The Unorthodox Engineers Read online

  ‘Convinced?’ asked Wooley, when they had retreated to a safe distance.

  ‘Convinced,’ agreed Van Noon weakly. ‘It must have taken a couple of thousand amps to melt a bar like that.’

  ‘It must have taken many millions of amps to melt our ship,’ said Wooley gloomily, ‘but it did it somehow.’

  ‘But this is ridiculous, Fritz!’ said Jacko. ‘How can you have an electrified desert?’

  ‘Not too ridiculous really. Even on Terra you can find a surprising amount of electrical currents in the earth if you go looking for them. On Terra the source is usually electro-chemical—minute differences in electrode potential between regions containing different concentrations of mineral substances. But I don’t know of any natural source capable of producing some dozens of volts at many millions of amps—or why the system doesn’t discharge itself.’

  ‘We’ve done some investigating,’ said Wooley. ‘The grey rocks you can ignore, but we call the black rocks “terminals”. Actually they aren’t simple rocks at all, but columnar graphite structures presumably reaching down to the bedrock. They have an insulating sheath, a sort of lacerated asbestos, which we theorize came to be deposited by electrophoresis of the soil silicates. But however it came about, it’s damned effective in insulating the columns from the rest of the plain.

  ‘The remaining bulk of the desert is merely a minerised silicate-base earth, not unlike Terran clay.

  Average potential difference between the terminal columns and the base land is about twenty-seven volts.

  But it varies pretty widely and can touch a couple of hundred volts in the high season.’

  ‘AC or DC?’ asked Jacko.

  Wooley began to look rather haggard and turned away for a moment.

  ‘You aren’t going to believe this,’ he said. ‘Generally it’s DC with the terminals positive with respect to the base-land. But sometimes you get AC—especially on Tuesday and Sunday mornings.’

  Five

  ‘And if you think that’s mad,’ said Wooley, ‘wait until you start on the Ixion project.’

  ‘You know, Fritz, I’m beginning to get sorry I came.’ Jacko looked at Van Noon appealingly. ‘Can’t I just go home and sleep it off?’

  ‘Try closing your eyes, Jacko. Maybe it’ll go away.’

  ‘I tried that,’ said Wooley. ‘But it comes back every morning, large as sunrise.’

  ‘Well, what is the Ixion problem?’ Van Noon asked. ‘The one thing I haven’t been able to do is get anyone to talk about it.’

  ‘Wait till you’ve seen it for yourself. I don’t think you’ll want to talk about it either.’

  They were approaching a stockpile of carefully classified girderwork, part of the Ixion turntable structure recovered from spacedrop capsules. Wooley consulted a parts list, then drew a few sections from the stockpile and dropped them on the ground.

  ‘A simple demonstration. Girder A measures two metres exactly between hole centres. Don’t take my word for it—check it out.’

  Jacko produced a steel tape from the recesses of one of his pockets and made the necessary measurement.

  ‘Two metres—check!’

  ‘Girders B and C each measure one metre between hole centres, yes?’

  ‘Check!’ Jacko looked at Fritz as if seeking release from the infantile nature of what was being demanded.

  ‘Very well!’ Wooley was unperturbed. ‘If you assemble girder B to girder C, end to end with a suitable rivet, the total length between extreme hole centres should be two metres. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Wooley sadly. He dropped a rivet on to the ground and waited while Jacko moved the components into line and fitted the fastening loosely into the holes. ‘If you don’t believe me, measure it yourself.’

  There was no need for measurement. Even viewed from a standing position the combined length of the two half girders was obviously much less than that of the whole one. Refusing to believe the evidence of his eyes, Jacko knelt and carefully measured the combined length of girders B and C.

  ‘One point five seven,’ he said hopelessly. Again refusing to accept the sum, he kicked the girders apart and checked each carefully before re-assembly. Fritz, who had watched the whole performance with detailed interest, seemed to have withdrawn into a state of deep concentration. At last he took the offered measuring tape from Jacko and repeated the whole ritual for himself. Intrigued by the situation, he found several other objects and measured them individually and together. Then he straightened.

