But there were evidently no bluenoses here. “Perfectly all right, Mr. Oak,” the blond young man said affably. Then he coughed politely and added: “But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take off the gun.”
I glanced at the holster under my armpit, walked back over to the locker, opened it, and took out my vac suit.
“Hey!” said the blond young man. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my boat,” I said calmly. “I’m getting tired of this runaround already. I’m a professional man, not a hired flunky. If you’d called a doctor, you wouldn’t tell him to leave his little black bag behind; if you’d called a lawyer, you wouldn’t make him check his brief case. Or, if you did, he’d tell you to drop dead.
“I was asked to come here as fast as possible, and when I do, I’m told to wait till tomorrow. Now you want me to check my gun. The hell with you.”
“Merely a safety precaution,” said the blond young man worriedly.
“You think I’m going to shoot Ravenhurst, maybe? Don’t be an idiot.” I started climbing into my vac suit.
“Just a minute, please, Mr. Oak,” said a voice from a hidden speaker. It was Ravenhurst, and he actually sounded apologetic. “You mustn’t blame Mr. Feller; those are my standing orders, and I failed to tell Mr. Feller to make an exception in your case. The error was mine.”
“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t blaming Mr. Feller. I wasn’t even talking to him. I was addressing you.”
“I believe you. Mr. Feller, our guest has gone to all the trouble of having a suit made with a space under the arm for that gun; I see no reason to make him remove it.” A pause. “Again, Mr. Oak, I apologize. I really want you to take this job.”
I was already taking off the vac suit again.
“But,” Ravenhurst continued smoothly, “if I fail to live up to your ideas of courtesy again, I hope you’ll forgive me in advance. I’m sometimes very forgetful, and I don’t like it when a man threatens to leave my employ twice in the space of fifteen minutes.”
“I’m not in your employ yet, Ravenhurst,” I said. “If I accept the job, I won’t threaten to quit again unless I mean to carry it through, and it would take a lot more than common discourtesy to make me do that. On the other hand, your brand of discourtesy is a shade above the common.”
“I thank you for that, at least,” said Ravenhurst. “Show him to my office, Mr. Feller.”
The blond young man nodded wordlessly and led me from the room.
* * * *
Walking under low-gee conditions is like nothing else in this universe. I don’t mean trotting around on Luna; one-sixth gee is practically homelike in comparison. And zero gee is so devoid of orientation that it gives the sensation of falling endlessly until you get used to it. But a planetoid is in a different class altogether.
Remember that dream—almost everybody’s had it—where you’re suddenly able to fly? It isn’t flying exactly; it’s a sort of swimming in the air. Like being underwater, except that the medium around you isn’t so dense and viscous, and you can breathe. Remember? Well, that’s the feeling you get on a low-gee planetoid.
Your arms don’t tend to hang at your sides, as they do on Earth or Luna, because the muscular tension tends to hold them out, just as it does in zero-gee, but there is still a definite sensation of up-and-down. If you push yourself off the floor, you tend to float in a long, slow, graceful arc, provided you don’t push too hard. Magnetic soles are practically a must.
I followed the blond Mr. Feller down a series of long corridors which had been painted a pale green, which gave me the feeling that I was underwater. There were doors spaced at intervals along the corridor walls. Occasionally one of them would open and a busy looking man would cross the corridor, open another door, and disappear. From behind the doors, I could hear the drum of distant sounds.
We finally ended up in front of what looked like the only wooden door in the place. When you’re carving an office and residence out of a nickel-iron planetoid, importing wood from Earth is a purely luxury matter.
There was no name plate on that mahogany-red door; there didn’t need to be.
Feller touched a thin-lined circle in the door jamb.
“You don’t knock?” I asked with mock seriousness.
“No,” said Feller, with a straight face. “I have to signal. Knocking wouldn’t do any good. That’s just wood veneer over a three-inch-thick steel slab.”
The door opened and I stepped inside.
