Henry Kuttner - Gallegher Plus

Gallegher squinted thoughtfully. “How could Smeith expect to put up a building there, then?”

“The new owner possesses the property from fifty feet above soil down to the center of the earth. Savvy? A big eighty-story building—most of it underground. It’s been done before, but not against political pull. If Smeith fails to fulfill his contract, the job goes to Ajax—and Ajax is hand-in-glove with that alderman.”

“Yeah. Max Cuff,” Gallegher said. “I’ve met the lug. Still—what’s this statute you mentioned?”

“An old one, pretty much obsolete, but still on the books. It’s legal. I checked. You can’t interfere with downtown traffic, or upset the stagger system of transport.”

“Well?”

“If you dig a hole for an eighty-story building,” Arnie said, “you get a lot of dirt and rock. How can you haul it away without upsetting traffic? I didn’t try to figure out how many tons have to be removed.”

“I see,” Gallegher said softly.

“So there it is, on a platinum platter. Smeith took the contract. Now he’s stymied. He can’t get rid of the dirt he’ll be excavating, and pretty soon Ajax will take over and wangle a permit to truck out the material.”

“How—a Smeith can’t?”

“Remember the alderman? Well, a few weeks ago some of the streets downtown were blocked off, for repairs. Traffic was rerouted—right by that building site. It’s been siphoned off there, and it’s so crowded that dirt trucks would tangle up the whole business. Of course it’s temporary”—Arnie laughed shortly—“temporary until Smeith is forced out. Then the traffic will be rerouted again, and Ajax can wangle their permit.”

“Oh,” Gallegher looked over his shoulder at the machine. “There may be a way—”

The door buzzer rang. Narcissus made a gesture of inquiry.

Gallegher said, “Do me another favor, Arnie. I want to get Smeith down here to my lab, quick.”

“All right, vise him.”

“His visor’s tapped. I don’t dare. Can you hop over and bring him here, right away?”

Arnie sighed. “I certainly earn my commissions the hard way. But O. K.”

He faded. Gallegher listened to the door buzzer, frowned, and nodded to the robot. “See who it is. I doubt if Cuff would try anything now, but—well, find out. I’ll be hi this closet.”

He stood in the dark, waiting, straining his ears, and wondering. Smeith—he had solved Smeith’s problem. The machine ate dirt. The only effective way to get rid of earth without running the risk of a nitrogen explosion.

Eight hundred credits, on account, for a device or a method that would eliminate enough earth—safely—to provide space for an underground office building, a structure that had to be mostly subterranean because of prior-leased air rights.

Fair enough.

Only— where did that dirt go?

Narcissus returned and opened the closet door. “It’s a Commander John Wall. He vised from Washington earlier tonight. I told you, remember?”

“John Wall?”

J. W., fifteen hundred credits! The third client!

“Jet him in,” Gallegher ordered breathlessly. “Quick! Is he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Then step it up!”

Narcissus padded off, to return with a gray-haired, stocky figure in the uniform of the space police. Wall grinned briefly at Gallegher, and then his keen eyes shot toward the machine by the window.

“That it?”

Gallegher said, “Hello, commander. I… I’m pretty sure that’s it. But I want to discuss some details with you first.” !:

Wall frowned. “Money? You can’t hold up the government. Or am I misjudging you? Fifty thousand credits should hold you for a while.” His face cleared. “You have fifteen hundred already; I’m prepared to write you a check as soon as you’ve completed a satisfactory demonstration.”

“Fifty thou—” Gallegher took a deep breath. “No, it isn’t that, of course. I merely want to make certain that I’ve filled the terms of our agreement. I want to be sure I’ve met every specification.” If he could only learn what Wall had requested! If he, too, had wanted a machine that ate dirt—

It was a farfetched hope, an impossible coincidence, but Gallegher had to find out. He waved the commander to a chair.

“But we discussed the problem’ in full detail—”

“A double-check,” Gallegher said smoothly. “Narcissus, get the commander a drink.”

“Thanks, no.”

“Coffee?”

“I’d be obliged. Well, then—as I told you some weeks ago, we needed a spaceship control—a manual that would meet the requirements of elasticity and tensile strength.”

“Oh-oh,” Gallegher thought.

Wall leaned forward, his eyes brightening. “A spaceship is necessarily big and complicated. Some manual controls are required. But they cannot move in a straight line; construction necessitates that such controls must turn sharp corners, follow an erratic and eccentric path from here to here”

“Well—”

“Thus,” Wall said, “you want to turn on a water faucet in a house two blocks away. And you want to do it while you’re here, in your laboratory. How?”

“String. Wire. Rope.”

“Which could wind around corners as… say… a rigid rod could not. However, Mr. Gallegher, let me repeat my statement of two weeks ago. That faucet is hard to turn. And it must be turned often, hundreds of times a day when a ship is in free space. Our toughest wire cables have proved unsatisfactory. The stress and strain snap them. When a cable is bent, and when it is also straight —you see?”

Gallegher nodded. “Sure. You can break wire by bending it back and forth often enough.”

“That is the problem we asked you to solve. You said it could be done. Now—have you done it? And how?”

A manual control that could turn corners and withstand repeated stresses. Gallegher eyed the machine. Nitrogen—a thought was moving in the back of his mind, but he could not quite capture it.

The buzzer rang. “Smeith,” Gallegher thought, and nodded to Narcissus. The robot vanished.

He returned with four men at his heels. Two of them were uniformed officers. The others were, respectively, Smeith and Dell Hopper.

Hopper was smiling savagely. “Hello, Gallegher,” he said. “We’ve been waiting. We weren’t fast enough when this man”—he nodded toward Commander Wall—“came hi, but we waited for a second chance.”

Smeith, his plump face puzzled, said, “Mr. Gallegher, what is this? I rang your buzzer, and then these men surrounded me—”

“It’s O. K.,” Gallegher said. “You’re on top, at least. Look out that window.”

Smeith obeyed. He popped back in again, beaming.

“That hole—”

“Right. I didn’t cart the dirt away, either. I’ll give you a demonstration presently.”

“You will in jail,” Hopper said acidly. “I warned you, Gallegher, that I’m not a man to play around with. I gave you a thousand credits to do a job for me, and you neither did the job nor returned the money.”

Commander Wall was staring, his coffee cup, forgotten, balanced in one hand. An officer moved forward and took Gallegher’s arm.

“Wait a minute,” Wall began, but Smeith was quicker.

“I think I owe Mr. Gallegher some credits,” he said, snatching out a wallet. “I’ve not much more than a thousand on me, but you can take a check for the balance, I suppose. If this—gentleman—wants cash, there should be a thousand here.”

Gallegher gulped.

Smeith nodded at him encouragingly. “You did my job for me, you know. I can begin construction—and excavation—tomorrow. Without bothering to get a trucking permit, either.”