Heyden blinked, gave an irritated wave of his hand as if to dismiss the thought, then frowned. "How hard is it to make these things?"
"I've told you. The actual physical construction isn't too bad, once you know what to do."
There was a long period in which neither man said anything. Then Heyden said slowly, "You said, 'With this, we could put a man on the moon in a few weeks.' Did you mean that literally?"
Benning nodded. "Remember all the research that's already been done. Think of the problems we don't have, because the drive is no worry. Think how we're set up here. Sure, in three weeks, we could put a man on the moon."
"Could you mount the drive so it could also be used as a weapon?"
"Yes. And, for that matter, a smaller one could serve as an auxiliary weapon in flight, if you wanted. But it would take money."
Heyden thought it over, then grinned. "If Grossrad's going to have his Kiddie Kits ready in time, he's going to have to give us money."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious. This is the biggest technological advance in history."
Benning was wide eyed. "And what you're thinking of making is a full-size spaceship—good enough for an actual expedition?"
"That's exactly what I want—if we can make such a thing. No trim. No flimflam. Just let it work."
Benning seemed to lose some enthusiasm. "This is risky."
Heyden nodded. "You bet your life, it's risky. If Grossrad gets wind of it I'll be hung from the rafters. But never mind that. Are you sure you can do it?"
"Of course I'm sure." Benning frowned. "Right now we can do this better than Kiddie Kits. A month from now, if we follow Grossrad's letter, it'll be a different story. But—"
"Then this may be the only chance our side gets. We'd better take it."
Benning drew a deep shaky breath. "Okay."
IV
The next two weeks passed in a blur of desperate activity that left Heyden no time to think of anything but the problem immediately in front of him. Benning's remark that a man could be put on the moon in a few weeks turned out to be a little optimistic.
Benning said exasperatedly, "I didn't figure in all that life-support stuff. So far as the drive is concerned, that's what I meant."
Heyden said angrily, "We could have put a corpse on the moon a long time ago."
"I'm sorry," said Benning. "We're coming fast, anyway. Thank heaven the thing is basically simple."
Before them loomed a big black shape like an overgrown boiler. It had all the sophistication of a sledge-hammer, but Benning insisted it could take off inside a week.
"You see," he said, "the only real problem with the drive is durability under stress. Theoretically, we could use that demonstration model I showed you. The trouble is that in practice if the drive-unit is too small, it will crush."
"That's nice. But we've got around that, have we?"
"Yes."
Heyden eyed the looming black boiler shape. "We don't want to get out there and get cooked."
"The other side shades from black into a pure reflective coating."
"How do we see out of it? In addition to the radar, which may fail on us?"
"There's a window in the end. Also, we're practicing with a light-weight kind of drive-unit. We figure we can use that as a sort of detector."
"How does it work?"
"To create a given negative bending or warping where there's a physical object present takes more power than where there isn't. Set things up right, and you can read the mass of the given object off a meter."
"How about the distance?"
"The reading drops in front and behind the object. There's no problem there."
Heyden stared at the looming shape and nodded slowly. He had no clear idea why there was no problem there; but there was nothing to do but take Benning's word for it, and hope things would turn out. He turned to make a final comment, then paused.
A bulky overalled form had just ducked out the door of the boiler-shape, and now, scowling deeply, pushed through a knot of people standing just outside. Carrying a flimsy sheet of yellow paper, he headed straight for Benning, and immediately got down to brass tacks.
"That inside-drive idea won't work. If we try that, we're going to swivel that drive around, stress the walls, and crack the window on the end. That leaves us with an air-leak. That drive has to go outside."
"That's insane," said Benning angrily. "With that size unit, the whole ship's inside the distortion."
"Maybe, but there's a fringe effect."
"We're inside it."
"We are? Look at this."
Benning took the paper. "Well . . . this is just a freakish—"
"Maybe it doesn't last long, but what's it going to do to that window?"
"Yes, but if we put it outside, it will still—"
"Not if we have it on a boom. That puts us outside that gradient."
Benning stared at him. "How long a boom?"
"About two hundred feet should do it."
"Two hundred—"
"Unless you can breathe vacuum, that's where it's got to go, if we make it that size."
Benning was staring at the flimsy sheet of paper as there came the sound of a feminine throat-clearing to Heyden's right. He glanced around to see his secretary holding out a special-delivery letter. Leaving Benning to deal with the technical problem, Heyden headed back to his office, and read the handwritten letter:
Jim—
Well, boy, we've got the merger, but doing business with this outfit really puts your wallet through the wringer. I hope you're coming along fine with the Kiddie Kits. We'll need every cent we can scrape up, so pare expenses to the bone, and shave everything just as fine as you can. We're going to have to cut down more than I expected on the scientific talent, and I just hope we can pick them up again when we need them.