  ‘Incredible,’ he said, ‘but very definitely true.’

  ‘Then explain it to me,’ said Jacko. ‘In all my books twice one is two—and it’s never before been in dispute.’

  ‘But your books were written on Terra, not Getawehi. On Getawehi they don’t apply.’

  ‘But that’s insane!’ Jacko was adamant. ‘Mathematics is merely a system for expressing the properties and relations of quantities. It’s universal, not a local phenomenon. Once one is one, twice one is two…

  Van Noon rapidly reviewed his previous calculations.

  ‘Not on Getawehi. It seems to be different here. Once one is one… but twice one is only a bit over one and a half—one point five seven zero eight, to be more exact. And three times one is about two point three six.’

  ‘Wooley, you don’t agree…?’ Jacko was still fighting. The look on Wooley’s face, however, convinced him that the battle was lost. ‘I still don’t see how it’s possible,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘It’s long been suspected that our mathematics may not be universal,’ said Fritz. ‘Dimensionless numbers, for instance, although having an accepted value in the part of the universe where we customarily use them, are more likely to be local coincidences than physical absolutes. But on Getawehi we seem to have hit on something even more fundamental.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but for my money it’s something to do with unity.’

  ‘Unity?’

  ‘Yes. Unity… one… a whole. I’m no mathematician, but it seems to me there’s a darn great hole in our idea of the structure of numbers. We’ve explored number structure up to infinity and several orders beyond—but something we’ve always taken for granted is the constant mathematical value of unity.’

  ‘But it has to have a constant mathematical value.’ Jacko’s voice was ragged. ‘Once one is one… It can’t be otherwise by its very definition.’

  ‘So we’ve always assumed. But what if we happened to be wrong? What if there’s a difference between the value of one as representing a whole thing—and the value of one as a mathematical factor. They seem both to be the same in the corner of the universe where our books were written—but one used as a factor on Getawehi is demonstrably only point seven eight five of what it was on Terra.’

  ‘You’re not right, you know, Fritz. I’ll prove it to you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Take a metre length of iron, cut it in half and then join it together again. By your reasoning we should finish up with a total length only a little above three-quarters of what we started with.’

  ‘Let’s try it,’ said Van Noon. ‘We have to settle this one way or the other before we all go merrily insane.’

  Wooley provided welding equipment, and they tried it. The final measurement was a little over point seven eight of a metre.

  ‘But I still don’t see how you can reconcile it with the law of conservation of matter,’ said Jacko.

  ‘Where do you keep the Scotch?’ asked Fritz Van Noon.

  ‘So what are we going to do with Project Ixion?’ asked Jacko the next day.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Fritz. ‘It’s not going to be easy even if it proves possible. The Ixion assembly is a pretty complex girderwork construction. Every part has to be accurate if it’s going to fit. My first thoughts are to take every girder, cut it in half, and re-join. In that way we might be able to construct what is, in effect, a scaled-down version of t
he original design.’

  ‘Is that acceptable?’ asked Jacko. ‘Surely some of the parts have a critical size.’

  ‘I don’t know. I tried to put this question to the Tycho Brahe, but I don’t think my message was received. Apparently the pinnace can hold our position by line of sight, but it’s not easy for us to track the pinnace because of its unstable orbit. Anyway, I suspect this is a problem for the design team on Terra rather than something which can be settled on the Tycho.’

  ‘Then you want me to try cutting and joining the girders?’

  ‘We’d better have a go. We certainly can’t make matters any worse than they are. I’ve a suspicion, however, that the problem isn’t going to be solved that simply.’

  ‘You’re the boss!’ said Jacko. ‘I still can’t convince myself that it happens at all, but at least we’ll go through the motions.’