I have never seen a room quite like it. The furniture was all that same mahogany—a huge desk, nineteenth century baroque, with carved and curlicued legs; two chairs carved the same, with padded seats of maroon leather; and a chair behind the desk that might have doubled as a bishop’s throne, with even fancier carving. Off to one side was a long couch upholstered in a lighter maroon. The wall-to-wall carpeting was a rich Burgundy, with a pile deep enough to run a reaper through. The walls were paneled with mahogany and hung with a couple of huge tapestries done in maroon, purple, and red. A bookcase along one wall was filled with books, every one of which had been rebound in maroon leather.
It was like walking into a cask of old claret. Or old blood.
The man sitting behind the desk looked as though he’d been built to be the lightest spot in an analogous color scheme. His suit was mauve with purple piping, and his wide, square, saggy face was florid. On his nose and cheeks, tiny lines of purple tracing made darker areas in his skin. His hair was a medium brown, but it was clipped so short that the scalp showed faintly through, and amid all that overwhelming background, even the hair looked vaguely violet.
“Come in, Mr. Oak,” said Shalimar Ravenhurst.
I walked toward him across the Burgundy carpet while the blond young man discreetly closed the door behind me, leaving us alone. I didn’t blame him. I was wearing a yellow union suit, and I hate to think what I must have looked like in that room.
I sat down in one of the chairs facing the desk after giving a brief shake to a thick-fingered, well-manicured, slightly oily hand.
He opened a crystal decanter that stood on one end of the desk. “Have some Madeira, Mr. Oak? Or would you like something else? I never drink spirits at this time of night.”
I fought down an impulse to ask for a shot of redeye. “The Madeira will be fine, Mr. Ravenhurst.”
He poured and handed me a stemmed glass nearly brimming with the wine. I joined him in an appreciative sip, then waited while he made up his mind to talk.
He leaned across the desk, looking at me with his small, dark eyes. He had an expression on his face that looked as if it were trying to sneer and leer at the same time but couldn’t get much beyond the smirk stage.
“Mr. Oak, I have investigated you thoroughly—as thoroughly as it can be done, at least. My attorneys say that your reputation is A-one; that you get things done and rarely disappoint a client.”
He paused as if waiting for a comment. I gave him nothing.
After a moment, he went on. “I hope that’s true, Mr. Oak, because I’m going to have to trust you.” He leaned back in his chair again, his eyes still on me. “Men very rarely like me, Mr. Oak. I am not a likable man. I do not pretend to be. That’s not my function.” He said it as if he had said it many times before, believed it, and wished it wasn’t so.
“I do not ask that you like me,” he continued. “I only ask that you be loyal to my interests for the duration of this assignment.” Another pause. “I have been assured by others that this will be so. I would like your assurance.”
“If I take the assignment, Mr. Ravenhurst,” I told him, “I’ll be working for you. I can be bought, but once I’m bought I stay bought.
“Now, what seems to be your trouble?”
He frowned. “Well, now, let’s get one thing settled: Are you working for me, or not?”
“I won’t know that until I find out what the job is.”
His frown deepened. “Now, see here; this is very confidential work. What happen
s if I tell you and you decide not to work for me?”
I sighed. “Ravenhurst, right now, you’re paying me to listen to you. Even if I don’t take your job, I’m going to bill you for expenses and time to come all the way out here. So, as far as listening is concerned, I’m working for you now. If I don’t like the job, I’ll still forget everything I’m told. All right?”
He didn’t like it, but he had no choice. “All right,” he said. He polished off his glass of Madeira and refilled it. My own glass was still nearly full.
“Mr. Oak,” he began, “I have two problems. One is minor, the other major. But I have attempted to blow the minor problem up out of proportion, so that all the people here at Raven’s Rest think that it is the only problem. They think that I brought you out here for that reason alone.
“But all that is merely cover-up for the real problem.”
“Which is?” I prompted.
