Industrial Revolution Page 4

helpless anger on her account. He wasn't sure why. Whatwas she to him? He'd probably never see her again. A hell of anattractive target, to be sure; and after so much celibacy he washighly vulnerable; but did she really matter?

  He turned his back on Warburton and his eyes on her--a five thousandper cent improvement--and diverted her from her embarrassment byasking, "Are you from Colorado, then, Miss Ziska?"

  "Oh, no. Toronto."

  "How'd you happen to join the Navy, if I may make so bold?"

  "Gosh, that's hard to say. But I guess mostly I felt so crowded athome. So, pigeonholed. The world seemed to be nothing but neat littlepigeonholes."

  "Uh-huh. Same here. I was also a square pigeon in a round hole." Shelaughed. "Luckily," he added, "Space is too big for compartments."

  Her agreement lacked vigor. The Navy must have been a disappointmentto her. But she couldn't very well say so in front of her shipmates.

  Hm-m-m ... if she could be gotten away from them--"How long will yoube here?" he inquired. His pulse thuttered.

  "We haven't been told," she said.

  "Some work must be done on the missile launchers," Warburton said."That's best carried out here, where extra facilities are available ifwe need them. Not that I expect we will." He paused. "I hope we won'tinterfere with your own operations."

  "Far from it." Blades beamed at Ellen. "Or, more accurately, this kindof interference I don't mind in the least."

  She blushed and her eyelids fluttered. Not that she was a fluffhead,he realized. But to avoid incidents, Navy regulations enforced aninhuman correctness between personnel of opposite sexes. After weeksin the black, meeting a man who could pay a compliment without riskingcourt-martial must be like a shot of adrenalin. Better and better!

  "Are you sure?" Warburton persisted. "For instance, won't we be in theway when the next ship comes from Jupiter?"

  "She'll approach the opposite end of the asteroid," Blades said."Won't stay long, either."

  "How long?"

  "One watch, so the crew can relax a bit among those of us who're offduty. It'd be a trifle longer if we didn't happen to have an empty bagat the moment. But never very long. Even running under thrust thewhole distance, Jupe's a good ways off. They've no time to waste."

  "When is the next ship due?"

  "The _Pallas Castle_ is expected in the second watch from now."

  "Second watch. I see." Warburton stalked on with a brooding expressionon his Puritan face.

  * * * * *

  Blades might have speculated about that, but someone asked him why theStation depended on spin for weight. Why not put in an internal fieldgenerator, like a ship? Blades explained patiently that an Emett largeenough to produce uniform pull through a volume as big as the Swordwas rather expensive. "Eventually, when we're a few megabucks ahead ofthe game--"

  "Do you really expect to become rich?" Ellen asked. Her tone was awed.No Earthsider had that chance any more, except for the greatcorporations. "_Individually_ rich?"

  "We can't fail to. I tell you, this is a frontier like nothing sincethe Conquistadores. We could very easily have been wiped out in thefirst couple of years--financially or physically--by any of a thousandaccidents. But now we're too far along for that. We've got it made,Jimmy and I."

  "What will you do with your wealth?"

  "Live like an old-time sultan," Blades grinned. Then, because it wastrue as well as because he wanted to shine in her eyes: "Mostly,though, we'll go on to new things. There's so much that needs to bedone. Not simply more asteroid mines. We need farms; timber; parks;passenger and cargo liners; every sort of machine. I'd like to trygetting at some of that water frozen in the Saturnian System.Altogether, I see no end to the jobs. It's no good our depending onEarth for anything. Too expensive, too chancy. The Belt has to be madecompletely self-sufficient."

  "With a nice rakeoff for Sword Enterprises," Gilbertson scoffed.

  "Why, sure. Aren't we entitled to some return?"

  "Yes. But not so out of proportion as the Belt companies seem toexpect. They're only using natural resources that rightly belong tothe people, and the accumulated skills and wealth of an entiresociety."

