Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon

Gersten bit his lip. “Do you mean all of that? I never know what’s in your mind.”

Hawks’ eyebrows rose. His lips twitched. “That’s a strange thing for you to say to me.”

Gersten shook his head in annoyance. “I don’t know what you mean by that, either. Hawks—” He brought his glance up. “This is the best job I ever had. It’s the most important job I ever had. I’m almost five years younger than you are. Whether I know this trade as well as you do is something else again. But assuming I do, what chance do you think I have of being where you are now, five years from now?”

Hawks frowned. “Well, I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “That depends, of course. Five years ago, I was beginning to fumble around the edges of this thing—” He nodded toward the equipment around them. “It happened to be something with possible military applications, so it got quite a boost. If it had been something else, it might not be as far along toward practicality. But that’s no criterion. What people will buy isn’t necessarily what’s best… if anything’s best.” He shrugged. “I just don’t know, Ted. If you’ve got some basically new idea you’re working out in your spare time, the way I was when I was with RCA, you might go pretty near anywhere with it.” He shrugged again. “That would be pretty much up to you.”

Gersten frowned at him. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry if I let myself get into a swivet over nothing, just now.” He smiled a quick, uncertain apology that disappeared. “I imagine you’ve got other things to think about besides cranky engineers. But—” He seemed to gather himself up. “When I enlisted in the Army during the war,” he said bluntly, “I applied for Officer Candidate’s School. I was interviewed by a temporary lieutenant who’d been a buck sergeant since the days when they were civilizing ’em with a Krag underneath the starry flag. He interviewed me, he filled in all the proper questionnaire spaces, and then he turned the form over, licked the end of his pencil again, and wrote down, ‘This candate seems to have language difficulties. This language difficulties would probly keep him from exercising proper command of troops.’ Then he turned the form around, so I could read the confidential appraisal he’d made. And that was that.” Gersten watched Hawks’ face very carefully. “What do you think of that?”

Hawks blinked. “What did the Army do with you, after that?”

“They sent me to electronics school at Fort Monmouth.”

“So you’re not sure you’d be here today, if it wasn’t for that?”

Gersten frowned. “I suppose so,” he said finally. “It’s not the way I’ve looked at it.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, Ted, but I would have made a terrible career officer in the Navy. I don’t suppose being in the Army would have improved matters.” He grimaced suddenly. “And let me worry about Sam Latourette.” Then he looked apologetically at Gersten. “Maybe after we’ve gotten over the hump with this project, we can get to know each other better.”

Gersten said nothing. He looked at Hawks as if he could not decide what expression to put on his face. Then he half shrugged and said, “What I wanted to speak to you about, earlier, was this business with the signal amplifier array. Now, it seems to me that if we—”

They walked away together, talking shop.

The day after the elapsed time was brought up to seven minutes, forty-nine seconds, the transmitter had to be shut down because the angle of shoot would have included too much of the Earth’s ionosphere. The maintenance crews set to work on their periodic rebuilding schedule. Hawks worked with them.

On the day they were able to shoot again, Barker came into the laboratory at the proper time.

“You look thinner,” Hawks said.

“You don’t look so hot yourself.”

On the day that the elapsed time was brought to eight minutes, thirty-one seconds, Benton Cobey called Hawks into his office for a conference.

Hawks came in, wearing a clean smock, looking carefully at the men around the conference table across the room from Cobey’s desk. Cobey stood up from his chair at the head of the table.

“Dr. Hawks, you know Carl Reed, our Comptroller,” he said, indicating the reserved, balding, raw-boned man who sat beside him, his ploughman’s hands lying relaxed atop each other on the sheaf of bookkeeping work sheets he had brought with him.

“How do you do?” Hawks said.

“Well, thank you. And you?”

“And this is Commander Hodge, of course,” Cobey said shortly, nodding toward the liaison naval officer who sat on his other side, his cap off and resting on the table, reflected in the glowing wood.

“Of course,” Hawks said with a faint smile which Hedge answered in kind. He walked to the end of the table opposite Cobey and sat down. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

Cobey glanced aside at Reed. “We might as well get right to it,” he said.

Reed nodded. He leaned slightly forward, his fingertips advancing the work sheets in Hawks’ direction.

“These are the figures, here, on your laboratory equipment requisitions,” he said.

Hawks nodded.

“Both for the original installation, and replacements over the past fiscal year.”

Hawks nodded again. He looked toward Cobey, who was sitting with his hands tented, his elbows on the table and his thumbs under his chin, looking over his fingertips down at the work sheets. Hawks glanced aside at Hedge, who was running the side of his right index finger up and down one cheek, his ice-blue eyes apparently vacant, their corners crinkled into habitual crows’ feet.

“Dr. Hawks,” Reed said, “in looking over these, it first occurred to me that we ought to be looking for ways to manage this business more economically, if possible. And then it seems to me that we have done so.”

Hawks looked at Reed.

Reed said, “Now, I’ve explained my idea to Mr. Cobey, and he agrees with me that it ought to be presented to you.”

Cobey’s mouth twitched.

“And so,” Reed finished, “we checked with Commander Hedge on whether the Navy would be willing to consider a change in operating procedure, provided it didn’t interfere with efficiency in any important way.”

Hedge said, still without seeming to devote any great part of his attention, “We don’t mind saving money. Especially when we’re not free to have the appropriation itemized at congressional hearings.”

Hawks nodded.

No one said anything, and then Cobey broke out, “Well, are you willing to listen, Hawks?”

Hawks said, “Of course.” He looked around. “I’m sorry — I had no idea we were all waiting for me.” He looked at Reed. “Go ahead, please.”

“Well,” Reed said, looking down at his figures, “it occurs to me that a lot of this equipment is just more of the same. I mean by that, here’s an item for one hundred voltage dividers of a single type. And here’s another one for—”

“Yes. Well, a good deal of our equipment consists of one particular component or another, linked into a series of similar components.” Hawks’ head was cocked to one side, and his eyes were watchful. “We have to handle a great many basically similar operations simultaneously. There was no time to design components with the capacity to carry out these functions. We had to use existing electronic designs and make up for their comparatively low capacity by using a great many of them.” He paused for a moment. “It takes a thousand ants to carry away a cupful of sugar,” he said at last.

“That’s very apt, Hawks,” Cobey said.

“I was trying to explain—”

“Go ahead, Reed.”

“Well—” Reed leaned forward earnestly. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of ogre, Dr. Hawks. But, let’s face it, there’s a lot of money tied up in that equipment, and as far as I can see, there’s no reason why, if we’ve got a duplicating machine in the first place, we can’t just—” he shrugged — “run off as many copies as we need. I can’t see why they have to be built in our manufacturing division, or purchased from outside suppliers. Now, we’ve got a situation here where I can’t even calculate a fixed operating cost. And—”