The Bramble Bush
The Bramble Bush
Free DownloadUsually, if a man's gotten into bad troubleby getting into something, he's a fool to go back. But there are times ...
Book Excerpt
the instability can be corrected by positive beta emission. When two nuclei of the resulting Xenon 128 are forced together, the positron emission begins long before the coalescence is complete, resulting in Fermium 256.
But not even a Ditmars-Horst reactor can stand the next step, because matter itself won't stand it--not even in a D-H reactor. The trouble is that a D-H reactor tries. Mathematically, it was assumed that the resulting nucleus did exist--for an infinitesimal instant of time. Literally, mathematically, infinitesimal--so close to zero that it would be utterly impossible to measure it. Someone had dubbed the hypothetical stuff Instantanium 512.
Whether Instantanium 512 had any real existence is an argument for philosophers only. The results, in any case, were catastrophic. The whole conglomeration came apart in a grand splatter of neutrons, protons, negatrons, positrons, electrons, neutrinos--a whole slew of Greek-lettered mesons of various charges and masses, and a fine co
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There's an unexplained explosion in a reactor design so unstable that it wasn't permitted to be built on Earth. It's on the moon, and De Hooch is the only person left to repair the controls that shut the reactor down. Help is hours away, and before then there will be nothing left but a new crater on the moon.
The hero is a good character, and Willows the coward is pretty good too. The plot held my interest, it had nice tension.The story uses a lot of particle physics and element transmutation that I can't criticize because I'm ignorant of the field.
Four and a half stars.
I enjoyed the story.
The hero is a good character, and Willows the coward is pretty good too. The plot held my interest, it had nice tension.The story uses a lot of particle physics and element transmutation that I can't criticize because I'm ignorant of the field.
Four and a half stars.
I enjoyed the story.
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