The Death Ray

Quincy Bernat was about a month away from retiring when I came to the U of Roquefort, and I was to take over some of his tasks, including a quarterly inventory of all radioactive sources. Today he was going to show me one of the hottest, most powerful sources we had, which was nicknamed The Death Ray. Quincy showed me the department key locker and took out the Death Ray key. He called for Bob Francois to bring an Ion Chamber (a type of Geiger counter) and the three of us were on our way to a little adventure.

We took an elevator down to the basement, where just a few doors down the hall from our radioactive waste drop off room was a room with two different numbers on the door. One number was “72” and the other, on a small wooden plaque, was “OB 56.” OB stood for Old Basement, and for some reason the sign had never been removed after the new numbers were put up. Also on the door was a sign stating: “Grave Danger, Very High Radiation Area.” I knew from both my time in the Nuclear Navy, and in the civilian nuclear power industry, that this designated the highest level of radiation. There was no higher warning sign. As the source was not in use at the time, we unlocked the door and walked on in, Bob first because he had the Ion Chamber and could check radiation levels. Sure enough, the source was safely retracted behind its lead shielding. Rad readings were low. Quincy began to explain the workings of the irradiation machine: the lead shielded doors, the alarms, safety interlocks, emergency escape button, countdown timer, etc.

He was almost finished when in walked a man named Hans Koblenz. I hadn’t yet met Hans, but I’d heard of him. He was the main operator of The Death Ray, taught the class for those who applied to use it for their experiments, and he also used it for his own experiments. He had an MS in Brain Biology or something, and worked in the Radiation Oncology Department. His boss, Glen Tarrietos, PhD, was the owner of the device. Quincy introduced me to Hans, then excused himself, saying Hans could do a better job of explaining everything. This was definitely true, and as Quincy quickly walked away, retirement more important than passing along to me his considerable knowledge, Hans and Bob began to fill me in on the finer points of the death ray. This included the perhaps apocryphal time that a person no longer working there deliberately violated the safety protocol and stayed in the room as the Death Ray was called forth from its lead cave. Bob and Hans couldn’t help but chuckle as they recalled how quickly the man began screaming “Turn It Off!!” and pounding on the emergency escape button. Or they were laughing at the recollection of being told about it… Surely they weren’t there, weren’t involved…

I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.