Bruce smiled his askew smile at the smaller man. “I foxed them,” he said. “In that hotel they’ve got Security men at each door I checked save one. It evidently has never occurred to them they’d need one there.”
Adam Bloch frowned. “Which one is that?”
“The door that leads from the Security offices to the street. You enter the corridor from the hotel proper, simply walk down the hall briskly, as though you had business, and then slip out the door into the town.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Adam murmured. “It sounds as though it would be just as easy to enter.”
Pal said, “You’ve probably already guessed, but this is the writer guy I told you about, Bruce Carter.”
The two shook hands.
Pal said to the newcomer, “This is Adam Bloch, Bruce. I guess if we had a head of the club, he’d be it.”
“I’ve read quite a few of your things, Mr. Carter,” Bloch said. “Particularly your books.”
“Oh?” Bruce said, looking about the room. Most of the occupants were standing around in groups chattering away in much the same manner as they had at the party he had attended the night before. “Which ones did you like?”
Pal interrupted by saying, “I think I’d better go and introduce Jeff around.” He left Adam and Bruce to continue their conversation.
“I liked them all,” Adam said. “But I think that I’m going to like your next one best of all. It’ll be your masterpiece.”
Bruce took him in. “I don’t even have a next one in mind.”
“It will be about the Lagrange Five Project,” the other told him. “You will reveal it to be the greatest catastrophe in history.”
“I will?” Bruce said coolly.
“Yes,” Adam nodded. “Since never in history have so many people been caught up and put so much of their resources into a disaster.”
Bruce was irritated. He said, “Are you so sure that it’s a disaster? It’s already been admitted to me that there are still a lot of bugs, but isn’t that to be expected in a project of this magnitude?”
“It’s more than just a few bugs, Mr. Carter. The whole concept has been idiotic since its conception. Some aspects of it so much so that one can only suspect sabotage.”
“Wizard,” Bruce said impatiently. “Let’s have just one of those aspects.”
“There are so many that I hardly know where to begin, but I’ll take a simple example. In one of the early books on space colonization, the author points out, rather in passing, that most likely it will be necessary to import soap from Earth, at least for the first island or two. He goes no further in developing the ramifications of that.”
The writer was puzzled. “Well, what are they? Obviously, you’re not going to be able to make much soap up here if your only animals are chickens and rabbits. Even when you get pigs, you’d have to have one hell of a lot of them to obtain enough fat to supply ten thousand people with soap.”
“Quite correct. Picture ten thousand people using a bar of soap or its equivalent every day.”
Bruce said indignantly, “A bar of soap a day? Nobody uses the equivalent of a bar of soap a day.”
“I’m afraid a modern, civilized person does, Mr. Carter. I wasn’t just thinking in terms of washing one’s hands and face and taking a bath or shower. There is also shaving, washing dishes, laundry, scrubbing floors, washing windows, and so forth. So we have 10,000 bars, or the equivalent in other forms of soap. That’s 3,650,000 bars a year. If you figure four bars to the pound, roughly, that means 1,912,500 pounds a year, or about 456 tons. All to be brought up by spaceship every year.”
Bruce whistled. “That sets me back.”
“Ummm,” Adam Bloch nodded. “Seemingly a minor matter, but there are a thousand similar, minor matters that add up to the catastrophe I was speaking of. Tell you what; let’s circulate a bit.”
Bruce fell in beside the sad-faced man as they left their position near the door and entered the hall proper. He was beginning to get used to the sterility of the interiors here in the island. No rugs or carpeting, no drapes at the windows, no art on the walls, the sparse furniture all of metal.
He said, “You don’t look exactly like a space worker.” The other smiled wanly. “We’re not all construction men, you know. We have everything from health workers to garbage disposal people. I’m a teacher. Many of the community who signed up as colonists brought their families. There aren’t a great many children, as yet at least, but on the other hand, they aren’t rare.”
They approached a lean, tired, frustrated-looking man, leaning against a wall, glass in hand.
