“You use the manual when you set these things up,” he added. “Don’t go depending on your memory. You can play some pretty dirty tricks on yourself that way.” He looked thoughtfully at the array of coils.
“And don’t go using any gravito clamps around these things when the back’s off. They don’t like it. It makes ’em do nasty things.” He flipped his wrist up, looking at his watch.
“All right, that’s it. Let’s go eat.” He snapped a cover back in place and swung down from the catwalk.
Stan turned away. No tools to put away tonight, he thought. Didn’t need ’em all afternoon. He smiled. And no column to fall into, either. This was the weekly free night.
He walked out of the shop, following a group of prisoners through the archway into the main yard. Another small group followed him, keeping a decent interval behind.
Someone drew a sharp breath.
“Hey, look! Over there.”
Stan followed the direction indicated by a dozen abruptly turned heads. Vernay was lounging in the shadow of the archway. He smiled tigerishly and sauntered toward Stan. The group of prisoners melted away, to form a rough semicircle. From somewhere, others were appearing.
“So all right, little rat,” Vernay said softly, “you’ve had a lot of fun these last few days, eh? Big man around the yard, huh? Yeah! Well, it’s going to stop.” He massaged his right hand with the thumb and fingers of his left, then stretched out his arms, flexing his fingers.
“Real smart little fella,” he added. “Knows all kinds of little tricks. Got anything to say before I open you up for inspection?”
Stan faced him, his feet a few inches apart, his knees slightly bent. He folded his arms without interlacing them.
“Look, Vernay,” he said. “I’m not looking for any fight, but if you force one, I’ll break you all to pieces. I didn’t mean to bust your head the first time, but I can do it on purpose if I have to. Why don’t we just forget it?”
Vernay looked dazed for an instant, then recovered and laughed derisively.
“You trying to crawl out and still look good? No, no. You made your brags. Now we’ll have a little dance.” He took a step forward.
“Come on, baby, just stay there. I’m going to unscrew your head.”
He came closer, then reached out, his hand open.
Stan looked at the hand incredulously. No one could be that careless. For an instant, he almost spun away from a suspected trap. Then he decided the man was in no position for a counter. A try for a simple hand hold couldn’t do a bit of harm.
His right hand darted up, gripping the outstretched hand before him. He jerked down, clamped the hand with his left, then pressed up and took a quick step forward.
With a startled cry of pain, Vernay spun around and bent toward the ground. Stan carried the motion through with a sudden surge that forced the big man’s face almost to the stones. Abruptly, Vernay twisted and kicked, trying to tear away. There was a ripping noise and he screamed thinly, then slumped to the pavement.
Stan looked down at him in bewilderment. It had been too easy, he thought. Something had to be wrong. The imprisoned hand twitched and was flaccid. He let it go and stepped back.
For a few seconds, Vernay lay quietly, then he struggled into violent motion. He scrambled to get to his feet, his left hand groping at his belt. Stan caught the glint of polished steel. He stepped quickly around the man, poising himself.
It was no use, he thought. This would have to be decisive. He brought his two hands up to his shoulder, then swung them like an axe, stepping into the swing as Vernay got his feet under him.
The impact of the blow brought Vernay to a standing position. As the man stood swaying, Stan swung his hands again.
Vernay’s back arched and for an instant he was rigid. Then he stumbled forward, to pitch against the wall.
Briefly, he was braced upright against the wall, his left hand high on the stones, the scalpel glittering. Then the hand relaxed and the sliver of steel clattered to the paving. Slowly, the man slid down, to melt into a shapeless heap in the gutter.
Stan sighed, then shook his head and wiped an arm across his eyes.
There was a concerted sigh behind him.
“Go ahead, kid,” someone muttered. “Give him the boots. Big phony hadda go trying a knife.”
Stan turned. “No use,” he said wearily. “I just hope he’s still alive.”
“I don’t get it,” said someone. “He wants this guy alive?”
Someone else laughed shortly. “Maybe he just likes to make it tough on himself. Hey, look out! The joes.”
As the crowd faded into the nowhere from whence most of it had come, a guard approached Stan warily.
“Now, look, Graham,” he said cautiously, “I gotta throw you in the hole. You know that, huh?”
Stan nodded listlessly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose so.”
“Look, fellow, it won’t be too long. He jumped you, so they’ll have you out of there real soon.” The guard was apologetic.
“Besides, they’ll probably offer you his job at Janzel. Get you clear out of here. Only don’t give me a hard time. All you’ll get is both of us flashed.”
“Yeah, I know.” Stan held out an arm. “Come on, let’s go.”
Stan watched as the chief test engineer waved a hand.
“Two hundred twenty gravs,” the man said. “Full swing completed on both axes. That’s it. Ease off your tractors.”
He looked closely at his panel of meters, then got off his stool and stretched.
“No evidence of strain. Looks as though all components are good.” He turned, looking at the test operators.
“Let’s get this place cleaned up.”
The sense of disorientation set up by the tractors was subsiding. Stan got to his feet and looked at his companion.
Dachmann nodded at him.
