In the patchwork of tables and chairs, Lynn fell asleep in a daze, waking up with a faint numbness in her lower back. The interrogation room, located in an underground facility, was completely out of sight, and his watch was seized by American GIs, leaving him to guess the time intuitively. As intruders, they were brought to the U.S. base in the middle of the night in the middle of the night, so it was impossible to deduce from the length of time it took for the U.S. officials to leave to deduce whether the top physicists were there.

The American soldier on duty at the gate changed his guard but did not bring any food and water to Lynn, and although the atmosphere was a little strange and oppressive, Lynn waited very patiently. In the middle of the afternoon, the beautiful [***] officer, who looked a little like Winston, the commander of the Brothers of Brothers, reappeared, and after the iron door opened, he stood at the door and looked at Lynn: "Come with me!" ”

The calm tone made Lynn guess a rough idea, but there was a blank and ignorant look on his face. He stood up and staggered out slightly. The officer took out a black cloth belt, blindfolded him with his own hands, and admonished: "This is a special case, and you must not think that you are clever in any tricks." ”

Lynn nodded repeatedly, and then the officer personally carried him along the passage. Although out of sight, Lynn was well aware that this was the way she had come in yesterday. Ascending the 12 steps, the sun, the breeze and the heat all proved his basic judgment. The officer let go of his hand and got Lynn into a large truck with a tall chassis between his two stout arms, one on the left and one on the right. It was very hot and stuffy in the cabin, the engine was very noisy during the drive, and the people next to him didn't talk much. The road was flat, but the route was winding, turning left, right, left, right, such a trip was dizzying, but Lynn tried his best to grasp the direction and spatial imagination, and he keenly felt that the vehicle was going in circles in a large area, that is, the target was still inside the base.

After three or four hours of wandering in the desert, the car finally stopped, and Lynn was caught between the soldiers and got out of the car, and then retched with weakness and a painful expression, as if she were a weak young scholar. After performing like this for several minutes, feeling that it was enough for the scene, he barely stood up, and was led by others into a downward passage with his eyes still covered with black cloth, 16 steps, at least a different entrance.

As soon as I entered the ground, the air temperature suddenly dropped a lot, and there was the constant sound of iron doors opening and closing along the way, which felt like entering a heavily guarded prison. After turning around for about ten minutes, he finally arrived at the place, and the black cloth on Lynn's eyes was taken away by others. When I saw the light again, I saw a room not much larger than the previous interrogation room, with a rectangular wooden table in the center, and a young officer sitting by the air window preparing to take notes, which reminded Lynn of prison visits in foreign movies.

Officer Mei[***], who had a slight resemblance to Winston, the commander of the Brothers' Company, was unsurprisingly standing at the other end of the table, with a large blackboard behind him. Lynn guessed that he hadn't gotten into the car before, and reasoned that this base was indeed the one he had discovered in a hot air balloon, and the Americans had just taken him out for a big spin just to confuse his vision.

After a few minutes, there was the sound of soft footsteps in the passageway, and Lynn stared at the iron gate with curiosity, and the soldiers on duty opened it, and a small old man walked in. He had thinning hair, as thin as a perennial drug addict, a white lab coat with a shirt and tie underneath, and Lynn notebook in his hand, reading and thinking, completely immersed in his own thoughts. It wasn't until he sat down at the table that he set his sights on Lynn.

That's Robert. Oppenheimer, the main leader and technical leader of the "Manhattan Project", the father of the atomic bomb in the United States, the number one target of this trip? Lynn was a little stunned, he couldn't remember what this low-key but crucial figure looked like in the historical pictures he had seen back then, but he felt that this guy didn't have the aura of a leader at all.

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

The little old man put his handwriting on the table, put one hand in his pocket, and took his pipe in the other, and said to Lynn in fluent and standard English: "You are the exchange scholar from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata?" What's the name? ”

"Carter. Home! Lynn responded with a beaming expression, "You're Dr. Oppenheimer?" ”

The little old man was noncommittal, but continued to ask, "I heard that you and another young man came very bravely in a hot air balloon yesterday?" ”

The reaction was enough for Lynn to be sure of his true identity, and in order to gain sympathy, he turned from joy to apology and grievance: "I know it's really abrupt to do this, and I even face charges and imprisonment from the military, but I really can't do anything better." As the son of a German-Jew, I studied molecular physics at the National University of La Plata, and I came to the United States with a scientific challenge that the world knows that you are a top expert in molecular physics, and I believe that you are the only one who can solve these problems. ”

