Dreams and Shadows

PART I

ISABELLE Lives

Our story begins in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts in June of 1977. We’re in the Marine Research Center. Just take a walk around. Do you see? Anywhere you turn, there’s a big name. Here’s a Nobel winner, and there, walking down the hall, is a lab director, and, talking to him, a couple of government money men (G-Men). And, would you believe, there’s DOE’s Director of Energy Research (ER), Jim Kane, a man just a hop, skip and a jump away from the President. Something big is going on here. There’s a boom in science going on, and this June week, America’s next large scientific facility will be put in the construction hopper. To do this, the Energy Department has set up a panel of scientists who, after months of bargaining and sparring, are here to play the endgame. Competing in the Woods-Hole ring are two giants of the high-energy scene. In one corner, from the east, is ISABELLE, BNL’s pride and joy, and in the other, from the mid-west, is Fermilab’s entry in the grand-design rivalry, and, from this match-up, only one winner will emerge.

Chapter 1: The Cocktail Party

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Here’s your chance, Mickey. Grab it. Don’t be afraid. Say what has to be said. Oh, don’t worry, he will, for, so eager is he to be heard and so full of ambition, he could never resist the temptation. No, he’ll talk alright, even if it thrusts him into the lion’s den. True, sometimes doubt creeps into his mind. Are you right? Are you sure? he asks himself. But the self-righteous pay no heed to doubt. They banish it on arrival.

Whenever he has a free moment, Mickey unwinds the threads of his argument, honing them, repeating them over and over again, like a budding actor rehearsing for his opening night, and, all the while, the excitement within him is pounding to the rhythm of his heightened heartbeat.

A decade earlier, Mickey launched his career. The inner working of the atom, that’s his business and he loves it. Even more, he loves the life of a scientist, with its credo of truth, knowledge and openness. Grow up, Mickey. Maybe it was so in the old days, though even that’s doubtful. But today, in the post-A-Bomb Big-Science era, that notion’s a crock. Can’t you see? The price for the instruments of science has soared into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The funding of them entails feeding at the Federal trough and political machinations have become a way of life. No, Mickey, in this brave new world, that old idealistic credo is an empty reminiscence of some imagined good old days.

So, there’s Mickey, consultant to the seventy-seven panel. He’s full of ideas and ready to take the plunge – to enter the big-time and make himself felt. Poor Mickey! Alas, he’s naught but a babe in the woods, ignorant of the ruthless games men play and totally unaware of the rude awakening that awaits him.

It’s Wednesday morning, the third day at Woods Hole, and the technology experts are in session. Leading the discussion among the half-dozen or so consultants are the group’s co-chairs, Jim Leiss, Director of the National Bureau of Standards Technology Section, and Boyce McDaniel, Director of Cornell University’s Laboratory for Nuclear Studies. They’re in a small room, designed for about ten people, with a round table and about a dozen chairs. It’s not a fancy place, but comfortable enough. And, this being a blackboard group, the transparency machine and screen are pushed into a corner. They’re in the midst of the day’s topic, ISABELLE, just up Mickey’s alley. He’s BNL’s collider specialist first-class, and ISABELLE is his baby, the baby he nurtured since its birth in the late sixties. In spite of this, for some reason, Mickey is troubled. Just look at how subdued he is. For the past couple of days, it’s been hard to shut him up, but, today, he’s just sitting and listening – well, trying to listen – but he can’t focus. In fact, he finds that he’s drifting, absorbed in his thoughts.

What’s your problem? he asks himself. Can’t you find anything good to say about ISABELLE? Does there always have to be something wrong with it?

I calls ‘em the way I sees ‘em, he answers. Can I help it if the research facts show that ISABELLE has big problems?

Look, Mickey, returns his alter ego. You’re a Brookhaven man. You can’t just go on spouting all this inflammatory stuff against the place that feeds you. How long do you think it’ll be before they start hitting back? You know, there is a price to pay for being a blabbermouth.

What exactly are you saying? he responds, Aren’t scientists supposed to bring the truth to light and isn’t it our duty to do so?

Oh, I see, we’re playing the idealist today, his other self insists. You know it could get awfully lonely being mister honesty-above-all and going it alone the way you are. Look, my good man, right