WHEN HE WOKE up again, it was morning and someone’s hand on the bank of controls had turned the walls of the room back to transparency, so that he looked out over the smooth carpet of green moss to the Betsy and the jungle beyond. He blinked, stretched himself and sat up.
“Good morning, hopper,” boomed Sorrel’s voice cheerfully from some hidden loud-speaker. “The lift’s right behind you. Grab it and come up and join us for breakfast.”
Creakily, Mal rose from his chair, turned around, found the lift with its panel open and entered. Inside two buttons on the wall were marked, individually, UP and DOWN. He pressed the UP button and rose into a small interior garden, which, thanks to the same type of illusion that hid the funnel spot, contrived to give the impression of being out on a rocky hillside back on earth. A small spring bubbled out of a tiny cliff into a basin of natural rock, and through some flowing bushes, Mal saw his four companions seated around a table which apparently was placed on the edge of a cliff overlooking a waterfall.
“Shower and toothpaste to your right,” said Jim; and Mal, following the little man’s pointing finger, stepped through some trailing vines into a very modern wash lounge.
When he returned to the hillside, he had not only showered and shaved but run his clothes and boots through the cleaner and he felt refreshed enough to realize the gnawing of a ravenous appetite. He came out on the ledge, found a seat at the table and fell to.
As he ate, he listened to the conversation going on around him. The rest had passed to the coffee stage and the talk was general; and, indeed, animated. It struck him that a great deal of getting acquainted had been going on since he last saw these people. Almost as if they had taken his decision for granted and had already gone about the process of settling down together. For a moment Mal felt slightly piqued that they should have taken his soul-wrestlings of the previous night so lightly. And then the thought reminded him of something else.
“Peep!” he said suddenly. “He’s still in the Betsy. How about—”
“He’s all right,” spoke up Margie. “We talked to him over the ship-ground circuit. He can’t come out because of the softness of the ground, but he’s had a good night’s sleep and a few pounds of food from his own supplies in his flitter in the hatch. He blessed us all and said he’s going to spend the morning in deep contemplation of the Infinite.”
“Oh—” said Mal. He went back to his breakfast.
When he had polished off the last sausage and piece of egg, he accepted a cup of coffee from the dispenser and leaned back. The others turned on him.
“Well?” demanded Sorrel. “What’s the word, hopper?”
“I won’t make any deals,” said Mal. “I won’t say I agree with your way of doing things. But if you’ll help me, I’ll build it.”
“That’s it!” yelped Sorrel. He jumped to his feet. “Excuse me, I got to do something right away.”
He almost literally ran out of the room— followed by Jim. Margie looked at Mal curiously.
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“You mean, why did I decide that way?” said Mal.
“Margie!” growled Dirk, embarrassed. “That’s his business.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” answered Mal mildly. “I believe that the drive, whatever immediate uses it may be put to, is basically a good thing for the race to have. It’s progress and we aren’t ever going to gain anything by burying our heads in the sand; especially with the rest of the Galaxy so far ahead of us in other ways.”
“You didn’t come to any new decision, then,” said Margie. “You practically said that same thing to me the last time—on the way to Venus here— remember?”
“Well, no,” said Mal. “I guess there’s nothing brand new about it.”
“In other words,” said Margie sharply, getting to her feet, “you didn’t come to any real decision at all!”
“What?” said Mal, baffled. But Margie was already on her way out, her sharp heels beating an irritated tattoo on the stony illusion of the hillside. She vanished through what seemed to be a curtain of water and did not reappear.
“Now, what got into her?” demanded Mal, turning back to Dirk.
“You have done,” said Dirk pontifically, “what I call disappointing a woman in her imagination.” Mal snorted. It was the best way he could think of expressing his feelings on the subject.
Sorrel returned, followed, as usual, by Jim. “All set!” he said, in high glee, dropping into one of the chairs at the table. “The Underground will back you to the limit, hopper. Now—what are you going to need to throw this gadget together? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand?”
