The object was about one third of a kilometer in diameter. Some of it evaporated away at the surface as it came in through the terrestrial atmosphere, but only a little. The total mass was of order 3×1014 grams. With each gram possessing a kinetic energy near 5×10¹¹ ergs, the total energy released on impact was more than 1026 ergs. The effect was much like a great earthquake, not at all the sort of thing that security services could keep secret.

When you consider the boom generated by an airplane, say of mass 109 grams, moving at a speed of less than 1 kilometer per second, particularly when you consider that the boom increases as a high power of the speed, the sonic effect of the object can hardly be imagined. It came in over the British Isles from the Atlantic like the clappers of hell.

In the track of the object the temperature was lifted to 30,000°C. Most of the energy communicated to the atmospheric gases was dissipated as radiation. The radiative flash was as bright as the Sun and it lasted for several minutes, long after the actual impact.

The point of impact lay in a big area of desolate country, in the Monadhliath Mountains to the north of Newtonmore and Kingussie. Devastation spread out in all directions, reaching even to the south of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The first impression was of a national disaster. Then, more accurately, of a Scottish disaster. Damage was estimated to exceed five thousand million pounds.

It was some days before the first survey party got into the area. The members were astonished to find an incredible profusion of nuggets of a warm, yellowish metal. In size the debris ranged from little droplets a few millimeters in diameter up to great chunks the size of your fist. They were found scattered everywhere over an area of a hundred square miles. Within a few hours, a simple chemical analysis revealed element 79, worth, at the current stabilized world price, about one and one-half dollars per gram.

The government acted instantly. A sequence of barriers operated by the military were set up. The outer cordon prevented the average citizen to the south from entering the Highlands at all. Inner barriers stopped you from getting close to the critical area. Since all the roads were dreadfully damaged, ordinary transportation was in any case impossible. Only vehicles with a caterpillar drive could move about with any freedom.

The cleaning-up operation took a long time. It was the best part of a year before all the metal was safely under lock and key, in enormous vaults newly constructed at a dozen different locations throughout the south of England. The government would very much have liked to keep the whole operation secret. But this was quite impossible. Enough of the metal had got itself into private hands for the chemical nature of the object to have become known throughout the world. What nobody knew, however, outside the government, was the quantity of metal. Rumor said there was a tremendous lot of it, but even rumor grossly underestimated the situation. There was 3×1014 grams of it, worth five hundred thousand billion dollars, if the price of gold could be kept stable.

The international monetary system was quite plainly in a somewhat delicate position. For one thing, the French President had insisted on converting the whole of France’s dollar reserves into gold. Worse, he had persuaded the Germans to do the same. Essentially all of the reserves of the European Economic Community were in gold. Frankly, if the bottom were to drop out of the price of gold, Europe was in the soup. No good European then—least of all the French President—could contemplate a fall in the price of element 79. Nor were the Americans anxious to think of Fort Knox as an esoteric junk yard. Russia too had mining interests, as had a dozen other articulate nations.

The British were smart enough not to put very much gold onto the market. Just enough was released to balance the chronically adverse trade balance. So the price was kept stable through restriction, as the price of diamonds had been kept stable for a generation or more. The Chancellor on Budget Day was now able to hold up his battered old box[1] with a real smile, not the ghastly gray smirk of former years.

Yet the government was not without conscience. The story of the buried “talent” in the Bible came repeatedly to their collective mind. It was felt that the enormous golden windfall should somehow be put to progressive use. Modernization, automation, this was the obvious direction in which Britain should go. Plainly, the gold should be used to finance such a development. Snag, the trade unions, the lotus-eaters.

Automation, it had to be admitted, would put a lot of people out of work. But wasn’t this just what the unions themselves had really been seeking, these many years past, to have their members working as little as possible? What the unions obviously wanted for their members was to be out of work but not out of a job. The solution to this apparent paradox came in a brilliant flash to an administrative genius in the Civil Service. Unions should be paid for not working. Whenever automation made work unnecessary, payment would be made to the appropriate union, exactly as if its members were still doing the work. So it came about that the concept of “automation money” became of decisive importance in the evolution of British society.

“Automation money” was thought of as a perk in the beginning. Soon it became a right. Everybody wanted it. An insistent clamor arose for more and more automation. Unions became overwhelmingly powerful. Since automation money was paid through unions to members, there was no hope at all for you unless you had a ticket. Without a ticket you had to work, just the opposite from the way it used to be. Union membership soon increased to the point where union-sponsored parliamentary candidates were always elected, and where it was really mere hairsplitting to attempt to distinguish between the unions and the government.

The system works smoothly, the economy purrs along. Britain has become the most automatized nation on Earth. New technology is now bought from poorer nations, nations like the United States, where the unfortunate people are still obliged to work. Nowadays, the British take things easily, in well-bred style. Nothing reflects the national temperament quite so much as cricket. No game of cricket ever finishes nowadays. Gone utterly are the ferocious drives and swings of former years, gone are the chops and hooks. Perhaps twice in an hour a batsman will permit himself a gentle tickle to fine leg. The huge crowd wakens up for a brief moment to give a round of restrained applause, for here at last is the nirvana foreseen so percipiently by the philosophers of the East.

Hermes gave the contenders a quick, experienced glance. A weird lot, a distinctly unpleasant lot, was his instant analysis. He was damned glad he wasn’t going to find himself frolicking with any of ’em. He doubted whether Aphrodite quite realized just what it was she was letting herself in for this time.

On the far left was a fellow in a yellow cape, a king of some sort. Every fifteen seconds or so he spat a stream of bright red liquid into a huge spittoon. He squirted it out, blood, presumably, from the side of his mouth in what he evidently thought to be a stylish fashion. Thus relieved, he looked around the room with a satisfied smirk. Then he would chew for a few seconds and out would come the next jet.