“Ah,” the teacher said. “Here we have someone who can tell you about another far-out aspect of the Lagrange Five Project.”
The man stood erect as they approached. “Hi, Adam,” he said. “What spins?”
“Cris,” the teacher told him, “This is Bruce Carter, the well-known author. He’s doing a book on Lagrange Five.” He smiled wanly at the freelancer. “He might not know it yet, but he is. This is Cris Everett, Bruce, a window washer.”
Bruce shook hands. “A window washer? You’re right, Adam, you do have a wide variety of professions represented here. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that window washers would be one of them.”
“Are you kidding?” Cris Everett said indignantly. “We’re one of the most numerous classes of workers up here.”
Bruce looked at him blankly.
“Tell him about it, Cris,” Adam said.
“What the hell is there to tell? This cylinder is 3,280 feet long, with a circumference of 1,030 feet. It’s divided into six strips, half for living space, half in windows, to let in sunlight. Each one of the strips is about 170 feet wide, and, of course, runs the full length of the cylinder. Figure it out; three strips of windows, 170 feet wide, over 3,200 feet long. We start out at one end, hundreds of us, and by the time we get to the other end, it’s time to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Whoever designed these islands evidently didn’t figure that the windows would need washing. Well, they don’t on the outside, but they sure as hell do here on the inside. They intended to install automatic cleaning apparatus. They didn’t.”
Adam put in, looking at Bruce, “Ryan and his colleagues talk about islands eventually that will be several hundred square kilometers in area. They, too, are to be half in windows, half in living area. Window washing doesn’t lend itself to automation. Even in the most modern skyscrapers on Manhattan, the windows are washed by hand.” He said to the indignant worker, “See you, Cris. I’m showing Bruce around.”
As they continued on their way, Adam said, “There are some other interesting angles to those islands of a couple of hundred square miles or so. By the way, there are four European sovereign nations with land areas much less than that. Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and Monaco. Andorra is the largest with 175 square miles.”
“I’ve been in all of them,” Bruce said.
“Ummm. Now, the way Ryan and company picture it, there will be rivers and lakes on such islands, complete with swimming, boating, fishing, and other water sports. I submit that to have a river or lake permitting such activities, you’re going to need water at least six feet deep with, I’d say, soil beneath the water at least another foot deep, if you plan on aquatic vegetation for the fish to feed on. Then you’d have to have the land level a foot or so higher than the water level. So the land level would be eight feet in all. Now, I ask you to imagine transporting enough lunar soil up to your island to fill several hundred square miles to the depth of eight feet. I might point out that the mass driver now on the moon was designed to propel into space about 150 tons of lunar raw materials daily. How many additional mass drivers would be needed to put up the millions of tons necessary to build an island that big and then to fill it, eight feet deep, with lunar-derived soil?”
Bruce regarded him from the side of his eyes. Surely there were engineering solutions for these problems; but it made a man wonder…
/>
They came up on a group of four or five who were evidently going into lighter elements of the problems of Lagrange Five. The two newcomers to the group held their silence and listened in.
One of them was saying, “I tell you, some of these double-dome agricultural scientists must have learned their farming in a laboratory. One of them came up with the bright idea of bringing up a ton of earthworms. It must have put fishing in the States back a few years. At any rate, they dump them onto one of the patches where they’re trying to get vegetation going outside the hydroponic areas. A ton of earthworms, mind you. The poor little bastards probably all got bloody noses bumping them against the island’s metal shell, the soil only being a foot thick at that point. But the thing is, the simple cloddies who dreamed up the idea evidently never considered what those worms were supposed to eat. What in the hell could they find to eat in that incompatible lunar dirt?”
The others laughed and one said, “If you think that’s bad, how about the wildlife specialist? The one who brought up the ducks and turned them loose. After a while the ducks decided they wanted to migrate and broke their damn necks flying up against the windows.”
They laughed again. It would seem this group had a supply of bootleg with which to spike their punch.
