Space Tug Part 14

"Sally," said Mike bitterly, "I'm a bigger fool than I look. I thought the Chief was going to tell you what happened when I landed. I--I floated down in a village over there in India, and those crazy savages'd never seen a parachute, and they began to yell and make gestures, and first thing I knew they had a sort of litter and were piling me in it, and throwing flowers all over me, and there was a procession----"

Sally listened blankly. Mike told the tale of his shame with the very quintessence of bitter resentment. When he got to his installation in a red-painted mud temple, and the reverent and forcible removal of his clothes so he could be greased with b.u.t.ter, Sally's lips began to twitch. At the picture of Mike in a red loincloth, squirming furiously while brown-skinned admirers zestfully sang his praises, howling his rage while they celebrated some sort of pious festival in honor of his arrival, Sally broke down and laughed helplessly.

Mike stared at her, aghast. He felt that he'd hated the Chief when he thought the Chief was going to tell the tale on him as a joke. He'd told it on himself as a penance, in the place of the blow he'd given the Chief and which the Chief wouldn't return. To Mike it was still tragedy.

It was still an outrage to his dignity. But Sally was laughing. She rocked back and forth next to Joe, helpless with mirth.

"Oh, Mike!" she gasped. "It's beautiful! They must have been saying such lovely, respectful things, while you were calling them names and wanting to kill them! They'd have been bragging to each other about how you were--visiting them because they'd been such good people, and--this was the reward of well-spent lives, and you--you----"

She leaned against Joe and shook. The car went on. The Chief chuckled.

Haney grinned. Joe watched Mike as this new aspect of his disgrace got into his consciousness. It hadn't occurred to Mike, before, that anybody but himself had been ridiculous. It hadn't occurred to him, until he lost his temper, that Haney and the Chief would ride him mercilessly among themselves, but would not dream of letting anybody outside the gang do so.

Presently Mike managed to grin a little. It was a twisty grin, and not altogether mirthful.

"Yeah," he said wrily. "I see it. They were crazy too. I should've had more sense than to get mad." Then his grin grew a trifle twistier. "I didn't tell you that the thing that made me maddest was when they wanted to put earrings on me. I grabbed a club then and--uh--persuaded them I didn't like the idea."

Sally chortled. The picture of the small, truculent Mike in frenzied revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry....

Mike turned to the two big men and shoved at them imperiously.

"Move over!" he growled. "If you two big lummoxes had dropped in on those crazy goofs instead of me, they'd've thought you were elephants and set you to work hauling logs!"

He squirmed to a seat between them. He still looked ashamed, but it was shame of a different sort. Now he looked as if he wished he hadn't mistrusted his friends for even a moment. And he included Sally.

"Anyhow," he said suddenly in a different tone, "maybe it did do some good for me to get all worked up! I got kind of frantic. I figured somebody'd made a fool of me, and I was going to put something over on you."

"Mike!" said Sally reproachfully.

"Not like you think, Sally," said Mike, grinning a little. "I made up my mind to beat these lummoxes at their own game. I asked Joe about my brainstorm in the plane. He didn't know what I was driving at, but he said what I hoped was so. So I'm telling you--and," he added fiercely, "if it's any good everybody gets credit for it, because all of us four--even two big apes who try kidding--are responsible for it!"

He glared at them. Joe asked. "What is it, Mike?"

"I think," said Mike, "I think I've got a trick to make s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps quicker than anybody ever dreamed of. Joe says you can make a weld with powder metallurgy. And I think we can use that trick to make one-piece s.h.i.+ps--lighter and stronger and tighter--and fast enough to make your head swim! And you guys are in on it!"

The black car braked by the entrance to the Security offices outside the Shed. It looked completely deserted. There was only a skeleton force here since the Platform had been launched three months before. There was almost n.o.body to be seen, but Mike pressed his lips pugnaciously together as they got out of the car and went inside.

The four of them, with Sally, went along the empty corridors to the major's office. He was waiting for them. He shook hands all around. But it was not possible for Major Holt to give an impression of cordiality.

"I'm very glad to see all of you back," he said curtly. "It didn't look like you'd make it. Joe, you will be able to reach your father by long-distance telephone as soon as you finish here. I--ah--thought it would not be indiscreet to tell him you had landed safely, though I did ask him to keep the fact to himself."

"Thank you, sir," said Joe.

"You answered most of the questions you needed to answer on the plane,"

added the major, grimly, "and now you may want to ask some. You know there is no s.h.i.+p for you. You know that the enemies of the Platform copied our rocket fuel. You know they've made rockets with it. You've met them! And Intelligence says they're building a fleet of s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps--not for s.p.a.ce exploration, but simply to smash the Platform and get set for an ultimatum to the United States to backwater or be bombarded from s.p.a.ce."

Mike said crisply: "How long before they can do it?"