Mal glared at him.
“Five years, twenty million credit units, and a staff of fifty trained men, plus factory facilities, a testing ground and a fully equipped laboratory ship.”
Sorrel stared at him as if Mal had just slammed him with a power wrench.
“That’s all right,” said Dirk reassuringly. “Give him about five minutes and ask him again. He’s just been having a little argument with Margie.”
But Mal was already pulling himself together. “That’s just what I need,” he growled. “It doesn’t mean that I can’t get along without some parts of them.”
“I hope to sweet blue heaven you can,” breathed Sorrel. “What do you think we are—the Company?”
“All right,” said Mal. With the prospect of his own kind of work before him, he was rapidly regaining his ordinary good spirits. “Let’s go at it this way—what can the Underground give me in the way of equipment and space? If it comes down to that, I can do most of the actual work myself.” Sorrel winced.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “We don’t dare try to get you off Venus and back to Earth. Undoubtedly by now the news of your Alien friend getting stuck in the mud has gone back to Company Headquarters and they’ve got scanner units blanketing the planet. That leaves this world which actually means your choice of two spots. Here or the plateau.”
“How about out in the jungle, somewhere?” put in Dirk.
Both Jim and Sorrel shook their heads. “Never do,” said Jim, his wide eyes serious. “You’ve got no idea what it’s like out there. You work with respirators and refrigeration units for a max of four hours a day when you’re prospecting; and three days of that’s the limit, even.”
“If we had the equipment for jungle building—but we don’t,” said Sorrel.
“Well, actually,” said Mal, “The unit will, I believe, be small. You’ve got to remember I’ve never gone any farther with this than drawing up a report for the Company to accompany my request for experimental material. But I’m pretty sure the unit should, itself, be small and simple. However, I can still use all the space I can have; and it seems to me there’d be more of that here than on the plateau—right?”
“Right!” replied Sorrel. “And there’s your laboratory ship lying out in the front yard—” he jerked a thumb in the general direction of the invisible Betsy—“but there’s something else to think of. If you’re going to need much in the way of equipment that’ll have to come from the plateau, we’re going to have to worry about drawing attention to the funnel spot here. The Company Police will be watching the plateau like hawks.”
“But look—” said Dirk. “We took off in the Betsy. And, as far as they know, we never came back. Don’t you think they’ll assume we hit for some place farther out in the asteroid belt, or back to Earth?”
“Why, sure, Frank,” said Jim, turning to Sorrel. “Why didn’t we think of that? They’ll figure these people have gone.”
“They might,” said Sorrel, frowning. “But they’ll still be watching the plateau, if only on general principles. That gives me a notion, though.”
“What?” asked Mal.
Sorrel chewed on a thumbnail, his dark eyes abstracted. He turned to Jim.
“Jim,” he said, “why the hell didn’t I think of it? The Underground can pick up individual pieces of equipment and cache them in the jungle anywhere.
Then we can go out overland and pick them up.”
“Why, sure,” said Jim, his face lighting.
“There’s no problem to that. What else do we have to figure out now?”
Sorrel turned to Mal, questioningly.
“Well, let’s see,” said Mal. “There’s just one more thing. If I’m going to use the Betsy to work in, we’ll have to clean a lot of stuff out of her. For that I’ll need some extra hands. In fact for work generally, I’ll need some extra hands. How many men can you get me?”
Sorrel grimaced.
“Now, that’s a sore point,” he said. “I don’t dare have people coming and going here steadily for fear of drawing attention to the place. They’d figure a big strike up on the plateau; and we’d have everybody and his Uncle John nosing around. On the other hand, I can’t very well bring a bunch in and keep them here. There’s no room and not enough supplies to feed them. This thing was set up as a one-man station for me. I’m the contact point between the Underground here and Earth.” He hesitated. “Look—” he said suddenly. “There’s me, there’s Jim, there’s Dirk here, and even your Margie. Can’t we handle it?”