Across the room, Pal Barack and his new friend, Jeff Miller, were the center of another group.
“I mean to say,” Pal was declaiming dogmatically, “It’s like joining the army. Even worse. In the army, supposedly you can get out if you have some medical reason, or some personal matter like family problems. You know, you’ve got to take care of your sick mother or something. It’s not easy to get discharged, but it’s possible. Well, it’s not possible if you work for the Lagrange Five Corporation.”
Tony Black, who was standing to the rear of the group, demurred grudgingly. Rick Venner’s contact man in Island One said, “Hell, Pal, a lot of the early construction workers went on home after their particular specialty was no longer needed.”
“Yeah, sure,” the little Hungarian admitted. “But those were the early days at the moon base and in the Construction Shack and everybody knew how rugged it was up here. In fact, all the Tri-Di shows and all stressed the fact. Kind of took pride in it. But now the story line is that Island One is just about completed and everything is hunky-dory and any day now the happy colonists will start building Island Two and start mass producing SPS’s wholesale once a few more wrinkles are ironed out. Ha! No wonder they don’t want any of us going back Earthside and telling everybody what it’s really like up here. Who the hell’d buy any more LFC stock?”
The others in the group stirred restlessly and looked at each other unhappily, almost furtively, from the sides of their eyes.
Jeff Miller said softly, “You might not believe what Pal says, but I can vouch for it. Nobody who might shoot off his mouth, Earthside, gets to return. Those big-name scientists and engineers, the executives of the project, and the Security men, sure. They’re safe. Hardly any of them ever leave the L5 Hilton anyway, and even if they did know what was really going on, it’s to their interest to keep their traps shut. But we working-type joes, we simply don’t leave.”
Tony Black said, “I’ve known several guys who went home after their contracts expired.”
“Like shit you do,” Pal Barack said nastily. “What do you know about anything? You work in Supply and your itchy fingers latch onto anything not nailed down. No wonder you’re the best source of black-market items around.”
Adam Bloch and Bruce had drifted around between groups for a time and then settled down to a couple of chairs against one of the auditorium walls.
Bruce was thoughtful. He said, “Some of these complaints seem valid enough, though I’m only a layman in each field. However, I met Doctor Ryan and some of his intimates yesterday, and they admitted that there were all sorts of holes that needed plugging. But they certainly didn’t see any point in scrapping the whole space colonization program.”
“The thing is,” Adam said urgently, “that it’s all premature. We simply don’t have the theoretical background yet. We’re going off half-cocked. I don’t have anything against Sol Ryan personally. He’s one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. But he’s a scatterbrain, a dreamer. His basic ideas don’t hold water.”
“Once again, such as what?”
“You’ve read his famous book?”
“Certainly. I’ve even met one of the men who wrote it.”
Adam Bloch looked at the freelancer. “Now that never occurred to me. You mean Ryan didn’t write that bestseller that introduced the whole dream to the man in the street?”
Bruce sighed. “Adam,” he said, “whenever you see a well-written book with a non-pro’s name on it as author, you can be sure it was ghosted by an old-timer. It takes years, plenty of them, to learn the tools of the trade in the writing game. President Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe was written by Quentin Reynolds. President Nixon’s Six Crises was done by a ghost named Berlin. And did you think Mohammed Ali’s autobiography was written by a doggerel-spouting boxer? Or that Lindberg wrote We? They might all have been capable men in their own fields, but they were not writers.”
Adam Bloch accepted what the other said, scowled in thought, and evidently came to a conclusion. He said, “See here, Bruce, obviously you are gathering material for your writing, whether or not you write a book, which I hope you do. And obviously, to secure your material, you’re going to have to seek out other sources of information than you’ll get at the L5 Hilton. Ron Rich will give you little beyond his standard publicity releases. Very well, without even consulting my associates, I am going to reveal to you that the WITH-AW-DOH Club is actually a front for what might be called an underground organization.”