I know how this Kiddie Kit business must strike you after the stuff we've been working on, but when the oasis gets this dry, there's nothing to do but fold your tents and move on. Nothing we could produce, no matter how advanced, would get a really sympathetic hearing right now.
I don't mean to dwell on this, Jim. I know we can count on you all the way, even if it is a let-down. I keep harping on it because I think this toy business is going to make the difference, one way or the other. It's hard to believe, I know, but there it is.
Ed and I are both totally worn out. There are some things that you have to do in business that aren't very business-like, but there's no time to argue about that. You either do them or get kicked in the head, and somebody else walks off with the prize.
I must be more worn-out than I realized to go on like this. Well, here's to the merger, and stick to those Kiddie Kits. You don't know what it means to know we've got somebody back there we can count on.
We'll see you in a week, Jim.
Stu
Heyden swallowed and sat back dizzily.
When his vision cleared, there stood, across the desk, an apologetic individual from Purchasing. "Sorry, sir, but it seems we have to have your signature on this."
Heyden took it, and scowled at the figures. "Are you sure the addition is right?"
"Yes, sir. That special silver wire is expensive stuff."
Heyden sat still for a moment, then scratched out his name. The paper was briskly whisked away.
"Thank you, sir." The door shut, and the incident was gone beyond recall. Heyden picked up the note, read it through again, and shook his head. He started to get up, then changed his mind. He sat still a minute, then drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rough sigh. The realization went though him with inescapable finality that in seven days the ship would be ready or not ready.
And then something else, that he'd been vaguely aware of theoretically took on a sudden solidness and reality.
In seven days, he would be either a hero of broad vision, or a fool and a traitor.
And there was not a thing he could do about it.
He had made hi
s move, and if it didn't work out, he could never, never explain it.
The first four or five days after that crawled past with Heyden almost in a daze. Time and again, between emergencies, he dredged up memories, trying to discover exactly how he had gotten into this. The astonishing thing was that, in retrospect the decision seemed to have been so easy. Blandly, calmly, he had given the decision that might wreck the corporation, and land him, personally, in the worst mess he'd ever been in.
His meditations were enlivened, toward the end of the week, by a telephone call from the comptroller.
"Hello, Jim?"
"Right here, Sam." Heyden tried without success to inject a little warmth into his voice. His voice retained a calm unconcerned coolness.
There was a hesitant cough over the phone. "Say, no offense, Jim, but what the devil is going on there?"
"Business as usual," came Heyden's voice, cool and totally assured. "Granted the changes that I'm sure Stu must have told you about."
"Well, Stu told me—" There was a brief pause. "Do you know something I don't know? Is that it?"
Heyden laughed. The sound was that of a man without a worry in the world. "Sam," his voice said cheerfully, "before I know if I know anything you don't know, I know you know I have to know what you know, otherwise I won't know, you know, if what I know is something you don't know."
"Ah, for—" Over the phone, the cautious voice sounded irritated but relieved. "Listen, we can kid all we want, but this is serious business."
"It is," said Heyden emphatically. After a moment, he added, "Thank heaven."
"What do you mean? Wait a minute, now, do you mean—" There was a long silence. "I know of course, that the merger went through, but I didn't realize—Do you mean that we're frying their fish?"
"All I can say is, this here is serious business. If Stu didn't tell you, I'm not going into it over the phone."
"What if I come down there?"
"Glad to see you anytime, Sam. But I can't mention it if Stu didn't."
"Did Stu say, specifically, not to tell me?"
"No. Of course not."
"Then why can't you—"
"Because he didn't tell me to mention it."
"Maybe I better call him up."
"No harm in it. Just don't give anything away over the phone."
"Then how the devil am I—"
Heyden said irritatedly, "Look, Sam, I'm sure it was an oversight on his part. Stu doesn't make a practice of leaving anyone in the dark. But he was worn out. I don't know what he had to do to put the merger across, but he seemed pretty thoroughly wrung out to me. Now, you can either try to locate him now, or you can wait a couple of days till he can tell you himself."
"All right. But meanwhile we're spending—"
Heyden exploded. "What do I have to do, spell it out? For Pete's sake, Sam! Look, do you think Stuart Grossrad is a commercial moron? With things the way they are now, would he deliberately stretch us out as thin as a rubber band? This merger wasn't a cheap proposition, you know."