"I heard them tell you that you are a student of Dr. Halguhi, just by this name...... I'm sorry, I can't remember it for a while. The little old man said this, and Lynn couldn't help but be a little worried, Dr. Halguhi did exist, but he was just an elderly professor of physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and he had no special research conclusions in molecular physics. However, without waiting for Lynn to explain, the little old man changed his tone: "I have briefly read your notes, and they are completely in line with the structural analysis of the existing theory, so I don't understand it very well...... What is the problem you are talking about? ”

Lynn was not good at exploring the esoteric theory of molecular physics, so he had to recognize the principle of nuclear fusion and dismantle it backwards: "The change of a heavy nucleus to a light nucleus will release a very large amount of energy, which has been verified in the laboratory, but in the theoretical formula, the change of a light nucleus to a heavy nucleus can also produce such an effect, and we have always wondered if there is a certain error in the calculation." ”

These theoretical things can make the beauty [***] official next to him foggy, but in front of a cutting-edge expert like Oppenheimer, he is completely pediatric, he got up and walked to the blackboard, picked up a chalk brush and made a three-line formula on it, and the top line was taken from the scientific books and magazines that Lynn had bought.

"This is our formula for inferring molecular evolution, can you understand it?"

It's strange to understand it, Lynn stared at the blackboard with a blank expression, not remembering, not remembering. After pondering for a while, he suddenly nodded: "These are completely correct in theory. ”

Once in research mode, the little old man stopped paying attention to Lynn's expression, he took out the style of the college class, scratched it under the formula with chalk, and talked about the theoretical analysis that made Lynn completely dizzy. What's even more painful is that Lynn has to pretend to listen with relish.

It was not only Lynn who was pitiful, the young officer sitting next to him who was in charge of recording was naturally not an expert in molecular physics, and he looked at the formula on the blackboard in a daze, and the pen in his hand had long stopped there at a loss.

"Actually, these formulas are in Edward. Dr. Teller's dissertation has ...... Oh, sorry! The little old man patted his head, "The paper has not yet been published, no wonder everyone is still bothered by routine questions, and Dr. Teller should have been invited to give you a lecture, but he is so busy now that he seems to have not had time to take a shower for many days." ”

"It's okay, Doctor, what you've just said has given me vital inspiration. With you, I finally got a glimpse of the true level of contemporary physics, and in Argentina, in our school, we are like an indigenous group of people who are still struggling with such simple problems. ”

After saying these sycophantic words, Lynn was afraid that the little old man would turn around and ask about the content of the formula, so he hurriedly took the initiative to ask: "We all know that in theory, the former model of molecular fission can be artificially controlled, and the diametrically opposed model of the latter is possible?" ”

"Fission" is the word Lynn saw in scientific papers, and at this time there seemed to be no word for "fusion", so he had to use the word "diametrically opposed".

Thinking suddenly jumped from formula to mode, the little old man thought for a while with his pipe in his mouth: "From the current point of view, these molecular changes with huge energy should be able to be artificially controlled in a specific environment. But...... At present, our research on the latter model is still at a very rudimentary stage, do you have more mature research and insights? ”

Lynn wanted to accept it when he saw it, but he was worried that if the problem was solved simply, his motive for coming here would be doubted by the United States. So, he nodded, and got up and walked over to the blackboard—in the process, the officer seated on the record, and the one who looked a little like Winston, watched him with the utmost wariness.

Walking up to the little old man, Lynn truly realized how thin and fragile he was, and it seemed as if she could have killed him with little effort, or take him hostage like he had raided the Soviet field command in Berlin. However, even without Oppenheimer, the American atomic bomb project will still go smoothly at this stage, and from a longer-term perspective, Lynn resisted the urge in her heart, calmly picked up chalk, and wrote in the corner of the blackboard the two most famous and simplest nuclear fusion formulas - appeared in high school physics textbooks, and also appeared in the science comprehensive examination papers of the college entrance examination.

21h+31h→42he+10n21h+21h→31he+11h+4mev, turned around, looked at the little old man staring at the blackboard intently, Lynn didn't know whether to thank the humorous physics teacher back then, or strict and serious test-taking education. At this moment, he felt that he was not fighting alone, but representing thousands of students who had studied hard for thousands of years, especially science students like himself.

(To be continued)