Chapter 11 chapter Ten

Jenkins walked out of the clinic, ready to report the bad news to the patient's family. He crossed the only street in Albania and saw Karen at the end.Drake.Wearing overalls and a handkerchief tied around her red hair, she was painting the metal panels on the roof.Jenkins called her as calmly as possible, and she turned off the spray gun and descended the ladder easily.Karen's warm smile took his breath away and he had to look away. "Hey, what's it you, Nick?" She still kept her earth accent, "You should have taken a vacation! Rick wrote that you worked so hard. You look really tired, you should think Think about other things, don't keep thinking about CT!"

Jenkins shook his head mournfully.He took a deep breath and was about to speak, but he couldn't bear to see the smile in Karen's eyes suddenly disappear. "How is Rick?" she asked. "He's written to say he's coming home next month, and said he's finishing work on the Liberty Star and can't be away for too long now. Ann's helping me clean up my room, and she's in there." Painted furniture." Karen turned to take another look at the gleaming aluminum paint on the house, and smiled with satisfaction. "Do you think Rick would like it?" she asked. "Ann and I have been living at her dad's house. After she had a baby, she needed a bit of space. It looked rusty at first, but the tin is actually good. Yes." She took his arm, "Come in and see Ann."

Jenkins only felt uncomfortable for a while, and followed in drowsily. Ann was painting the chairs in the kitchen and had some red paint on her face.The last time Jenkins had seen her, she had been a thin, boyish girl, and now, she was pregnant and looked bloated and crippled. "Hello, Nick!" She was evidently taken aback by Nick's sudden appearance, and unconsciously tried to hide behind the freshly painted desk.Her gray eyes looked keenly into his sickly face and read what Nick hadn't said.She couldn't help sobbing: "Paul, what happened to my Paul?" Jenkins stood silently, watching the can of red paint slip from her hand, and the viscous red liquid slowly spread on the floor, as horrible as blood.If the CT war broke out, this would be the blood of Ann and her child. Thinking of this, he shivered several times.

"Tell me!" she asked anxiously, "Is my husband dead?" Jenkins licked his lower lip. Maybe the clinic should have informed them.After a long silence, he heard his hoarse voice. "Not yet, I sent him to Vorrego." Karen's face turned pale, and he could hardly speak, and he nodded to the terrible question in her eyes, "Still There's Rick, Mr. Drake, Mackey and everyone else." The pool of red paint was still spreading across the floor. "Are they going to die?" Ann asked in a low voice. He nodded again, turned his head abruptly, not daring to look at the crimson paint on the ground again.Ann dropped the brush in her hand and staggered away from the table.Seeing the streak of red paint on her dress made Nick feel sick.

An suddenly came back to his senses: "Let's go and have a look right away." "Don't worry," Jenkins shook his head, avoiding Anna's blank eyes, "they've all inhaled amadin and passed out, and Dr. Urego said it would take them a week to wake them up. They've all received fifty levels of CT radiation." No one would tell them what that level of radiation meant. Karen asked softly, "How did it happen?" Jenkins shook his head. "I don't know." He trusted both of them as much as he trusted himself, but he dared not tell them.Any rumor of treachery on the Liberty Star would destroy the Trusteeship and his uncle's company, as well as his only hope of finding 80 tons of conductive alloy to build a transmitter.

"I went mining on a CT bull," he whispered. "It happened while I was gone. When I found them, they were all unconscious." He glanced at Karen's pale face. face, trying to forget the spreading blood-red color on the ground. "Please," he said hoarsely, "can you pass on to the other family members?" She nodded silently.Nick turned to Ann again: "I want to talk to your father." The CT Warehouse was a new build of shiny sheet metal, on the edge of the landing pad near the Albanian North Pole. The light in the warehouse is dim, and you can vaguely see crates of machine tools ready to be shipped to Freedom Star, buckets of purified oxygen, and boxes of dehydrated food. In addition, there are countless lead ingots, cadmium ingots, and copper ingots piled up on the ground. , but Jenkins wants a conductive alloy.

In a partitioned office in a corner of the warehouse, O'Barian was sitting behind the messy desk.He is old and fat, with a bushy beard that always impresses people, and the corners of his mouth are slightly drooping, revealing a trace of thoughtful pain unconsciously. Although the former combat hero and interim chairman of the high-level space alliance has long since passed away, he is still only a warehouse manager, and he feels a little wronged in his heart. "Hello, Mr. Jenkins." He smiled enthusiastically and stood up. Nick believed that his enthusiasm was entirely due to envy of Brian's wealth. "How is your uncle?"

