Colin Kapp - The Unorthodox Engineers

This was the first permanent foothold secured on Negrav.

‘Getting any ideas, Fritz?’ Jacko’s voice came over the headphones.

‘It strikes me that with the small size of the black hole, the chances of any particular attachment to the surface being eaten in any one orbit are negligible. If we were to suspend a stand-off platform from the surface and attach it by more than an adequate number of cables, we could give ourselves a relatively safe work stage. Furthermore, it would be more comfortable than this fly on the ceiling approach.’

‘Do you want me to organize a platform?’ asked Jacko.

‘Not yet, because the chances of cutting our way in seem quite as remote as Jim Fanning predicted. There has to be an easier method. Before I leave, I want to see what the explosive charge will do. But I don’t really have much hopes unless the stuff is a lot more friable than it seems.’

‘Right. When you get those swarf samples back we’ll have some idea of the answers anyway.’

Van Noon attached his explosive package to his first eyebolt, carefully levered free his precious magnet pack, then dropped down the cable from the second eyebolt to make the precarious rendezvous with the scudder. When it had stood off to a safe distance, he fired the explosive charge remotely.

The flash was impressive because of the highly reflective surface, but the destructive effect was negligible. A further close pass in the scudder revealed only the barest depression in the solid metal surface. A slight element of plastic flow had taken place, producing an extremely shallow crater, but there was no evidence that any material had actually been removed.

Van Noon returned thoughtfully to the ship. On the face of it his exploratory trip to the surface of Negrav had been a failure. They had learnt nothing they did not already know, and the few straws at which he had clutched had disappeared like vapour in a vacuum. The problem of building an observatory on Negrav appeared as intractable as ever. As the hours wore on, however, he developed the curious quizzical look at the corners of his eyes which signalled he was far from being beaten.

He spent hours viewing the surface of Negrav with the ship’s video facilities, imagining he could see the small black hole as it sped hungrily across the surface. The optical detection of such a small object from this distance was an impossibility, and his patient perusal of the scene began to worry Jacko Hine.

What’s the score, Fritz?’

‘One up to Negrav. Our turn to play.’

‘Are we still in the game?’

‘Very much so. Negrav’s going to have its observatory, and we’re going to build it.’

‘Crazy like a fox!’ said Jacko.

‘Am I? You remember my theme at the symposium. The ability of the unorthodox engineer is to do the job with anything he can lay his hands on. Well, Negrav’s a classic set-piece—the problem and the answer bound together in a single cosmological package.’

‘You need to be joking!’

‘Think about it. Ours is a problem of method. Cutting’s too slow, and blasting’s ineffective. But suppose I gave you a tool that’ll not only cut nickel iron without effort, but will also consume the detritus? Suppose this tool needs no external power supply, and the tool wear is so low that it even finishes up marginally larger than it started. And all for no transport costs. Couldn’t you do the job with that?’

‘Yes—but—,’ spluttered Jacko, and then realization dawned. ‘You’ve lost your mind!’

‘Our cutting tool’s right down there, Jacko. And for a bonus we get an eternally spinning workpiece to go with it. No lathe required. All we need to arrange is the traverse mechanism. With the black hole we can cut a toroidal cavity right around Negrav’s equator, and they can build a hundred observatories inside there if they like.’

‘Fritz,’ said Jacko, ‘this time you’ve surpassed even your own idiot genius. But there’s one tiny point you’ve overlooked. You can’t pick up a black hole and use it as a tool. You can’t hold it. You can’t even approach it. It’ll utterly absorb anything you can fling at it.’

‘All that’s accepted,’ said Van Noon. ‘But when you’ve a job to do and there’s no conceivable way to do it, there’s only one approach left open to you. You have to exercise some good old human ingenuity.’

The work-vessel took them back to the STA base on New Australia. This was the nearest point on the Rim where Fritz could find anything like the computer capacity he needed. He would have preferred to have gone back to Chronos, but was unwilling to waste the time whilst his enthusiasm was still at fever pitch. Once they had become convinced that Van Noon was intent on going through with the scheme, his team, too, had become infected with his eagerness, and their deliberations had considerably refined and improved Fritz’s initial ideas.

The STA technicians on New Australia listened to Van Noon’s proposals with critical alarm, and sent a message by subspace radio to Terra for confirmation that the project could proceed. In the meantime, Fritz got on with his computations.

The message which came back from Terra read :

’If van Noon wants to stick out his fool neck on a scheme like that, don’t stop him. We might get lucky!

Belling, Commanding engineering reserve .’

Van Noon could almost picture the gleam in the colonel’s eye as he penned the message. Nevertheless, he received all the help he needed from the STA staff on New Australia. With his precious calculations complete, and sufficient supplies for the job, he returned with his team to the keep-station around Negrav to begin the careful observations on which the success of the operation would depend. It was fairly obvious that the rest of the ship’s crew regarded the project as insane. There were moments when Van Noon was not too sure himself. Nevertheless, the future of unorthodox engineering was riding on his back, and having declared his intention, he was unable to retract.

Above all else, timing was critical. The accurate gauging of Negrav’s rotation was aided considerably by a huge dyespot which Jacko managed to produce on the surface. This was achieved in the course of a hair-raising approach to the asteroid in a scudder which was carefully manoeuvred while the dye was sprayed from pressurized canisters. With the spot in place, the rotational speed of Negrav was determined with an accuracy previously unobtainable, and Van Noon’s calculations were complete.

By far the hardest part of the operation was to give the order to proceed. Not only were the dangers considerable, but the timing needed to be immaculate and the positional accuracies held within very small limits. Additionally, there were still a few unknowns which added not only to the hazards but also to the virtual certainty of unorthodox engineering becoming a standard joke throughout the Service if things went wrong.

Having rehearsed and re-rehearsed his team, Van Noon finally reached the critical point, and gave the fateful order. Once the first scudder had left the ship and headed towards the surface, there was no turning back. It was only when he had passed this point that he began to appreciate the immensity of the forces with which he played.

Once started, there was no leisure for further thought. Jacko Hine went down with the first scudder and attached his package as specified. The second scudder was on its way before he returned. The third and most critical package, Van Noon took down himself.

There being no natural features on the surface of Negrav, he could only judge his position from the radioed instructions from observers on the ship and the relative movement of Jacko’s dye marker. This made easy sense during the long space descent but when the orb of the asteroid began to dominate the sky he lost orientation. In sudden panic he had the scudder halted until he could recalculate his bearings. It was this hesitation that probably saved his life.