  Six hours later Jacko found Van Noon crouching at the laser terminal trying to maintain sighting on the pinnace. Such was the relative crudity of the ground terminal that sighting on a small and erratic spaceborne target such as the pinnace was so precarious as to be nearly impossible.

  Jacko shook his head wearily. ‘Project Ixion’s no go, Fritz. We’ve tried cutting and joining the girders, but it doesn’t help. Where the assembly calls for a total span to be formed of thirty components along one edge and only five in another, the whole scheme falls down. Short of cutting every girder into the total number of parts required to form the entire project—and then re-joining them—we don’t stand a chance of getting anything to fit.’

  Van Noon stood up. ‘I was rather afraid of that. We’d need God-knows how much computer down here to calculate the operations needed to resurrect the original design, and even then we’ve no guarantee that the final de-scaled assembly would do the job it was designed to do.’

  ‘Is it worth continuing with the work?’

  ‘No. Abandon the whole thing. There has to be a more rational way out of this. As far as I can see, Ixion in its present form is destined to be a dead duck. I wonder where the heck they found a name like that for it anyway?’

  ‘Mythology—rather symbolic as it turns out,’ said Jacko mournfully. ‘Ixion was a character who killed his father-in-law and then tried to make love to Jupiter’s wife. As punishment, Jupiter ordered him to be tied to a fiery wheel and rolled for ever throughout Hades. Right now I know exactly how Ixion felt.’

  Van Noon was suddenly alert. ‘Say that again, Jacko.’

  ‘Right now I know exactly how Ixion felt…’

  ‘Not that! About the wheel?’

  ‘Tied to a fiery wheel and rolled for ever throughout Hades…’

  ‘That could be it!’

  ‘What’s on your mind, Fritz?’

  ‘I’ve just realized how it’s done. Why didn’t I think of it before?’

  ‘You’re way ahead of me. How what is done?’

  ‘The gravity, of course. And the burning mountains, the radio output, and the self-consuming spaceship—they’re all part of the same scheme.’

  ‘Can we just go back to the start?’

  Van Noon was jubilant. ‘That has to be the answer! Wheels within wheels… the fiery wheel of Ixion… rolling forever throughout Hades… suddenly the pieces all fit together. All we have to do is prove it.’

  ‘I’ll get them to spacedrop a good psychiatrist.’

  ‘Not for me, Jacko. I never use ‘em. But get me a good computer and a hyper-radio link with Terra, I think I’ve just made the Ixion project obsolete.’

  Six

  ‘Radio Officer presents his compliments, sir. Requests yourself and Commander Brumas to come to the radio room immediately.’

  Nash returned the salute and shot a quizzical look at Brumas, who was sitting near him at the conference table. Then he looked back to the courier.

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Radio messages loud and clear from Lieutenant Van Noon on Getawehi, sir.’

  ‘Radio messages? I thought radio was impossible under these conditions? Dammit!’ He looked round at the expectant faces of the officers present at the conference. ‘In the circumstances, gentlemen, I’m afraid I must call this meeting to a close. It would seem Van Noon has already achieved something of the impossible. There’ll be a progress report at twenty-hundred hours ship’s standard time. Until then, all sections are to stand in readiness. This may be the break we’re looking for.’

  With Brumas at his heels, Nash reached the radio room in record time. The Radio Officer was supervising a narrow-band lock on the big receiver, which appeared to be tuned to a slowly drifting signal.

  ‘Van Noon to Tycho Brahe. Are you receiving me? I say again…’

  ‘Can we answer?’ asked Nash.

  ‘Not by radio. We haven’t anything available with the sort of power that Van Noon’s using. All our transmissions would get lost in the mush. We’re just linking a relay so that we can answer via the laser circuit on the pinnace. It’s easier for us to get messages in that way than it is for Van Noon to get messages out.’

  ‘Fine, do it!’ Nash waited impatiently for the hookup to be completed.

