The Asenion Solution

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Fletcher stared bleakly at the small mounds of gray metal that were visible behind the thick window of the storage chamber.

“Plutonium-186,” he muttered. “Nonsense! Absolute nonsense!”

“Dangerous nonsense, Lew” said Jesse Hammond, standing behind him. “Catastrophic nonsense.”

Fletcher nodded. The very phrase, “plutonium-186,” sounded like gibberish to him. There wasn’t supposed to be any such substance. Plutonium-186 was an impossible isotope, too light by a good fifty neutrons. Or a bad fifty neutrons, considering the risks the stuff was creating as it piled up here and there around the world. But the fact that it was theoretically impossible for plutonium-186 to exist did not change the other, and uglier, fact that he was looking at three kilograms of it right this minute. Or that as the quantity of plutonium-186 in the world continued to increase, so did the chance of an uncontrollable nuclear reaction leading to an atomic holocaust.

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