deep down in this tube, something untamed and unpredictable that might chew off his hand.

He reached all the way in but encountered nothing.

The lights overhead flickered. He ignored them.

He pressed his shoulder against the opening and stretched out his fingers as far as he could.

They brushed against something. He pressed harder and stretched further, the end of the tube biting into his armpit.

Whatever was in there, he managed to scratch it, then press it with his fingernail. It seemed very hard. Steel perhaps.

The lights flickered again, then went out. A power outage. Outages had become so common that it merited no comment. Kan removed his arm from the tube and stood up. He waited in the dark as his eyes adjusted. The lights did not return.

He joined Yagi at the open door. They stood side by side, looking out at the base and the river.

Night had fallen. The base, the town, the arsenal complex across the river—all were in darkness.

The only light came from the unseen moon overhead, a gossamer hint of illumination drifting down through the clouds.

Yagi took out a pack of Kinshi cigarettes and offered one to Kan.

“Ah, thank you,” said the scientist. “We don’t get many of these.” The dry tobacco crackled as Yagi held out a match, momentarily illuminating their faces; then he lit one for himself. The flame disappeared. Darkness returned.

He would contact Colonel Sagara in Tokyo as soon as the power returned, Kan decided.

He would send a cable, using the codes that Captain Onda had provided, giving as his preliminary assessment that the object could indeed be a uranium bomb.

It was a bold assertion after such a short examination.

And it would magnify still further Project Ni-Go’s failure to produce a similar weapon.

Kan had already decided to make it, however, even with less evidence than he had now, for the colonel seemed eager to believe it.

Why? Was he so bent on atomic destruction from the skies? Or—

Kan caught himself. Even thinking such a thing was dangerous.

Or… was the colonel looking for a reason to surrender? If the Americans could command the destructive power of the atom, there was no better reason to end the war.

Kan swept the thought aside. The Imperial Army would never surrender.

The Decisive Battle was coming when the Americans landed, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

All that mattered until then was to make himself useful to the colonel.

If he did, Sagara surely would be willing to get Noriko released.

Wouldn’t that be a reasonable reward for his service?

Kan had been clutching at the idea for the past twenty-four hours, the hope that he might be able to undo the damage that he had caused with his weakness.

It had started with his delay in sending Noriko and Aiko away from Tokyo when the danger became clear.

If he had insisted they go to Kanagawa to stay with his parents, the only thing lost would have been their house.

And then, after that terrible night and the death of their daughter, he had been so overwhelmed by his own pain that he had given Noriko little thought.

He had buried himself in his work at the Riken and been blind to her own suffering, which she bore more bravely than he did. How could he have been so selfish?

Emotion was welling up. He was becoming upset. He cleared his throat and concentrated on his cigarette. The drumming of the rain gradually returned him to the present.

“Yagi Shokai,” he said, recalling the name of the garage Yagi had mentioned. “Did you work on American cars?”

“Mostly Fords,” replied Yagi. “Dodge. Hudson. Buick.” He drew in a lungful of smoke. His earlier gruff manner was falling away in the darkness. “We repaired a LaSalle once. A fat German businessman owned it. Beautiful car.”

Thunder, no longer distant, rolled in off the sea. Overhead, the rain rose to a violent crescendo, pummeling the tin sheets of the roof, sluicing off the eaves to form a curtain of water in front of the door.

Kan’s thoughts drifted back to Noriko. It made his heart ache.