Major Holt turned uncordial eyes upon him. "It's anybody's guess. Why?"

"We've been working something out," said Mike, firmly but in part untruthfully. He stood st.u.r.dily before the major's desk, which he barely topped. "The four of us have been working it out. Joe says they've done powder metallurgy welds, back at his father's plant. Joe and Haney and the Chief and me, we've been working out an idea."

Major Holt waited. His hands moved nervously on his desk. Joe looked at Mike. Haney and the Chief regarded him warily. The Chief c.o.c.ked his head on one side.

"It'll take a minute to get it across," said Mike. "You have to think of concrete first. When you want to make a cubic yard of concrete, you take a cubic yard of gravel. Then you add some sand--just enough to fill in the cracks between the gravel. Then you put in some cement. It goes in the cracks between the grains of sand. A little bit of cement makes a lot of concrete. See?"

Major Holt frowned. But he knew these four. "I see, but I don't understand."

"You can weld metals together with powder-metallurgy powder at less than red heat. You can take steel filings for sand and steel turnings for gravel and powdered steel for cement--"

Joe jolted erect. He looked startledly at Haney and the Chief. And Haney's mouth was dropping open. A great, dreamy light seemed to be bursting upon him. The Chief regarded Mike with very bright eyes. And Mike st.u.r.dily, forcefully, coldly, made a sort of speech in his small and brittle voice.

Things could be made of solid steel, he said sharply, without rolling or milling or die-casting the metal, and without riveting or arc-welding the parts together. The trick was powder metallurgy. Very finely powdered metal, packed tightly and heated to a relatively low temperature--"sintered" is the word--becomes a solid ma.s.s. Even alloys can be made by mixing powdered metals. The process had been used only for small objects, but--there was the a.n.a.logy to concrete. A very little powder could weld much metal, in the form of turnings and smaller bits.

And the result would be solid steel!

Then Mike grew impa.s.sioned. There was a wooden mockup of a s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p in the Shed, he said. It was an absolutely accurate replica, in wood, of the s.h.i.+ps that had been destroyed. But one could take castings of it, and use them for molds, and fill them with powder and filings and turnings, and heat them not even red-hot and there would be steel hulls in one piece. Solid steel hulls! Needing no riveting nor anything else--and one could do it fast! While the first hull was fitting out a second could be molded----

The Chief roared: "You fool little runt!" he bellowed. "Tryin' to give us credit for that! You got more sense than any of us! You worked that out in your own head----"

Haney rubbed his hands together. He said softly, "I like that! I do like that!"

Major Holt turned his eyes to Joe. "What's your opinion?"

"I think it's the sort of thing, sir, that a professional engineer would say was a good idea but not practical. He'd mean it would be a lot of trouble to get working. But I'd like to ask my father. They have done powder welding at the plant back home, sir."

Major Holt nodded. "Call your father. If it looks promising, I'll pull what wires I can."

Joe went out, with the others. Mike was sweating. All unconsciously, he twisted his hands one within the other. He had had many humiliations because he was small, but lately he had humiliated himself by not believing in his friends. Now he needed desperately to do something that would reflect credit on them as well as himself.

Joe made the phone call. As he closed the door of the booth, he heard the Chief kidding Mike blandly.

"Hey, Einstein," said the Chief. "How about putting that brain of yours to work on a faster-than-light drive?"

But then he began to struggle with the long distance operator. It took minutes to get the plant, and then it took time to get to the point, because his father insisted on asking anxiously how he was and if he was hurt in any way. Personal stuff. But Joe finally managed to explain that this call dealt with the desperate need to do something about a s.p.a.ce fleet.

His father said grimly, "Yes. The situation doesn't look too good right now, Joe."

"Try this on for size, sir," said Joe. He outlined Mike's scheme. His father interrupted only to ask crisp questions about the mockup of the tender, already in existence though made of wood. Then he said, "Go on, son!"

Joe finished. He heard his father speaking to someone away from the phone. Questions and answers, and then orders. His father spoke to him direct.

"It looks promising, Joe," said his father. "Right here at the plant we've got the gang that can do it if anybody can. I'm getting a plane and coming out there, fast! Get Major Holt to clear things for me. This is no time for red tape! If he has trouble, I'll pull some wires myself!"

"Then I can tell Mike it's good stuff?"

"It's not good stuff," said his father. "There are about forty-seven things wrong with it at first glance, but I know how to take care of one or two, and we'll lick the rest. You tell your friend Mike I want to shake him by the hand. I hope to do it tonight!"

He hung up, and Joe went out of the phone booth. Mike looked at him with yearning eyes. Joe lied a little, because Mike rated it.

"My father's on the way here to help make it work," he told Mike. Then he added untruthfully: "He said he thought he knew all the big men in his line, and where've you been that he hasn't heard of you?"