Мюррей Лейнстер - Space Tug

Then Mike grew impassioned. There was a wooden mockup of a space ship in the Shed, he said. It was an absolutely accurate replica, in wood, of the ships 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 space 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?"

He turned away as the Chief whooped with glee. He hurried back to Major Holt as the Chief and Haney began zestfully to manhandle Mike in celebration of his genius.

The major held up his hand as Joe entered. He was using the desk phone. Joe waited. When he hung up, Joe reported. The major seemed unsurprised.

"Yes, I had Washington on the wire," he said detachedly. "I talked to a personal friend who's a three–star general. There will be action started at the Pentagon. When you came in I was arranging with the largest producers of powder–metallurgy products in the country to send their best men here by plane. They will start at once. Now I have to get in touch with some other people."

Joe gaped at him. The major moved impatiently, waiting for Joe to leave. Joe gulped. "Excuse me, sir, but—my father didn't say it was certain. He just thinks it can be made to work. He's not sure."

"I didn't even wait for that, something has to turn up to take care of this situation!" said the Major with asperity. "It has to! This particular scheme may not work, but if it doesn't, something will come out of the work on it! You should look at a twenty–five cent piece occasionally, Joe!"

He moved impatiently, and Joe went out. Sally was smiling in the outer office. There were whoopings in the corridor beyond. The Chief and Haney were celebrating Mike's brainstorm with salutary indignity, because if they didn't make a joke of it he might cry with joy.

"Things look better?"

"They do," said Joe. "If it only works…."

Then he hunted in his pocket. He found a quarter and examined it curiously. On one side he found nothing the major could have referred to. On the other side, though, just by George Washington's chin―

He put the quarter away and took Sally's arm.

"It'll be all right," he said slowly.

But there were times when it seemed in doubt. Joe's father arrived by plane at sunset of that same day, and he and three men from the Kenmore Precision Tool Company instantly closeted themselves with Mike in Major Holt's quarters. The powder metallurgy men turned up an hour later, and a three–star general from Washington. They joined the highly technical discussion.

Joe waited around outside, feeling left out of things. He sat on the porch with Sally while the moon rose over the desert and stars shone down. Inside, matters of high importance were being battled over with the informality and heat with which practical men get things settled. But Joe wasn't in on it. He said annoyedly, "You'd think my father'd have something to say to me, in all this mess! After all, I have been—well, I have been places! But all he said was, 'How are you, Son? Where's this Mike you talked about?'"

Sally said calmly, "I know just how you feel. You've made me feel that way." She looked up at the moon. "I thought about you all the time you were gone, and I—prayed for you, Joe. And now you're back and not even busy! But you don't― It would be nice for you to think about me for a while!"

"I am thinking about you!" said Joe indignantly.

"Now what," said Sally interestedly, "in the world could you be thinking about me?"

He wanted to scowl at her. But he grinned instead.

Time passed. Hours, then days. Things began to happen. Trucks appeared, loaded down with sacks of white powder. The powder was very messily mixed with water and smeared lavishly over the now waterproofed wooden mockup of a space ship. It came off again in sections of white plaster, which were numbered and set to dry in warm chambers that were constructed with almost magical speed. More trucks arrived, bearing such diverse objects as loads of steel turnings, a regenerative helium–cooling plant from a gaswell—it could cool metal down to the point where it crumbled to impalpable powder at a blow—and assorted fuel tanks, dynamos, and electronic machinery.

Ten days after Mike's first proposal of concreted steel as a material for space ship construction, the parts of the first casting of the mockup were assembled. They were a mold for the hull of a space ship. There were more plaster sections for a second mold ready to be dried out now, but meanwhile vehicles like concrete mixers mixed turnings and filings and powder in vast quantities and poured the dry mass here and there in the first completed mold. Then men began to wrap the gigantic object with iron wire. Presently that iron wire glowed slightly, and the whole huge mold grew hotter and hotter and hotter. And after a time it was allowed to cool.