He leaned forward again. Apparently, it was the only exercise he ever got. “You’re aware that Viking Spacecraft is one of the corporations under the management of Ravenhurst Holdings?”
I nodded. Viking Spacecraft built some of the biggest and best spacecraft in the System. It held most of Ceres—all of it, in fact, except the Government Reservation. It had moved out to the asteroids a long time back, after the big mining concerns began cutting up the smaller asteroids for metal. The raw materials are easier to come by out here than they are on Earth, and it’s a devil of a lot easier to build spacecraft under low-gee conditions than it is under the pull of Earth or Luna or Mars.
“Do you know anything about the experimental robotic ships being built on Eros?” Ravenhurst asked.
“Not much,” I admitted. “I’ve heard about them, but I don’t know any of the details.” That wasn’t quite true, but I’ve found it doesn’t pay to tell everybody everything you know.
“The engineering details aren’t necessary,” Ravenhurst said. “Besides, I don’t know them, myself. The point is that Viking is trying to build a ship that will be as easy to operate as a flitterboat—a one-man cargo vessel. Perhaps even a completely automatic job for cargo, and just use a one-man crew for the passenger vessels. Imagine how that would cut the cost of transportation in the Solar System! Imagine how it would open up high-speed cargo transfer if an automatic vessel could accelerate at twenty or twenty-five gees to turnover!”
I’ll give Ravenhurst this: He had a light in his eyes that showed a real excitement about the prospect he was discussing, and it wasn’t due entirely to the money he might make.
“Sounds fine,” I said. “What seems to be the trouble?”
His face darkened half a shade. “The company police suspect sabotage, Mr. Oak.”
“How? What kind?”
“They don’t know. Viking has built six ships of that type—the McGuire class, the engineers call it. Each one has been slightly different than the one before, of course, as they ironed out the bugs in their operation. But each one has been a failure. Not one of them would pass the test for space-worthiness.”
“Not a failure of the drive or the ordinary mechanisms of the ship, I take it?”
Ravenhurst sniffed. “Of course not. The brain. The ships became, as you might say, non compos mentis. As a matter of fact, when the last one simply tried to burrow into the surface of Eros by reversing its drive, one of the roboticists said that a coroner’s jury would have returned a verdict of ‘suicide while of unsound mind’ if there were inquests held for spaceships.”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” I said.
“No. It doesn’t. It isn’t sensible. Those ships’ brains shouldn’t have behaved that way. Robot brains don’t go mad unless they’re given instructions to do so—conflicting orders, erroneous information, that sort of thing. Or, unless they have actual physical defects in the brains themselves.”
“The brains can handle the job of flying a ship all right, though?” I asked. “I mean, they have the capacity for it?”
“Certainly. They’re the same type that’s used to control the automobile traffic on the Eastern Seaboard Highway Network of North America. If they can control the movement of millions of cars, there’s no reason why they can’t control a spaceship.”
“No,” I said, “I suppose not.” I thought it over for a second, then asked, “But what do your robotics men say is causing the malfunctions?”
“That’s where the problem comes in, Mr. Oak.” He pursed his pudgy lips, and his eyes narrowed. “The opinions are divided. Some of the men say it’s simply a case of engineering failure—that the bugs haven’t been worked out of this new combination, but that as soon as they are, everything will work as smoothly as butter. Others say that only deliberate tampering could cause those failures. And still others say that there’s not enough evidence to prove either of those theories is correct.”
“But your opinion is that it’s sabotage?”
“Exactly,” said Ravenhurst, “and I know who is doing it and why.”
I didn’t try to conceal the little bit of surprise that gave me. “You know the man who’s responsible?”
He shook his head rapidly, making his jowls wobble. “I didn’t mean that. It’s not a single man; it’s a group.”
“Maybe you’d better go into a little more detail on that, Mr. Ravenhurst.”