It was Mal’s turn to look sour.
“Listen—” said Sorrel desperately. “I know it’s tough. But when you’ve got to make do, you’ve got to make do. I could bring a crew of five hundred good men in here tomorrow, if I thought it would work. But you know how long the project would last then. Just long enough for the word to cross the plateau and the Company Police to get their flitters in the air. Look, I know I’m asking for a miracle—but can’t you do it that way?”
Mal waggled his head in despair.
“I can try,” he said heavily.
“That’s it, then!” cried Sorrel, slapping him on the shoulder and jumping to his feet. “Let’s go all have a drink on it, and then we’ll hit the moss outside and get to work. How about it?”
“Oh, hell!” said Mal, with the beginnings of a grin, following Sorrel over to a large boulder which had just turned into a liquor cabinet. “What have I got to lose that I didn’t stand to lose, anyway?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
JOSH BIGGS WOULD never have recognized his sleek yacht before the day was out. The recognizable items such as his luxury furnishings and some of the paneled partitions were no longer in the ship, but instead were flung in a disordered pile off in one far corner of the funnel spot; and the places they had occupied were stripped down to bare, gleaming metal.
This part of the work, indeed, progressed much more rapidly than had been expected because of an extra pair of hands which Sorrel had not taken into account. These were the slimfingered appendages of Peep. The Atakit met them at the entrance of the Betsy as they left the station ready to begin work, and was apprised of the plans over Sorrel’s protest.
“Listen—” said the Underground man, dragging Mal off to one side after the beans had already been spilled. “What’re you doing? He’s an Alien!”
“Look!” said Mal shortly, pulling his arm loose from the other’s grasp. “If it hadn’t been for him, we’d have been in the Company’s hands twenty times over.” And he told Sorrel of how they had met Peep.
“Well—” Sorrel was saying doubtfully, when Peep trotted into the main lounge where they were standing.
“May I be of use, young friends?” he beamed.
“Why, thanks, Peep,” said Mal, turning away from Sorrel. “You can. That partition back of the bar will have to come out.”
Peep obligingly trotted over to the partition, grasped the edge of it firmly and pulled. There was a screech of tearing metal and a five-by-ten-foot section of tungsten alloy dyed and burled to resemble knotty pine, ripped loose in his hands.
“Just toss it outside, Peep,” said Mal.
Sorrel turned white.
“St. Ignatius, be my friend—” he murmured and tottered out, making a large circle about Peep on his way to the door of the lounge.
The furnishings and the partitions came out. The rugs and the floor coverings were rolled up and set aside. Where the main lounge, the library, and the bar had been, now stretched one long room of bare metal walls and floor, with power leads spouting untidily here and there, like so many cable-headed clumps of mechanical bouquets.
“Fine,” said Mal, beaming at the room. The overhead lights had been turned up to a maximum; and under them the room seemed to shimmer in a white bath of reflected light. “Lots of elbow room, that’s what’s necessary.”
“What next?” inquired Sorrel, coming up behind him.
“Well,” said Mal. “I’ll want a work bench for the power tools there.” He pointed to the forward corner of the room where the bar had formerly stood. “And a series of racks for power-pack lifters and hoists at the other end. Cutters should be spotted about the room. As for the other items—the auto lathe and the portable chucks should be ceiling anchored and the testing equipment can be on flotation packs. Of course we’ll need a direct response meter-load generator, gallimeter, wave-impulse recordometer; and I don’t quite know what we’ll do with the tension box, but I’ll find a place for it. The graviometer—”
“Hold it!” cried Sorrel. “Hold it!” He flung up his hands in despair. “Let’s go back to the station and make out a list.”
Mal gazed fondly about the room once more then followed the others out.
This time Peep came with them. The station had yielded power belts and with one of these strapped around his furry middle, Peep floated lightly over the moss and followed them up the lift and into a new level of the station, which was severely set out with a long table, filing cabinets and chairs, giving somewhat the appearance of a combination office and conference room.