“Well,” he said slowly, “Golzer can get off the hook now. His run’ll be approved. Suppose we get back on the job.”
He led the way out of the blockhouse tunnel.
A car was pulling up at the entrance. A heavy, square face looked from a rear window and a large hand beckoned.
“Dachmann, Graham. Over here.”
“Oh, oh.” Dachmann sighed. “Here’s trouble. Wizow doesn’t come out here unless he’s got something.”
The blocky production chief looked coldly at them as they approached the car.
“It’ll be a lot better,” he growled, “if you two clear through my office before you start wandering all over the grounds.” He looked at Stan.
“Got a problem for you. Maybe we’ll get some action out of you on this one.” He held out a few sheets of paper.
“Hold up over in the components line.” He jabbed at a sheet with a forefinger.
“Take a trip over there and kick it up.” He glanced at Dachmann. “Got another one for you.”
Stan took the papers, studying them. Then he looked up. There was very little question as to the bottleneck here. Each material shortage traced back to one machine. He frowned.
“Maintenance people checked over that machine yet?” he asked.
Wizow shrugged impassively. “You’re a staffman,” he said coldly. “Been on parole to us long enough, you should know what to do, so I’m not going to tell you how. Just get to the trouble and fix it. All I want is production. Leave the smart talk to the technical people.” He turned.
“Get in, Dachmann. I’ve got a headache for you.”
Stan examined the tabulated sheets again. The offending machine was in building nine thirty-two. Number forty-one.
He walked over to the parking lot and climbed on the skip-about he had bought on his first pay day. The machine purred into life as he touched a button and he raised the platform a few inches off the ground, then spun about, to glide across the field toward block nine.
Fabricator number forty-one was a multiple. A single programming head actuated eight spinaret assemblies, which
could deliver completed module assemblies into carriers in an almost continuous stream. It was idling.
Stan visualized the flow chart of the machine as he approached. Then he paused. The operator was sitting at the programming punch, carefully going over a long streamer of tape. Stan frowned and looked at his watch. By this time, the tapes should be ready and the machine in full operation. But this man was obviously still setting up.
He continued to watch as the operator laboriously compared the tape with a blueprint before him. There was something familiar in the sharp, hungry-looking features. The fellow turned to look closely at the print and Stan nodded.
“Now I remember,” he told himself. “Sornal. Wondered what happened to him. Never saw him after the first day up in Opertal.”
Sornal came to the end of the tape, then scrabbled about and found the beginning. He commenced rechecking against the print. Stan shook his head in annoyance.
“How many times is he going to have to check that thing?” he asked himself. He walked toward the man.
“Got trouble?”
Sornal looked up, then cringed away from him.
“I’ll get it going right away,” he whined. “Honest! Just want to make sure everything’s right.”
“You’ve already checked your tape. I’ve been watching you.”
Sornal flinched and looked away.
“Yeah, but these things is tricky. You get some of this stuff out of tolerance, it can wreck a whole ship. They got to be right.”
“So, why not a sample run-through? Then you can run test on a real piece.”
“This is a very complicated device. Can’t check those internal tolerance without you put in on proof load. These got to be right the first time.”
Stan shook his head wearily.
“Look. Get up. I’ll give your tape a run-through, then we’ll pull a sample and check it out. Got a helper?”
“Some place around here.” Sornal got out of his chair and stood, looking at the floor.
Stan picked up the tape and sat down.
“All right, go find him then. And bring him over here while I run out the sample. We can make with the talk after that.”
The tape was perfect, with neither patch nor correction. Stan finally raised his head, growling to himself.
“Guy’s competent enough at programming, anyway. Now, what’s wrong with him?”
He snapped the power switch from stand-by to on, then waited as the indicators came up. Delicately, he turned a couple of microdrive dials till the needles settled on their red lines. Then he opened the control head, poked the tape in, and punched the starter lever.
The tape clicked steadily through the head. Stan kept his eyes moving about as he checked the meters.
The tape ran out of the head and dropped into the catcher basket and hydraulics squished as a delivery arm set a small block on the sample table. Stan picked it up, turning it over to examine it.
It was a simple, rectangular block of black material, about the size of a cigarette lighter. On five sides were intricate patterns of silvery connector dots. An identifying number covered the sixth. Inside, Stan knew, lay complex circuitry, traced into the insulation. Tiny dots of alloy formed critical junctions, connected by minute, sprayed-in threads of conductor material. He glanced around.
Sornal watched anxiously. He looked at the little module block as though it were alive and dangerous.
“Here,” Stan told him, “stick this in the test jig and run it.”
Sornal carefully set the block into an aperture, then reached for a switch. His hand seemed to freeze on the switch for a moment, then he looked back at Stan and snapped it on. Needles rose from their pins, flickered, then steadied.
Sornal appeared to gain a little confidence. He turned a dial, noted the readings on a few meters, then twisted another dial. Finally, he faced around.
“Looks all right,” he said reluctantly, “only—”
“Looks all right, period.” Stan turned to the helper.
“Get that machine rolling,” he ordered. “And keep your eyes on those meters. Let’s get this run finished right.” He moved his head.
