The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Howard Fast Page B

in shale-oil deposits. Then an atomic bomb is lowered to the bottom of this hole, after which the hole is plugged and the bomb is detonated. Theoretically, the heat and force of the atomic explosion crushes the shale and releases the oil to fill the underground cavern formed by the gigantic force of the bomb. The oil does not burn because the hole is sealed, and thereby, for a comparatively small cost, untold amounts of oil can be tapped and released—enough perhaps to last until that time when we experience a complete conversion to atomic energy—so vast are the shale deposits.
    Such at least was the way Max Gaffey put the proposition to me, in a sort of mutual brain-picking operation. He had the utmost admiration for my knowledge of the earth’s crust, and I had an equally profound admiration for his ability to make two or five or ten dollars appear where only one had been before.
    My wife disliked him and his notions, and most of all the proposal to feed atomic bombs into the earth’s crust.
    â€œIt’s wrong,” she said flatly. “I don’t know why or how, but this I do know, that everything connected with that wretched bomb is wrong.”
    â€œYet couldn’t you look at this as a sort of salvation?” I argued. “Here we are in these United States with enough atom bombs to destroy life on ten earths the size of ours—and every one of those bombs represents an investment of millions of dollars. I could not agree more when you hold that those bombs are the most hideous and frightful things the mind of man ever conceived.”
    â€œThen how on earth can you speak of salvation?”
    â€œBecause so long as those bombs sit here, they represent a constant threat—day and night the threat that some feather-brained general or brainless politician will begin the process of throwing them at our neighbors. But here Gaffey has come up with a peaceful use for the bomb. Don’t you see what that means?”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t,” Martha said.
    â€œIt means that we can use the damn bombs for something other than suicide—because if this starts, it’s the end of mankind. But there are oil-shale and gas-shale deposits all over the earth, and if we can use the bomb to supply about five million dollars to man with a century of fuel, not to mention the chemical by-products, we may just find a way to dispose of those filthy bombs.”
    â€œOh, you don’t believe that for a moment,” Martha snorted.
    â€œI do. I certainly do.”
    And I think I did. I went over the plans that Gaffey and his associates had worked out, and I could not find any flaw. If the hole were plugged properly, there would be no fallout. We knew that and we had the know-how to plug the hole, and we had proven it in at least twenty underground explosions. The earth tremor would be inconsequential; in spite of the heat, the oil would not ignite, and in spite of the cost of the atom bombs, the savings would be monumental. In fact, Gaffey hinted that some accommodation between the government and Thunder Inc. was in the process of being worked out, and if it went through as planned, the atom bombs might just cost Thunder Inc. nothing at all, the whole thing being in the way of an experiment for the social good.
    After all, Thunder Inc. did not own any oil-shale deposits, nor was it in the oil business. It was simply a service organization with the proper know-how, and for a fee—if the process worked—it would release the oil for others. What that fee would be was left unsaid, but Max Gaffey, in return for my consultation, suggested that I might buy a few shares, not only of Thunder Inc., but of General Shale Holdings.
    I had altogether about ten thousand dollars in savings available and another ten thousand in American Telephone and government bonds. Martha had a bit of money of her own, but I left that alone, and without telling her, I sold my Telephone stock