They sat down to the task of figuring out what Mal would need in the way of supplies and equipment. It turned out that the station itself would be able to supply almost all of his needs, since it had been built to be almost completely self-sustaining. Most of the necessary materials could be smuggled out from the plateau by members of the Underground, after first being obtained by the black-market man named Bobby.
Bobby called on tight sub-channel wave length, agreed to undertake all commissions, except the one concerning the testing equipment—to wit, a tension box, a cold box, and a gallimeter.
“But I’ve got to have them,” Mal protested.
In the communications vision screen Bobby shrugged.
“They’re in the Company warehouses,” he said in a rusty voice. “But they’re priority items. How’m I going to get clearance papers on them from the weather station, the hospital, and the communication center? All those outfits got priority on that sort of stuff.”
“Okay, Bobby,” said Sorrel, and cut contact. The screen faded and he turned back to the rest of them.
“Well, I’ve got to have that equipment,” said Mal obstinately.
Sorrel passed a weary hand across his swarthy brow. “Let me think about it,” he said desperately.
“Possibly,” said Peep, lowering his upraised hand and combing his whiskers modestly, “I could get your equipment for you.”
“You?” exploded Dirk. “I thought you were neutral.”
Peep cast his eyes down toward the floor. “That was my mistaken assumption,” he sighed. “During this last night and day, however, I have been wrestling with myself—internally,” he explained, “and I discovered to my sorrow that I am deeply in your debt.”
“In our debt?” echoed Margie. “Peep, you know that if anything, it’s the other way around.”
“No,” Peep shook his head stubbornly. “Was it not you in the first place who opened my eyes to the falseness of Neo-Taylorism? I have been enamored of a concept of universal good achieved through contemplation while ignoring the good that may be achieved on an‘individual level by positive action. Your drive, Mal—” he went on, turning to the young physicist “—is a good thing because it will enable more of your kind to enter the great community of races now existing in the Galaxy. It will promote tolerance
and friendship—and, in the end, I hope—love. So any small aid or assistance I can give you, I give willingly and with a whole heart.”
Peep’s speech had the effect of rendering everybody else in the room tongue-tied for the space of about a minute. Then Margie and Mal began to thank him at once; and Sorrel’s voice came battering in to interrupt.
“Hold it. Hold it!” he shouted. “Hang on a minute here. Before you start falling on each other’s necks, remember I’m not sold yet on how far we ought to trust this Alien.”
“‘You aren’t?” snapped Mal, turning on him. “Well, I’ll tell you—I am. And if you want me to go ahead and build the drive, we better get used right now to the fact that Peep’s as trustworthy as any of the rest of us.”
For a long moment, Sorrel stared, his hard dark face eye to eye with Mal’s pale, smooth-skinned one. Then the tension went out of him. He sank back into his chair, shrugging his shoulders.
“What can I do, hopper?” he murmured. “You’re writing the ticket.”
“Just so we’ve got that one point settled,” said Mal. He turned back to Peep. “What do you think you could do about getting those things out of the warehouse?”
Peep folded his hands together in front of him. “How big, may I inquire,” he said, “is this ventilation opening?”
Mal looked at Sorrel, who sat up.
“You could make it,” said the Underground man, looking narrowly at the Atakit. “It’s not too small for you. Of course there’s a grill and some baffle plates in the way . …” he trailed off speculatively.
“If they’re not made of too heavy metal—” said Peep almost shyly, “I imagine I could …”
“Judging by what I saw you do to that partition this morning,” replied Sorrel, “you could and then some. But just how are you going to get up to the warehouse?”
“If you are referring to the softness of the plateau soil—”
“That’s it,” said Sorrel.
“As to that,” said Peep, “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to equip my feet with some sort of plates, which, by spreading my weight over a larger total amount of surface area, should enable me, if not to progress with my customary ease, to—”