"Well—the point of the merger was that, ultimately we'd reap the advantages of diversification."
"How would that get us through the next six months?"
There was a lengthy silence. Finally there was a long sigh over the telephone. "Did Stu tell you this beforehand?"
"Beforehand, all he told me was such a tale of misery I almost drowned in my own tears. No. He didn't tell me a thing, beforehand. What I couldn't figure out was why he was so eager for this merger, if there wasn't more in it than what he mentioned."
"He's smooth, all right. He wanted us psychologically set up to take full advantage of this. Or, if the merger fell through, he didn't want us moping around, thinking we'd lost our last chance. Either way it went, he was ready."
"I suppose that must have been it."
"Well—I just had to find out. No hard feelings, Jim?"
"Of course not, Sam. Any time."
"See you, boy."
"So long, Sam."
Heyden put the phone in its cradle, and mopped his forehead. He had, if Sam remained convinced, succeeded in hanging on to two more days. If, that is, Grossrad didn't decide to come back early. If there were no other catastrophes. Heyden glanced at his watch, and decided to go take a look and see how Benning was coming along.
It took Heyden some time to walk down the long corridor, but only a few moments more to find his answer. The big boiler shape stood in solitary glory in the hangar-like building, apparently forgotten. Everyone was fifty feet away, crowded around a smoldering mess about a foot-and-a-half long and eight inches in diameter, and that had, apparently, once been something useable. Benning had his hand at his chin, staring at this ruin. He, and the rest of the men, all looked so dazed and tired that Heyden didn't have the heart to ask what had happened. Wearily, he shut the door, went back to his office, and sat down.
"Well, Stu," he said mentally, "you see I thought we could make it to the moon . . . Yes, the moon . . . Yes, I know the thing doesn't work, Stu . . . That's where all the money went, Stu . . . That's right . . . Yes, Stu . . . Sorry . . . Yes . . . That's right, Stu—I mean Mr. Grossrad . . . Yes, Mr. Grossrad, I did it on my own responsibility . . . Yes, sir, I know, but—You see, sir, if somebody else had got it—And if it had worked, Mr. Grossrad, then . . . I know it didn't sir, but—"
Heyden abruptly sat up, and smashed his fist on the desk. "Damn it," he said savagely, "it's got to work!"
By the time he got to Benning again, Benning looked glassy-eyed with pure stupefaction, and the others had expressions that varied from ordinary gloom to total defeatist resignation.
Heyden told himself that he would have to keep himself under tight control.
"What's this?" he said abruptly, and a good deal louder than he'd intended.
Instantly, every eye in the room was focused on him. They watched him with the alert attention a man gets when he breaks the silence by cracking a bullwhip.
Benning turned around, his expression that of bafflement and disbelief. "This size builds up heat faster than we imagined. It's got to have a cooling system."
"Is that the drive-unit for the ship?"
"No, this is the forward unit. The ship drive-unit is bound to be worse yet."
"How long to rig up a cooling system?"
"Too long. We've not only got to cool the drive-unit itself, we've then got to unload all the heat from the cooling system. The stupefying thing is, we tested for this with smaller units, and the heat build-up was gradual and well within bounds. We've apparently run into some effect that increases exponentially with mass, while thrust—"
"Can you get the same thrust with a group of small units as with one large one?"
Benning blinked. "It wouldn't be as efficient, but yes, we could do that."
"Any drawbacks to having a bunch of them?"
"Yes. All the mounts have to be duplicated."
"Why not mount them together?"
"If they're too close, we've discovered they interact."
"Can you mount them far enough apart so they don't interact, but not so far apart as to make control impossible?"
"Yes, but the expense—"
"Damn the expense," said Heyden savagely. "How long will it take?"
Benning mopped his forehead. "If we work straight through without a break we can have it ready the day after tomorrow."
"All right. Starting now, everyone who volunteers to work straight through, and who sticks with it, gets quadruple pay, and a thousand-dollar bonus after taxes, if the job's done on time."
There was a brief sudden burst of excitement.
"My God!" blurted Benning.
"Look what's at stake!" said Heyden angrily. "Control of space! A drive that can reach the planets! All the high-grade ore in the asteroid belt! Are we going to fold up, or are we going to get it?" He paused just long enough to see the glint in their eyes, then turned to Benning. "What do you need?"
Benning said soberly, "A list as long as yo
ur arm."
"Let's have it."
Benning got him off away from the others. "Listen, do you know what's going to happen to you if—"
"It's too late for that."
"I wish I'd never brought that damned thing to your office."
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