  "Huh! The People didn't do anything with the Sword. Jimmy and I andour boys did. No Society was around here grubbing nickel-iron andriding out gravel storms; we were."

  "Let's leave politics alone," Warburton snapped. But it was mostlyEllen's look of distress which shut Blades up.

  To everybody's relief, they reached Central Control about then. It wasa complex of domes and rooms, crammed with more equipment than Bladescould put a name to. Computers were in Chung's line, not his. Hewasn't able to answer all of Warburton's disconcertingly sharpquestions.

  But in a general way he could. Whirling through vacuum with a load offrail humans and intricate artifacts, the Sword must be at oncemachine, ecology, and unified organism. Everything had to mesh. Afailure in the thermodynamic balance, a miscalculation in supplyinventory, a few mirrors perturbed out of proper orbit, might spellRagnarok. The chemical plant's purifications and syntheses werealready a network too large for the human mind to grasp as a whole,and it was still growing. Even where men could have taken charge,automation was cheaper, more reliable, less risky of lives. Thecomputer system housed in Central Control was not only the brain, butthe nerves and heart of the Sword.

  "Entirely cryotronic, eh?" Warburton commented. "That seems to be theusual practice at the Stations. Why?"

  "The least expensive type for us," Blades answered. "There's noproblem in maintaining liquid helium here."

  Warburton's gaze was peculiarly intense. "Cryotronic systems arevulnerable to magnetic and radiation disturbances."

  "Uh-huh. That's one reason we don't have a nuclear power plant. Thisfar from the sun, we don't get enough emission to worry about. Theasteroid's mass screens out what little may arrive. I know the TIMMsystem is used on ships; but if nothing else, the initial cost is morethan we want to pay."

  "What's TIMM?" inquired the _Altair's_ chaplain.

  "Thermally Integrated Micro-Miniaturized," Ellen said crisply."Essentially, ultraminiaturized ceramic-to-metal-seal vacuum tubesrunning off thermionic generators. They're immune to gamma ray andmagnetic pulses, easily shielded against particule radiation, andeconomical of power." She grinned. "Don't tell me there's nothingabout them in Leviticus, Padre!"

  "Very fine for a ship's autopilot," Blades agreed. "But as I said, weneedn't worry about rad or mag units here, we don't mind sprawling abit, and as for thermal efficiency, we want to waste some heat. Itgoes to maintain internal temperature."

  "In other words, efficiency depends on what you need to effish," Ellenbantered. She grew grave once more and studied him for a while beforeshe mused, "The same person who swung a pick, a couple of years ago,now deals with something as marvelous as this...." He forgot aboutworrying.

  * * * * *

  But he remembered later, when the gig had left and Chung called him tohis office. Avis came too, by request. As she entered, she asked why.

  "You were visiting your folks Earthside last year," Chung said."Nobody else in the Station has been back as recently as that."

  "What can I tell you?"

  "I'm not sure. Background, perhaps. The feel of the place. We don'treally know, out in the Belt, what's going on there. The beamcast newsis hardly a trickle. Besides, you have more common sense in your leftlittle toe than that big mick yonder has on his entire copperplatedhead."

  They seated themselves in the cobwebby low-gee chairs around Chung'sdesk. Blades took out his pipe and filled the bowl with his tobaccoration for today. Wouldn't it be great, he thought dreamily, if thisold briar turned out to be an Aladdin's lamp, and the smoke condensedinto a blonde she-Canadian--?

  "Wake up, will you?" Chung barked.

  "Huh?" Blades started. "Oh. Sure. What's the matter? You look like afish on Friday."

  "Maybe with reason. Did you notice anything unusual with that party
you were escorting?"

  "Yes, indeed."

  "What?"

  "About one hundred seventy-five centimeters tall, yellow hair, blueeyes, and some of the smoothest fourth-order curves I ever--"

  "Mike, stop that!" Avis sounded appalled. "This is serious."

  "I agree. She'll be leaving in a few more watches."

  The girl