“Come on, friend, I’ll buy you a mug of tea.”
Sornal backed away.
“You ain’t gonna—Look, ain’t I seen you some place before? Look, I just—”
“I said I’d buy you a mug of tea. Then, we’ll talk, and that’s all. I mean it.”
“I just got outta—Listen, I can’t take it so good any more, see?”
“Don’t worry. We aren’t going to have any games this morning. Come on, let’s go.”
When Sornal started talking, the flow of words was almost continuous.
He had come to Kellonia almost four years before, on a standard one-year contract. For over twenty years, he’d moved around, working in space-yards over the galaxy. He’d worked on short contracts, banking his profits on his home planet. And he’d planned to finally return to his original home on Thorwald, use his considerable savings to buy a small business, and settle down to semi-retirement.
But an offer of highly attractive rates had brought him to Kellonia for one last contract with Janzel.
“They got my papers somewhere around here,” he said, “only I can’t get ’em back any more.” He shook his head wearily and went on.
Everything had gone smoothly for the first half of his contract period. He’d drawn impressively large checks and deposited them. And after thinking it over, he had indicated he would like an extension.
“That was when they nailed me down,” he said. “There was just that one bad run, only that was the job that sneaked through the inspection and went bust at Proof.”
“Blowup?”
Sornal grinned sourly.
“Blowup, you want to know? Even took out one of the tractor supports. Real mess. Oh, you think they weren’t mad about that!”
“You say there was just one bad run? Then everything came out normally again?”
“Yeah. I ran a check, see? Test sample was perfect Beautiful. So then the power went off for a while. Crew was working around. Well, they found the trouble and cleared it, just before lunch time. I went ahead and finished my run. It was only ten gyro assemblies—control job.
“I don’t know—guess they were out of balance. Maybe the shaft alloys came out wrong. Anyway, I finished the run and went for chow. Came back and set up a new run.”
He stared into his cup.
“Along about quitting time, they came after me. Mister, I don’t like to think of that! I been beat up a lot since, but them’s just little reminders. Those guys really enjoyed their work!”
Sornal shuddered and set his cup down. Finally, he sighed and continued.
He had left the hospital, muttering grim threats of the legal action he would take. And he’d limped over to file a complaint at the Federation Residency.
“I didn’t get there. Next thing I knew, I was in some cell.” He looked up at Stan.
“Now I know where I see you. You’re in that van, going out of some jail.”
“Yeah.” Stan nodded, looking at his own empty cup.
“Tell me something,” he said slowly. “When that maintenance crew was working around your machine, did they have a gravito clamp!”
“Clamp? Yeah . . . yeah, I suppose they might have. Use ’em a lot around here when they’ve got heavy stuff, and those guys had a lot of stuff to move.”
“I see. Wonder if the field head got pointed at your machine?”
“I don’t think . . . I dunno, I didn’t watch ’em close.” Sornal looked sharply at Stan.
“You mean, they mighta—”
“Well, what could cause a temporary misflow?”
“Yeah!” Sornal bobbed his head slowly. “Funny I didn’t think of that.”
“So anyway, you went up to Opertal?”
“Yeah. Had me for evasion of obligation. Said I owed the company plenty for the damage done by the blowup. Claimed I’d tried to run out.
“They wouldn’t let me in the machine shop up there. Had me out hauling stuff for the landscape crew. Then, they paroled me back here. Back to the machines again, only I ain’t a contract man any more. Junior machinist. Oh, it’s better than helper, I guess, only they don’t pay much.” Sornal pushed himself away from the table.
“I’m going to be real careful with my work from now on,” he said. “They got me for quite a while, but that sentence’ll run out one of these days. I’ll get me out of parole and pay off that claim, then I’m getting out of here. They aren’t hanging another one on me.”
“Only one trouble,” Stan told him. “You’re getting so careful, you’re setting yourself up.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. They’ll tack you down for malingering if you don’t watch it.” Stan got to his feet.
“Tell you what you do. Run things just as you did when you were a contract man. Only one thing—if any crew comes around, pull a sample after they leave. And check it. You know how to check for magnetic and gravitic deviations. Do that, then go ahead with your run. Now go back to your machine. I’m going to do a little work.”
He strode out of the refreshment room, watched Sornal as he took over the production run, then swung around and walked over to the Personnel office.
“Like to see the package on a man named Sornal,” he told the clerk.
The man hesitated. “We aren’t supposed to release a whole file. I can look up any specific information for you.”
Stan frowned. “Don’t argue with me. I want to see this guy’s package. Need his complete history. Now get it.”
The clerk started to make an objection, then turned and went to the files. He flipped an index, then punched a combination of numbers on his selector. Finally, he came back with a folder.
Stan took it and flopped it open on the counter.
“All right, now just stay here while I go through this. I’ll give it back in a few minutes.”
He looked through the records, looking closely at one exhibit.
“Wow!” he told himself silently.
“Eleven thousand, six hundred ninety-two interstells. Only way he’ll ever pay that off is by making a big dent in his savings.”
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 61