Hal Clement: Answer

ALVAN WREN, POISED beside a transparent port in the side of the service rocket, gazed out with considerable interest. The object of his attention, hanging a few miles away and slowly drifting closer, was not too imposing at first glance; merely a metal globe gleaming in the sunlight, the reflection from its surface softened by a second, concentric, semitransparent envelope. At this distance it did not even look very large; there was no indication that more than seventy years of time and two hundred million dollars in effort had already been expended upon that inner globe, although it was still far from completion. It had absorbed in that time, on an average, almost a quarter of the yearly income from a gigantic research “sinking fund” set up by contributions from every institution of learning on Earth; and — unlike most research projects so early in their careers — had already shown a sizable profit.

More detail began to show on both spheres, as the rocket eased closer. The outer envelope lost its appearance of translucent haze and showed itself to be a silver lacework — a metallic mesh screen surrounding the more solid core. Wren knew its purpose was to shield the delicate circuits within from interference when Sol spouted forth his streams of electrons; it was all he did know about the structure, for Alvan Wren had a very poor grounding in the physical sciences. He was a psychologist, with enough letters after his name to shout down anyone who decried his intelligence, but the language of volts and amperes, ergs and dynes was strange to him.

The pilot of the rocket was not acquainted with his passenger, and his remarks were not particularly helpful.

“We ought to make contact in about fifteen minutes,” he said. “We’re not supposed to use rockets close to the machine, and we have to brake down to safe contact speed at least twenty miles away.

That’s why the final approach takes so long. They don’t like anything they can’t account for in the neighborhood — and that goes for stray electrons and molecules, as well as atomic converters.”

“What is their objection to rocket blasts, provided they’re not fired directly at the station?” asked Wren. “What influence could a jet of gas even one mile away possibly have on their machinery?”

“None, directly; but gases diffuse, and some of the elements in rocket fuel are easily ionized in sunlight. The boys in there claim that the firing of a rocket blast five miles from the outer sphere will disturb some of their circuits, when the molecules which happen to leak inside their screen are ionized there. It sounds a little farfetched to me, but that’s not my line. I do know that that machine is inoperative nearly half the time from causes which are not precisely known, but which must be of the same order of magnitude as the one I mentioned. I’m careful of my jets around here, because they’d have my job if I caused them trouble more than once; and the board would slap a ‘lack of proficiency’ on my dismissal papers, so I’d have a nasty time finding a new one.”

“If you make this trip regularly, I don’t suppose you have much difficulty with this rather tricky glide.”

“I’m used to it. I’ve been making this supply run every week for nearly three years, with special flights between times. This ship carries everything they need at the station, and also the bright boys from home who have special problems to work, and don’t believe the machine can handle them without their personal presence.” The pilot looked sideways at Wren. “Most of those fellows were able to tell me things I didn’t know about the computer. You’re the first sightseer I’ve ever carried. I didn’t think the universities encouraged them. Are you a journalist?”

Wren smiled. “I don’t blame you for getting some such idea. I’ll admit I don’t know the first thing about electronic computers; the station out here is only a name to me. But I have a problem. I don’t know whether it can be stated in terms that can be treated here or now; I know very little math; but I decided to come out for a conference with the operators, to find out whether or not I could be helped.”

He nodded at the great expanse of silver mesh that now filled almost the entire view area of the port.

“Aren’t we getting pretty close?”

The pilot nodded silently and returned to his seat, curbing his curiosity for the time being. Actually, there was little he could do during the “landing” since he was forbidden to use power; but he felt safer at the controls while the coppery hull of his ship drifted into the resilient metal network of the static shield and was seized by metal grapples — grapples operated by specially designed electric motors so matched and paired that the inevitable magnetic, fields accompanying their operation were indetectable at more than a few feet. The grapple cables tightened, and the swaying of the ship ceased gradually as its kinetic energy was taken up by the resilient mesh. The pilot locked his controls, and rose with a grin.

“They tell me,” he said, “that when the screen was first built, about forty years ago, some bright boy decided that the supply rocket would have to be very carefully insulated in order not to interfere with the potential equilibrium of the outer sphere; so they coated the hull of the ship that was being used then with aluminum hydroxide, I think — something very thin, anyway, but a good insulator; and they made an approach that way while a problem was being run.” He grinned more broadly. “I don’t know the exact capacity of the condenser thus formed, but there’s an operator still out here whose favorite cuss word is the name of that board member. They had to replace several thousand tubes, I guess. Now they look on the supply ship as a necessary evil, and suspend operations while we come in and the accumulated charge on the screen drains into our hull.”

“How do I get in to the main part?” interrupted Wren, whose interest in historical anecdotes was not of a high order.

“There’s a hollow shaft opening outside the web not far from us. There will be men out in a few moments to unload the ship, and they’ll show you the way. You’ll have to wear a spacesuit; I’ll show you how to get into it, if you’ll come along.” He led the way from the control room to a smaller chamber between it and the cargo compartments, and in a short time had the psychologist arrayed in one of the bulky but flexible garments which men must wear to venture outside the metal bubbles which bear them so far from their own element. The pilot donned one also, and then led the way through the main airlock.

Wren had become more or less used to weightlessness on the flight to the station, but its sudden conjunction with so much open space unnerved him for a moment, and he clutched at the arm of the figure drifting beside him. The pilot, understanding, steadied his companion, and after a moment they were able to push themselves from the lip of the airlock toward the end of the metal tube whose mouth was flush with the screen, and some thirty yards away from them. As they approached the opening, four spacesuited men appeared in it, saw them, and waited to catch their flying forms. Wren found himself set “down” within reach of a heavy strand of silver cable, which he grasped in response to the gesture of one of the men — their suit radios were not on the standard frequency, and as he learned later, were not even turned on — while the pilot promptly leaped back across the gap to his ship and disappeared inside.

A moment later a large door aft of the airlock which he and Wren had used slid open, and the four men of the station leaped for it. It was not an airlock; for convenience of this particular station, the supplies were packed in airtight containers and the storage holds were opened directly to the void for unloading. The psychologist watched with interest as one of the men came gliding back to the shaft with the end of a rope in his gauntleted hands. He braced himself beside Wren and began pulling; and a seemingly endless chain of sealed metal boxes began to trail from the open cargo door. The first of them was accompanied by another of the men, who took the rope’s end from the hands of the first and disappeared down the shaft with it. After a brief pause, the procession of containers began to follow him down the metal tube.