The China Syndrome by Burton Wohl

Author:Burton Wohl [Wohl, Burton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science-Fiction
ISBN: 055313017X
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1979-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

FIVE

The following morning, Jack Godell sat outside a massive steel door much like the door of a huge bank vault. He was seated on a short metal stool, awkwardly bending over to zip the fasteners on his anti-radiation boots. The bulky radiation suit he was wearing made it difficult to reach his toes and he was perspiring underneath the layers of lead-impregnated cloth. As soon as he was done, he stood up, put on his helmet and gloves, and picked up his flashlight and Geiger counter. Then, looking like a bright orange Martian and feeling vulnerable despite his protective cover, he activated a lever which opened the heavy steel door.

It swung silently, set in walls of ultra-thick concrete. Ahead of him loomed another door exactly like the one he’d passed through. Pausing, he locked the first door behind him and experienced for a moment the terror of entrapment. Shuffling ahead, he opened the second steel door and when that finally swung shut behind him, he was in the containment area. He’d been here before and each time he stood at the top of this huge eerie space, preparing to descend to the depths, he felt as if he had left the normal world.

The containment dome rose approximately ten stories from its lowest level, and as he stood on the small metal platform he could see all the way down this vast dark silo to the very bottom of the reactor core. There were no windows and the lights, though powerful at his level, grew dimmer and dimmer as he peered into the depths below.

Godell was not a fanciful man. His background was engineering, science and technology. Yet he could never come into this place without wondering if he was looking at a preview of hell.

Quickly, he checked his instruments to make sure they were working, and then began his long, slow descent down the spotless steel staircases. As he moved, he played his flashlight over the immense forms around him—pumps, three and four stories high, stainless steel pressure tanks as large as dirigibles, girders and pipes gleaming in the half-light of explosion-proof lamps. And everything vibrated with a deep, throbbing hum. He felt it in the handrails, in the metal plates beneath his feet. His body was alive with the energy coming from that deadly core far, far below him in the semi-darkness. He paused, took a few deep breaths in his special gas mask and then made his way downward again.

He forced his mind to concentrate on the things around him, refusing to think about the incident in the control room. Dutifully, he monitored the radiation as he went downward, falling back on training procedures as he used to do in the Navy. He would do it as a veteran officer should—strictly by the book.

As he got to the lowest level, an orange figure dwarfed ‘by a forest of steel girders and immense concrete blocks, he removed and unfolded a blueprint from one of his suit pouches. The reflection from the overhead lights was too dim and he unhooked a flashlight from his belt.

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