“About?” Jaworski sounded at once horrified and delighted. “Dr. Pillsbury, you are head of the schedule committee and you don’t know how large the core will be? Isn’t the core your very particular assignment?”

“There’ll be enough credit to go around if the gadget fizzles.”

“Harvey, if this gadget ‘fizzles,’ no one will ever hear of it. The Manhattan Project will be the American doughnut hole of history.”

“What are you testing now?” Harvey wanted to change the subject.

“Now? We are testing some new detonators that must fire through a bank of high-voltage condensers in the same one-millionth of a second. We are testing lenses of Baratol explosive to focus the shock wave. And we are testing a flash technique for shadow photography.”

“We have thirty days until Trinity. All this information is absolutely necessary?”

Jaworski turned to Joe. “Hitler goes to Hell. The devil takes him to different rooms to choose his punishment. In the first room, Goering is nailed to a wheel and rolled through boiling oil. In the second room, Goebbels is being devoured by giant red ants. In the third, Stalin is making love to Greta Garbo. ‘That’s what I want,’ Hitler says, ‘Stalin’s punishment.’ ‘Very well,’ says the devil, ‘but actually it’s Garbo’s punishment.’ ” He turned back to Harvey. “See, it helps to have as much information as possible. Don’t worry, I’ve tested weapons for thirty years. I know the military mind. General Groves wants this bomb. I’m confident he will drop something on Japan.”

While Jaworksi’s team had been connecting cables the sky had changed. June and July were the rainy season. This year, rain was replaced by dry electrical storms that rolled like loose cannons down from the Jemez and across the valley. A pair of black clouds exchanged lightning bolts as they moved in an eerie calm toward the Hanging Garden. The thunder was too far away to hear and the entire mesa was falling quiet because orders were that there was to be no testing of high explosives while there was lightning and the chance of a power surge. Unperturbed, Jaworski led his men down the control bunker for lunch.

“Coming?” Joe asked Harvey.

Harvey held up his clarinet. “Might as well stay here and practice. Then I’ll sound the all clear.”

“Good place. Next to a bomb on a hill in a storm.”

“You said I needed practice. Besides, it helps me think.”

On his way down, Joe glanced back. Harvey looked like a duckling beside a gray and ugly egg.