"Why didn't you send him home or have him guarded carefully?"
"We tried, kept him guarded closely. Aside from putting him in an air-tight case, we did about everything. When the accident occurred--well, he and his guards went to watch the first time that the thing could be fooled."
"It happened, all right," said Simpkins. "First, another man caught a mislink on his shoulder, which laid him out slightly. That, we thought, was it! And if it was, the time-factor was all screwed up. But we all ran forward to measure, and as we did, our man got clipped with another. The first accident had gone unnoticed by the operator."
"How can you tell that such an accident will happen?" asked Peter. "Seems to me that a hundred tons of crane might not notice a few pounds of human in its way."
"We erect guard wires that register. That is for one reason only. We use it to summon the medicos and the hospital ambulance, and prepare for action. That's about all we can do."
"I wonder if you could take a picture of such?" suggested Peter.
"Huh?"
"Take a picture with a camera controlled by the operator--you know, temporal-treat the camera, film, and all but the range finder and the shutter release."
"Look, fellow, that would take a picture of the accident as it happens, all right. It's also done. Makes excellent records. But as for pre-accident stuff, know what happens?"
"No, of course not."
"Well," smiled Ben, "you'll, see. Anyway, the camera comes roaring out, is poised in midair, and is snapped. The timing isn't too good, however. Well, you'll see the camera come out and snap around the place when the accident happens. Remember this is not time travel, and you can't go forward and take a picture and then come back."
"For what good it does, we can tell about when a piece of goods will move by leaning a long-time mislink against it and waiting for it to fall."
"Does electricity cross the gap?"
"Nope. Only force and motion. The television idea isn't good either, young man."
"Um, how did you know?" asked Peter.
"We go through this regular. You're not the first that has been trying to avert accidents."
"You understand that I represent I. I. I.?"
"Yes," said Simpkins. "As such, it is your responsibility to do as much as possible to save your company money. That is your job."
"Right. I still say that there is some means of averting the accident, somehow."
* * * *
"Well, Ben, we've always claimed that we'd tried everything. But they didn't try the electric light until Edison got the idea, and the airplane was a new science when they went to work on it. Young man," said Simpkins, to Peter Wright, "you are a young man with a bright mind for legal intricacies. It usually makes little difference, so long as the mind is capable of handling the intricacies, just what the mind was specialized in. You are a fresh mind, and we've all seen fresh minds enter and lick a problem that stuck the original men for months.
You think you can lick it?"
"I don't know. It just seems to me that there must be some way."
"Don't forget," said Ben, "that this is not much different from a regular problem. In construction, I mean. We have accidents where a man is hit by a flying grab hook that is not in any way temporal-treated. Common accidents. The real problem, Peter, is to stop accidents. Not to try to avert them after they have happened."
"But this one--"
"So far as the temporal treatment goes, is--or has happened."
"Could you temporal-treat the stuff so the mislinks pass through first?"
"Sure," laughed Ben. "Not practical. They have no forewarning then. They just go where the tools will go when used. We can't tell when one of the men will try to grind a mislink chisel. As it is, we can clear the area where the tools have been."
"Just remember that this is fact: For a one-hour mislink, we treat the tools for one hour. They are then ready for use for one hour. At the end of that time, the mislinks start to follow, and follow for one hour, at which time the temporal difference decreases on a fourth-power curve, and the mislink catches up with the tool and falls back into place."
"Uh-huh. Well, I'm new at it, gentlemen, but it is my guess that this accident you anticipate need not happen."
"You forget," corrected Ben. "It's happened."
"Then where's the body?" demanded Peter Wright.
"It... ah--"
"Has it really happened?"
"It will, with certainty."
"Thus proving the utter futility of all effort?"
"Ah--"
"See?" laughed Peter.
* * * *
They left the office and proceeded into the factory. Here, where things should have been humming, all was at a standstill. Men sat on the benches and smoked nervously. They looked into one another's eyes with that "Will it be me?" stare, and they worried visibly. An electrician who tinkered hourly with lethal voltages as his day's work sat and chewed his fingernails. A machinist, sitting on the bedplate of a forming press large enough to stamp out an automobile body around the place where he sat, was biting his lips and looking out through the opened door to the shipping platform. Men outside were working feverishly, however.
"Why?" asked Peter.
"They want to get done. They must get done so that the engine can remove the car where the accident will happen."
"Where is this scene?" asked Peter.
It was out on the loading platform. A mislink crane shunted large cases from the platform, swung around in an arc, and the missing section passed through the door, and the crane ran down the length of the car, dropping the case at the far end. The mislink crane returned, the far end reappeared, and another case was hooked to the boom. The operation was repeated. The cases were fitted in the box car with neatness and dispatch. The pile of cases diminished, and the box car was sealed as the crane went to work on the next car in line. It took time, though, to fill each car, and the men working out here sweated visibly, partly in fear, and partly from the hurried work.