"I'm going to see him at Port Burroughs. I have bad news for him and, of course, for you." Nick began to describe the unprecedented disaster of the Liberty Star, and O'Brien sat down lumberingly.As he listened, his expression changed, and beads of sweat oozed from his sagging face.When he heard that his friends and Ann's husband were going to die from CT radiation, the wrinkles on his face seemed to deepen. "Terrible!" he sighed, breathlessly. "What terrible news for Ann boy." But to Jenkins, O'Brien did not appear to be merely distressed.His stubby hands trembled, his breathing became short of breath, his bloodshot eyes narrowed, and he looked at himself coldly.

"Now, there's a planet ready for a CT war," Jenkins finished, watching O'Brien's strange reaction in bewilderment. "The new owners of these missiles will attack soon." He said everything except that he was dying.Knowing that O'Brien had been a politician, a financier, and even a fighter, Jenkins could recognize the seriousness of the rumor and know what to do about it. "Mr. Jenkins, it's scary!" The old man nervously sorted out the messy documents on the table, and spoke in a high voice, "Which planet do you suspect it is?" Jenkins shook his head: "It's possible, I didn't find any clues."

"It's terrible, it's terrible, and there's nothing we can do about it." Jenkins leaned forward with difficulty. "There is a way. We have to build the Brian transmitter." O'Brien just looked at him, rubbing his gray-haired head stubbornly. "You can help." Jenkins persuaded in a low voice, "I'm going to Port Burroughs, I want you to call my uncle and ask him to prepare the metal that Drake wants for me, the 80 tons of conductive alloy .” O'Brien shifted his body in his chair, his eyes were evasive, evasive, and hostile.He looked at the door, as if signaling Jenkins to go out.His lips squirmed, opened, but closed again immediately.

"One more thing," Jenkins continued, "I hope you can find two or three engineers who will volunteer to work in the Liberty Star remnant ray environment for a few days, in case Drake and them are sick and can't help ’” Just in case he died, Jenkins said silently. O'Brien let out a harsh grunt and rose impatiently. "Stop talking nonsense, Mr. Jenkins." He suddenly reminded, "I don't know any engineer who is willing to commit suicide in the residual radiation, and I'm afraid you won't get conductive alloy." "Why?" Jenkins asked. "My uncle promised..." "That's why!" O'Brien flipped through the documents in the metal hooks hanging on the wall with his fat fingers, "This is Drake's application, and this is your uncle's approval." Jenkins took the yellow paper and saw it said: "I'm sorry, Jim. You know that the conductive alloy is worth two million per ton! I suggest you think of something cheaper. Sincerely, M.B." He Rubbing the paper angrily. "He promised for that metal," he whispered. "The cheap ones won't work. Conductive alloys are cast from platinum, osmium, and iridium isotopes. More current than a ton of copper. Nothing else, I'm going to find that alloy myself!" "Don't worry, Jenkins." O'Brien swayed his fat body to open the door for him, as if he was eager to send him away. "There are so many meteors that one cannot completely control them. I always tell Drake that way." "Wait," interrupted Jenkins, "I'm going to call my uncle." "Not now." As it was difficult to conceal his anger, O'Barian's face slowly turned red. He looked at the dusty watch on the wall and shrugged, "There are still four hours left on Burroughs." Only then can it appear in the beam receiving area, do you have the time?" Jenkins shook his head, relieved to see the old man.Frowning suspiciously, he paused by the door, trying to understand the cause of O'Brien's indifference, suspicion, and impatience.The old man's attitude disturbed his mind, but his own life was taking away, and he had no time for that much. "I'm going to Port Burroughs. If possible, call my uncle and ask him to prepare the alloy." O'Brien only snorted mockingly. Nick came out in a hurry and walked down the street, trying to shake off the confusion O'Brien had caused him.Jenkins didn't understand why he had that attitude, but it was clear that he didn't want to help. "O'Brien is nothing," Jenkins convinced himself hopefully. "Uncle will find that alloy, and maybe he'll help make the transmitter! Don't forget he's a brilliant space engineer." He hurried to the safety pit of the clinic, wondering what Albania would look like with endless CT energy?Those protruding iron rock heads will definitely be leveled, new synthetic soil will be formed on the ground, and water will be produced to nourish the soil. In Nick's mind, energy is the foundation of life. CT energy will bring people a better life, and it will be too late to use it to save the people in the Orrego Clinic.However, Ann is pregnant again... Jenkins hurried into the clinic without going in.Ann, Karen, and everyone else's family must be there by now, weeping into the bed, or just standing in distraught silence.He dreaded seeing them. He walked through a winding radiation-proof tunnel behind the clinic to the safety pit.goodbye.The abbreviation was still parked there, and a few red letters flashed impressively on the airlock: the spaceship is polluted, be careful of the rays, and stay away!It must have been posted by a nurse at the clinic, and he stopped involuntarily. Afterwards, he smiled wearily, stepped forward and tore off the notice, and threw it aside.No matter how dangerous the rays were, he didn't care. He stepped onto the spaceship, closed the valve, entered the driver's cab along the ladder, and drove the rusty ship to Burroughs Port in the distance.