Bruce eyed him in surprise. “Underground!”
“That’s what it amounts to. We are organized for the purpose of subverting the present administration of the Lagrange Five Project. One of our greatest difficulties is that we have no manner of getting any of our more articulate membership back to Earth to spread our message. But with you on the scene, it’s another thing. If we can convert you to our way of thinking, when you return, no one is in a better position to reveal the true nature of the Lagrange Five Corporation.”
Bruce was taking him in as though the sad-faced, older man had gone around the bend.
The teacher pressed on. “Tomorrow there is to be a secret meeting of our Central Committee. I’d like to have you attend.”
“I’d love to attend,” Bruce said evenly.
“Very well. I live on the edge of the park, just on the outskirts of town. My home is a small, two-storied one, and is constructed entirely of gray moon brick and plastic. It will immediately come to your eye. Take all precautions not to be followed. I’ll be waiting for you at four o’clock. I suppose you’ve already found that we keep Greenwich time here. I’ll take you to the meeting. Meanwhile, I suggest that you continue to circulate around here. Almost all the conversations you will listen in on will concern shortcomings of the L5 Project. That’s supposedly the purpose of the Club, to get together and exchange complaints, supposedly in a humorous way.”
“So I’ve already found out,” Bruce said mildly.
The teacher stood and said, “I’d just as well not be seen in your company any more tonight. It’s almost certain that Security has an agent or two present and it might look suspicious if I spent too much time with a writer.”
“Wizard,” Bruce told him. “I’ll see you and this mysterious committee of yours tomorrow.”
Pal Barack was one of the last to leave that night. He had spent the whole evening sounding off about Security and the conspiracy to keep contractees from returning to Earth when their time had elapsed. He’d had no difficulty in getting ears to listen.
Now, on his way home, he was mulling over the position he was in. He had no doubt that Jeff Miller had been right. Captain Borgia could keep him on standby indefinitely, as he had Jeff. And meanwhile he
had no funds whatsoever. He could continue to occupy his quarters and eat the unappetizing food in one of the community dining halls, but the prospect of continuing to survive without any funds for extras was bleak. As he walked through the darkened streets an instinct, perhaps an ESP manifestation going back to his Romany heritage, caused him to suddenly spin in alarm. It was too late. There were three of them and they came into the attack fast. The first struck the little man heavily in the belly, and when he doubled over in pain, the second clubbed him brutally on the back of the lower skull with a blackjack. Two of them grabbed his arms before he fell to the sidewalk.
“Wizard, there’s nobody around,” the leader of the three snapped. “The disposal chute’s a couple of hundred feet up the street. If we run into anybody, and that’s unlikely this time of night, we’re all drunk and he’s passed out and we’re carrying him home.”
“Great,” one of the two supporting the victim growled.
There was no difficulty in shoving the unconscious Pal Barack into the chute.
The three stepped back and the leader said in satisfaction, “That’s the advantage of recycling everything. Tomorrow, the bastard will be fertilizer, along with all the other shit. Antonio, you go to his house and get his things. All of them. If any of his friends get to wondering about him, it’ll look like he got his passage to Earthside.”
Chapter Eleven
“On the economic side I think that (the space colony advocate’s) vision fails. We must always measure proposals like his against Hitch’s Rule, which says that a new enterprise always costs from two to twenty times as much as the most careful official estimates... (He) says his space program will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Applying Hitch’s Rule we can be sure it will cost thousands of billions. Would such a venture push the economic system past the flop-over point?”
—Garrett Hardin,
author of Nature and Man’s Fate.
*
Peter Kapitz had awakened the morning after the party for Prince Abou ben Abel to find himself momentarily disoriented. He stared up at the unpainted metal ceiling and for a moment wondered if he was in a battleship. Obviously not. Now it came back to him. He moved his eyes to the right and there was the blonde head of Irene, the girl who had waited upon him and Mark Donald, the Security lieutenant, at the L5 Hilton dining room the day before.
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