They had little time to stare into one another's faces and wonder which of them would be taking the brunt of the accident. As time wore along, the siren of the ambulance arriving caused some nervousness. The doctor and his corps of nurses came slowly forward, inquired as to the scene, and proceeded to lay out a fairly well-equipped emergency operating set-up.
"I'm beginning to feel the morbidity of this," said Peter. "The doctor, the ambulance, the insurance agent. We're like a bunch of vultures awaiting the faltering step of the desert wanderer."
"A bunch of undertakers waiting for the accident to happen," said Ben. "No, I'm not calloused. I'm scared slightly green. I can't take it unless I joke about it. It's the uncertain certainty--the wondering just which one of us gets caught in the certain accident."
"It seems uncanny to talk about the certainty of accident," said Peter.
"The training at I. I. I. would instill a bit of the perfection of the statistical method in you," nodded Simpkins. "By the time your statistical bureau gets all done checking the chances of a new account, no one would bet against it. I. I. I. also puts the kiss of death on, too. Just try to hire men for a plant that can't be insured by your outfit. They'll ask a thousand credits a day."
"What time is this affair going to happen?" asked Peter.
"Not too long. They're about finished. Then they inert everything as usual, and we'll all retreat to the inside wall and wonder."
"Why not all go home?"
"You can't win," said Ben solemnly. "We did all go home once."
"And the accident happened anyway?"
"Certainly. A thief broke in and it clipped him. Just don't forget that this isn't a probability, it's certain. And the same mob instinct that makes people gather around an injured man will keep the entire gang here, morbidly waiting to see who gets it in what way.
There is that element of wonder, too, you know. Every man in the place knows that someone is going to get clipped with that crane. They're all c
agey and very careful. It will be an accident despite planning, and therefore the unforeseen something will be out of the ordinary."
* * * *
"Quite a problem, Peter," said Simpkins.
"I see it is."
"A lot of this veiling is sheer psychiatry. We've consulted the best behavior specialists in the system. Keeping the fact secret is worse than permitting free knowledge, according to them. But identifying the victim is far worse than to have everybody in a slight tizzy."
"Why?"
"Well, when it happens, we have a victim who realizes that part of the chance was his, and shock is not so great as it would be if no warning took place, in light of the management knowing all about it beforehand. On the other hand, all the men who were not hurt get as much uplift after it happens as their downswing of anticipation. On the third hand--pardon the numbers, Peter--if the victim were positively identified, the rest would be no better off, but the victim would be a mental case from then on, and shock would set in prior to the accident. Then we'd be likely to run up the casualty rate. Follow?"
"It seems like a hard row to hoe."
"Well, usually we keep people out of danger areas. We know where they'll be, of course. It's these darned accidents that happen twice in time."
"Twice in time?"
"Yes. The accident happens once invisibly, and once visibly. Once in the future controlled by the present, and then, as the future unfolds, it is an accident happening in the present, controlled by the past. It's blind time, and there is nothing we can do about it."
"That fatalistic attitude again."
"Well--"
Ben interrupted. "They're stopping now."
They turned to watch. The final box car was loaded, and the engine drew them away.
The mislink crane returned for the final time, and was stowed on the platform. A hush fell over the crew, and the windows in the back were filled with faces, watching.
The silence was intense. Peter realized that practically every man was holding his breath, and yet it would be at least a half hour before the mislink began to follow the crane, and some time after that before the mislink caught up to the scene of the accident.
He let his breath out with a sigh, and mentioned the fact to Ben and Simpkins. The foreman nodded and agreed, saying, "We know, but there isn't one of us who won't try to hold his breath for the next two hours."
"Impractical," muttered Peter Wright. "There must be a way."
* * * *
The mislink was a husky section in its own right. The crane boom was no weakling. Thin rods, jointed on toggles, floated about ten inches from the main I-beam, just as long as the temporal-treated section itself. It made an eerie sight, this monstrous slab of solid metal, moving back and forth with determination and purpose, with no visible means of
support. To add to the alien sight, the telltale rods maintained their ten-inch separation with a metallic rigidity, though no connection was visible to the main girder.
On the loading deck were three painted circles. The inner one was a four-inch stripe of brilliant red. The circle approximated the scene of the accident. Outside of that by a considerable safety factor was an orange stripe, almost yellow. Another safety-factor distance away, the third stripe of green inclosed the area. As the mislink crossed the green stripe, all eyes fastened on it. As it crossed the yellow-orange stripe, the watchers tensed, and as the mislink crossed into the danger section, there was a sudden, audible indrawing of breath, which was held solid until the mislink passed across the red line on the way out.
The out-go of breath was definitely audible.
The tension mounted. A large clock, set up for the case, swept around and around toward the estimated zero hour. The watchers no longer looked into one another's eyes, and when eyes met inadvertently, they both fell with a sickly smile that lacked courage.
