Runaway World

Work Resumes

     Beside the furnace was a pile of cold slag. Everything in the pellets that wasn't dysprosium was cooled to freezing temperatures before being dumped onto the surface of the ice. Beside the waste chute was another, much smaller opening that, every couple of hours, would disgorge a small ingot of pure dysprosium. At the end of the day, Andrew would pile them up on a small motorised trolley and drive them to the unmanned cargo rover which contained all the dysprosium they'd collected so far. Nearly half now of all they'd need. The operation was going very well, and only the situation their children were in kept him from feeling a warm glow of satisfaction.

     Andrew felt a tremble in the ice under his feet that told him that the former fork lift truck, now a bulldozer, was approaching, bringing another bucketload of control rod assemblies up from the ruined factory and research complex. The ruins gave every indication of containing all the dysprosium they would need, they'd been pleased to find. Philip, Joe and Valentina were sifting through the wreckage, picking through rubble and concrete, some still glued together with iron hard water ice, looking for the treasure they'd come to find whether it was in completed control rods or pellets of raw dysprosium titanate.

     Andrew looked around and saw Lungelo in the driver's seat. He waved as the bulldozer came level with them, then tipped the control rod assemblies on the pile that was already there. A light flashed in the corner of Andrew's vision, his suit telling him that someone was trying to talk to him over the public channel. He changed channel and the other man's voice sounded in his ears.

     "How you guys doing?" Lungelo asked.

     "Fine," Andrew replied. "Going to have to go in soon to recharge the pliers. They're getting low."

     "Anytime you want to swap jobs, sit down for a while, just let me know."

     "Will do. We're fine for the moment, thanks."

     They saw Lungelo nod in the bulldozer's cabin. "Listen, Phil says it's getting hard to find more completed assemblies where he is. Another couple of hours and he thinks he'll be mined out."

     "Yeah, that's pretty much what we expected," Andrew replied. "This place supplied control rods for over two hundred power stations, in the USA and abroad. They shipped them out pretty much as soon as they were completed. I'm surprised we found as many as we did. No, the assembly plant is where we'll find the rest of what we need. The place where these control rod assemblies were made."

     "You got any idea how much of the stuff there is here?" asked Susan. "I really don't want to have to raid the cores themselves for used dysprosium."

     Andrew shared her wish. Used dysprosium would be contaminated with unusable isotopes. It could still be used, but would take much longer to process to make it safe. Plus, of course, there would be the fuel rods themselves to deal with, which would still be radioactive even after two hundred years. Going to the cores of the nuclear reactors would be very much a last resort. Very much.

     "I don't think there'll be any need for that," said Lungelo, though. "Phil seems to think there's more than enough for what we need. The only problem is getting to it under all the rubble, but we're making progress. You guys sure you're okay here? Just let me know if one of you wants to have a go in the driver's seat. Sit down and rest for a while."

     Andrew looked across at his wife, who shook her head. "We'll let you know," he said. "In the meantime, just enjoy the..."

     He broke off at the sight of two people emerging from the huge, circular hole in the ice, at the bottom of which were the factory ruins. Two New Londoners. Their surface suits were newer and smarter looking than the antique suits being worn by the New Philadelphians. One figure was small, which meant it was Valentina. The other could have been either Philip or Joe. They were both large, physically imposing men, the seventeen year old son almost as much as the father.