The Unorthodox Engineers Read online

  Nash picked up the phone and dialled a number.

  ‘Bring Ensign Harris to my office immediately—and forget the guards. I’m ordering his immediate release. That’s right, you idiot, I said “release”!’

  He looked up at van Noon and slowly shook his head. From his desk drawer he extracted two glasses. ‘You got any Scotch tucked away somewhere, Fritz?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think I can manage that,’ said Fritz van Noon with a straight face.

  ‘I thought you might.’

  The Subways of Tazoo

  One

  “Lieutenant van Noon, report to Colonel Belling’s office.”

  “Damn!” Fritz van Noon glared at the loudspeaker. “Sounds as though Belling’s back and on the warpath again.”

  “Can you wonder?” Jacko Hine helped him out from under the tottering pile of half-assembled pieces. “Let’s face it, Fritz, some of our recent projects have come unstuck in a rather spectacular manner.”

  “True,” agreed Fritz, ruefully, “but never let it be said that the Unorthodox Engineers have produced a damp squib. Always our results have exceeded our wildest expectations.”

  “Or Belling’s wildest fears,” grinned Jacko.

  As Fritz entered the office Colonel Belling looked up over the top of his old-fashioned half-moon spectacles. “Ah, van Noon! Just the fellow I wanted to see.”

  “Sir?” asked Fritz suspiciously. Colonel Belling was not a man given to cordiality towards his subordinates.

  Belling smiled wolfishly. “I’ve just returned from the General Staff conference. Since you re-instated the railways on Cannis IV even the Old Man has been forced to admit that there may be occasions when unorthodox engineering has its virtues. For my part I felt impelled to point out that I’m trying to run a specialist engineering reserve, and that carrying the can for a complete squad of engineering illegitimates was not strictly within my terms of reference. As I explained, always I get stuck with the one engineer in a thousand who should never have left his mother’s knee, let alone graduated from a university. The only repository I have for these mechanical misfits is the Unorthodox Engineering squad, where the damage they can do will at least be limited.”

  “That’s a little unfair, sir…”

  “I know what you’re going to tell me! And I don’t accept it. Engineering is a discipline, but the brand you people apply is strictly delinquent. Anyway, the outcome of the conference was that Colonel Nash, whom I’m beginning to suspect has masochistic tendencies, has volunteered to take the U.E. squad on the Tazoon expedition.”

  Fritz considered this for a moment. Tazoo was a recently-discovered planet orbiting Beta Centauri. Once home to a technologically advanced civilization, it was now a silent, abandoned world.

  “Exactly what are they doing on Tazoo, sir?”

  “Supporting the archaeological team. Life on Tazoo is now extinct, but we continue to find evidence that a well-developed civilization once existed there. In terms of knowledge to be gained it could be the most valuable opportunity ever presented to us.”

  He paused, and studied van Noon dispassionately. “It’s doubtful if the Tazoons were human or even humanoid. The archaeologists tell me they became extinct around a hundred thousand years ago, and that creates certain complications. After that length of time there might not be much left for us to examine. Our problem is to pick up the remains of a complex mechanical culture as alien and as old as that and attempt to understand it for what it was.”

  “That shouldn’t be impossible, sir.”

  “No, Fritz, not impossible, but definitely not easy. That’s partly the reason I’m sending you. Your inverted-sideways approach is the nearest thing to an alien technology that we’ve got. That makes you a specialist.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Fritz warily. “And the other part of the reason we’re going?”

  “The climatic conditions on Tazoo are such hell that the average rugged ground-cat has a useful working life of about two weeks. That means the archaeologists can’t explore far enough from base to expand their operations. Fritz, I want you to provide them with transport to where they’ll be most use—and if you don’t, you’d better find some other engineering reserve to come back to…”

  “Yes, sir,” said Fritz unhappily, “I get the point.”

  “You know, Fritz,” said Colonel Belling, “I think we may finally have reached a point of real understanding!” He grinned wolfishly. “I’m going to rather enjoy the thoughts of you and the U.E. squad sweating it out in a hell-spot like Tazoo.”

  Touchdown on Tazoo. The transfer ferry had no viewports and afforded no opportunity for its passengers to receive a preview of their destination. Even the ground-cat which rendezvoused at the landing site close-coupled its hatches with the ferry’s air lock before the transfer of passengers and goods began. In the cabin of the ground-cat, shutters likewise obscured the view and cheated Fritz of his moment of revelation.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” said the cabin’s occupant. “I’m Philip Nevill, Archaeologist in charge of this project.”

  “Van Noon,” said Fritz. “Engineer extraordinary—and this is Jacko Hine, one of my staff.”

  Nevill grinned affably. “Your reputation preceded you, Lieutenant. Frankly, when I heard of you I persuaded Colonel Nash to get the U.E. squad here at any cost. There are things on Tazoo it’ll take a very liberal mind indeed to understand.”

  The ground-cat struggled away from the ferry, its treads crunching through the sand and its engine coughing in asthmatic complaint.

  “So I’ve heard,” said Fritz. “Look, do you mind if I open the shutter for a second? I’d like to know the worst right from the start.”