Why were they there? Peter asked himself, and he knew. They were there because of morbid curiosity. The thing that made people watch three-hundred-foot dives into a large washtub of water; people watching a tightrope walker somersault on the wire above Niagara; watching the high trapeze artists performing with no net. That one of them was certain to be called into the act, the element of chance and the element of danger, always a gamble, made them stay. With nothing to win, they stayed to watch, which is a basic characteristic of human nature.
They were there because they were human!
And when the accident came, the laws of the lines would be broken, though everything in every man's power would be done to maintain the safety. For the mislink would stop, after the accident, just as the crane had been stopped automatically by the contact with the telltale rods in their temporal extension of the crane itself. The green line, across which no one must pass save the authorities, the yellow line across which only the medical corps may cross, and the red line across which only two men may cross and then only to take the victim to the medical set-up on the dock. Men would rush forward, crossing the lines, and the victim would be carried away with a trailing number of watchers. Then someone would have to forget the victim to keep the rest of the men from getting in the way of the mislink as it resumed operations. But, of course, no one else had been hit, so this, at least, would be successful, and the men were very confident that no matter what they did, they would not be hit.
The minutes wore on interminably. Coffee came in great tanks, and sandwiches in stacks. The men ate in gulps, swallowing great lumps of unchewed food, and all courted indigestion. The strain was terrific as the timing clock drew close to the minute.
Who--?
* * * *
Then--came the zero minute.
There was an intake of breath as the clock chimed once, to mark the beginning of the period of probability. No man moved a muscle, yet all muscles were tense with expectancy.
Nervously, Ben felt in his pocket and took out a cigarette, stuck it into his mouth, and fumbled for a match. "Match?" he grumbled.
Simpkins fumbled and shook his head.
"Nope," he said, and his voice was loud and raw.
Peter felt in his pocket and found a match.
He lit one and held it over. His eyes were solid on the scene; he did not want to miss it.
"Look out!" someone cried in a strident voice.
The mislink was approaching the circles again.
Peter turned and faced the place squarely, casting an eye across the men's faces.
They were all set, and in every man's body were muscles tensed against moving forward.
How, asked Peter of his mind,
can they expect anything to happen now?
Every man is psychologically unable to move forward.
There came a stabbing pain, and Peter whirled with a wordless scream. The shock was searing. Instantaneously, he whirled, hitting his upflinging elbow against the wall. The obstruction in motion set him off balance, and he automatically moved a foot to regain it. His foot hit the foot of Ben, who was standing solidly, partly turned, his face just changing from solid-set to one of surprise.
The solid foot tripped Peter, and he fell forward. He flung the still-burning match from his fingers as he put both hands forward to break his fall. The loading deck came up to meet him, and his forward-flung hands went down toward--
The red line!
There was a coruscating flare of stars, bars, and screaming color in his mind, which contracted to a pinpoint and then expanded to infinity, leaving only peaceful blackness.
He returned to consciousness in the ambulance, but his return was brief. He was conscious only long enough to hear:
"Some day we'll lick it," said Ben.
"Only when you lick the regular accident rate. The trouble is," mused the medical attendant, "that people think there's something about mislink accidents that is different. Like either predestiny or something that makes you able to change the future. Fact of the matter is, it is the
past that they're trying to change. Funny, to think of this guy getting it."<
br />
"Last one got it by a different set of factors," said Ben, "but you can't stop an accident that's already happened."
Peter Wright, adjuster for the solar system's greatest insurance company, Interplanetary Industrial Insurance, went under. His mind was whirling with a mixed desire to argue about temporal accidents, and the certain knowledge that he was in no position to mention the avoidance of same.
* * * *
This is the third part of the beginning. Chronologically, it is in the spring of 1944. The outcome of World War Two was looking up; it is not easy to say exactly when the war in Western Europe took its turn, it was about as low as it could get after Dunkirk, and things stayed that way for a long, long time. But in the summer of 1944, the invasion of the Continent was on, and the Allies were on the offensive. The war in the Pacific had its turn at the Battle of Midway, when what had been left of the United States Navy after Pearl Harbor clobbered the Japanese Navy down to the same point of military inactivity. But here in the spring of 1944, the Allies were taking the offensive in the Southern Pacific.
Ships, designed to fight the war in the Pacific, were built on clockwork time, and sent put with the latest models of radar and sonar and communication equipment--but without the manuals for instruction, maintenance, and repair that are necessary to run and keep running such equipment.
The need was specific. The Navy had to have these manuals, but manuals had yet to be written. Preferably, they were to be written without taking the engineers off their development job to do the writing. In addition, one can generally say that, unless they're writing for other engineers, and not for some bright technician who has been handed a hunk of machinery which needs to be explained, engineers (aside from a rather few) make a whole mess of the language.
The Navy needed these manuals, and the emphasis on the war in the Pacific centered on the American West Coast, and the Navy, with sound reason, figured that there were a lot of writers on the West Coast. Like in Hollywood, for instance.
Nothing official is done simply. One doesn't write a memo saying, "Hire me some technical writers to create manuals--" One works through channels.
The Worlds of George O Page 3