He nodded, and this time his jowls bobbled instead of wobbled. “Some group at Viking is trying to run me out of the managerial business. They want Viking to be managed by Thurston Enterprises; they evidently think they can get a better deal from him than they can from me. If the McGuire project fails, they’ll have a good chance of convincing the stock-holders that the fault lies with Ravenhurst. You follow?”
“So far,” I said. “Do you think Thurston’s behind this, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “He might be, or he might not. If he is, that’s perfectly legitimate business tactics. He’s got a perfect right to try to get more business for himself if he wants to. I’ve undercut him a couple of times.
“But I don’t think he’s too deeply involved, if he’s involved at all. This smacks of a personal attack against me, and I don’t think that’s Thurston’s type of play.
“You see, things are a little touchy right now. I won’t go into details, but you know what the political situation is at the moment.
“It works this way, as far as Viking is concerned: If I lose the managerial contract at Viking, a couple of my other contracts will go by the board, too—especially if it’s proved that I’ve been lax in management or have been expending credit needlessly.
“These other two companies are actually a little shaky at the moment; I’ve only been managing them for a little over a year in one case and two years in the other. Their assets have come up since I took over, but they’d still dump me if they thought I was reckless.”
“How can they do that?” I asked. “You have a contract, don’t you?”
“Certainly. They wouldn’t break it. But they’d likely ask the Government Inspectors to step in and check every step of the managerial work. Now, you and I and everybody else knows that you have to cut corners to make a business successful. If the GI’s step in, that will have to stop—which means we’ll show a loss heavy enough to put us out. We’ll be forced to sell the contract for a pittance.
“Well, then. If Viking goes, and these other two corporations go, it’ll begin to look as if Ravenhurst can’t take care of himself and his companies anymore. Others will climb on the bandwagon. Contracts that are coming up for renewal will be reconsidered instead of continuing automatically. I think you can see where that would lead eventually.”
I did. You don’t go into the managing business these days unless you have plenty on the ball. You’ve got to know all the principles and all the tricks of organization and communication, and you’ve got to be able to waltz your way around all the roadblocks that are caused by Government laws—some of which have been floating around on the books of one nation or anoth
er for two or three centuries.
Did you know that there’s a law on the American statute books that forbids the landing of a spaceship within one hundred miles of a city? That was passed back when they were using rockets, but it’s never been repealed. Technically, then, it’s almost impossible to land a ship anywhere on the North American continent. Long Island Spaceport is openly flouting the law, if you want to look at it that way.
A managerial combine has to know all those little things and know how to get around them. It has to be able to have the confidence of the stock-holders of a corporation—if it’s run on the Western Plan—or the confidence of communal owners if it’s run on the Eastern Plan.
Something like this could snowball on Ravenhurst. It isn’t only the rats that desert a sinking ship; so does anyone else who has any sense.
“What I want to know, Mr. Oak,” Ravenhurst continued, “is who is behind this plot, whether an individual or a group. I want to know identity and motivation.”
“Is that all?” I eyed him skeptically.
“No. Of course not. I want you to make sure that the MG-YR-7 isn’t sabotaged. I want you to make sure it’s protected from whatever kind of monkey wrenches are being thrown into its works.”
“It’s nearly ready for testing now, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It is ready. It seems to be in perfect condition so far. Viking is already looking for a test pilot. It’s still in working order now, and I want to be certain that it will remain so.”
I cocked my head to one side and gave him my Interrogative And Suspicious Glance—Number 9 in the manual. “You didn’t do any checking on the first six McGuire ships. You wait until this one is done before calling me. Why the delay, Ravenhurst?”
It didn’t faze him. “I became suspicious after McGuire 6 failed. I put Colonel Brock on it.”
I nodded. I’d had dealings with Brock. He was head of Ravenhurst’s Security Guard. “Brock didn’t get anywhere,” I said.
“He did not. His own face is too well known for him to have investigated personally, and he’s not enough of an actor to get away with using a plexiskin mask. He had to use underlings. And I’m afraid some of them might be in the pay of the…ah…opposition. They got nowhere.”
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