  ‘Hullo, Fritz! We are receiving you perfectly. How the Devil did you come by a high-power transmitter like that?’

  Van Noon’s voice came over the noise with rare fidelity. ‘If I told you, Colonel, you wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, thank heavens I’ve managed to raise you. I’ve been calling for nearly two hours.’

  ‘We weren’t watching for you on the radio bands because we didn’t think it possible for you to use them.’

  ‘Anything’s possible once you know how.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say it. How’re you making out with the Ixion project?’

  ‘I agree with Wooley that we might as well sell the existing parts for scrap. No one could ever assemble them on Getawehi.’

  ‘That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.’ Nash was disappointed. ‘Is there no hope at all?’

  ‘Not for the Ixion structure. But the Ixion principle might be a different matter. Unless I miss my guess, we can duplicate the function of the Ixion project without actually building it. But I’m going to need help.’

  ‘You name it, and you’ve got it, Fritz. By the way, Commander Brumas is anxious to speak to you, so I’m handing over for a moment.’

  ‘Hullo, Commander! You’ll be pleased to know the whole team down here is fit and well.’

  ‘I suppose that’s some consolation.’ Brumas was grave. ‘Did you get around to having any ideas as to how we can get them off Getawehi?’

  ‘Get them off?’ Van Noon sounded surprised, then the humour came through in his voice. ‘I don’t think that’ll be much of a problem. When the Tycho Brahe makes planetfall they can wander aboard just like anybody else.’

  There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the hiss of white noise on the radio link and the muted hum of the radio room equipment.

  Finally Brumas spoke. ‘I don’t think I quite understood you there, Fritz. For a moment I thought you were suggesting that the Tycho Brahe make planetfall on Getawehi!’

  ‘That’s exactly what I did say, Commander, I need the Tycho Brahe down here. I need the hyper-radio link, I need the ship’s computers, and I need a mass of manpower.’

  ‘But you can’t jeopardize the Tycho Brahe. For pity’s sake, Fritz! You know what happens to a ship attempting to land on that damned planet!’

  ‘I know what used to happen, but we’ve got ourselves a few answers since then.’

  ‘You can’t be serious, Fritz?’ Colonel Nash was back on the circuit. ‘There’s no point in writing off the Labship as well.’

  ‘I don’t intend to write it off. All I need is a direct two-way speech link with the senior pilot during the talk-down. Given that, I’ll guarantee a safe touch down and that the ship will remain intact after landing.’

  ‘I can’t permit it,’ said Brumas. ‘The risk is far too great.’

  ‘Are your recorders
on, Commander?’ asked Van Noon.

  ‘Certainly. Standard procedure—why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I want this firmly placed on record. I was appointed Senior Adviser for the whole exploit. My considered senior advice is that you should bring the Tycho Brahe down to Getawehi. If you should ignore this advice, I demand that this recording be placed in evidence at any court martial which may subsequently transpire. If you don’t do as I ask you have no chance at all of recovering the team on Getawehi.’

  ’Damn you, Fritz!’ said Brumas. ‘Let me speak to Wooley. I want evidence as to the unsoundness of your state of mind.’

  ‘You already have evidence. Look through your telescopes. Wooley’s out in the valley with his crew, laying out landing markers to guide your descent.’

  ‘Very well, Fritz… you win!’ Nash’s voice carried begrudged acquiescence. ‘It’ll take about an hour to put the ship in a state of readiness. After that you can begin talk-down. But I hope you know how much responsibility you’re taking on yourself. There’s two hundred men aboard the Tycho Brahe.’

  ‘I know it, Colonel. But I wouldn’t put a mouse down on Getawehi unless I was absolutely sure.’

  ‘I still don’t see how the hell you can be so certain. Every other ship that has touched the planet has come to a sticky end.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m beginning to gain an understanding of Getawehi. It seems that she and I both have the same sort of outwards-facing-interior approach.’