  “Help yourself,” said Nevill, “but I promise you it’s a passion you’ll soon lose.”

  Fritz fought the shutter from the window and peered out for his first glimpse of Tazoo. Heavy ochre-coloured cloudbanks filtered the furious sunlight to a baleful glare, and rendered all colours as murky shades of reds and browns. Black shadow cut the view into odd-shaped segments. The terrain itself was nothing but a lumpy, featureless waste as far as the eye could see.

  “Satisfied?” asked Nevill.

  Fritz dropped the shutter back and closed his eyes.

  “Painful, isn’t it?” asked Nevill. “Normal endurance is about forty minutes before red-blindness sets in. Very bad for the eyes, to say nothing of the psychological effects. And as if that were not bad enough; the planet has no ozone-layer, so ultraviolet radiation is extremely severe at all times.”

  At the blare of the ground-cat’s horn Nevill opened the shutter again. “There’s the base—way over yonder.”

  Fritz scowled at the deep-red panorama. Perhaps half a kilometre away was the base, like a cluster of cherries half-submerged in a basin of dirty pink icing.

  “Underground, eh? A very sensible precaution.”

  “It isn’t underground,” said Nevill in a slightly aggrieved tone. “It’s a surface installation.”

  “But I don’t see anything but some almighty balls of mud.”

  “They’re standard Knudsen huts with a protective skin on. There’s a sandstorm that whips up every night which would sandblast an unprotected Knudsen to a skeleton before dawn. We spray each hut weekly with a highly plasticized poly-polymer which is reasonably abrasive resistant. The plastic traps some of the sand and this materially increases its resistance, but builds up and completely ruins the shape.”

  Abruptly the engine of the ground-cat coughed and died. Nevill held a rapid exchange over the intercom with the driver.

  “Engine’s gone,” he said finally. “Either the carburettor’s etched away or the damn sand has got into the cylinders— probably both. Anyway, this cat is a write-off for all practical purposes, so there’s nothing for it but to walk—and it’s too near evening for that to be funny.”

  They descended from the cabin, Fritz and Jacko choking quietly in the acrid air which caught at their noses and seared t
heir lungs. Nevill, more acclimatized, was surveying the sky anxiously. Above them the swirling cloudbanks, smokey-red trailing into purple and black, plunged across the darkening sky so low that Fritz had an almost compulsive desire to put up his hands to see if he could touch them. There must have been a strong wind above, for the cloudrace was certainly moving at a significant clip, yet on the ground the warm humidity was almost deathly still, as though a sheet of glass insulated them from the driving turbulence above.

  “Looks like a storm,” Nevill muttered in a worried voice.

  “Is that bad?” asked Fritz.

  “Terminal if you’re unlucky enough to be out in it. Let’s hope it’s a wet storm. They’re decidedly uncomfortable, but not usually fatal if you can get to shelter quickly enough,”

  “Why, what happens?”

  “Nothing spectacular if you can find shelter from a hundred kilometre per hour damp sandstorm, and if you happen to have sufficient alkali available to neutralize the rain on your skin.”

  “Neutralize the rain?” said Fritz, his voice rising. “What the hell is in it?”

  “Oh, about five per cent sulphuric acid plus a trace of hydrogen chloride with a little free ionized chlorine. Stings like crazy, I can assure you. But it’s better than a dry storm.”

  “I’ll buy it,” Fritz said helplessly. “If a wet sandstorm is equal to an accelerated metal descaling process, what’s a dry storm equal to?”

  By now Nevill was deeply concerned, scanning the furious cloudrace with worried and experienced eyes. They were still three hundred metres from the nearest part of the base, with Jacko and the driver close behind.

  “I think you’re going to have a practical demonstration of a dry storm, Lieutenant. If the smell of ozone becomes intolerable or if you hear anything like a bee buzzing don’t hesitate —just drop to the ground as fast as you are able. If you can find a hollow then roll into it, but whatever you do, be quick.”

  “A bee buzzing?”

  “Air ionization path, the prelude to a lightning bolt. The cloudrace generates several megavolts, and it packs a current that can fuse you very neatly into the sand. The carbon from the body reduces a great many metal oxides in the ground so that the resultant slag forms a remarkable range of glasses.” He looked round and Fritz saw the concern in his eyes. “I’ve seen it happen—not pretty!”

  “Forget the chemistry lesson,” Chimed in Jacko. “I never could see myself making a very convincing paperweight.”

  “Then dropI” said Nevill, suiting action to the words.

  They all hit the ground. Fritz’s nose didn’t have time to detect the ozone, virtually paralysed as it was by the existing acridity, but his ears did register the sudden buzz which Nevill had anticipated by a half second. Then the lightning discharge, a crack of vivid energy a mere thirty metres distant. The noise and the shock-wave of its passing stunned them momentarily. By the time they had collected their wits only a generous patch of fused sand and a choking concentration of ozone marked the spot where the bolt had struck.

  “Bad!” said Nevill, “Worst I’ve seen for some time. It’s striking low ground, which means we have no possible cover out here. Best to crawl back nearer to the cat—but for God’s sake keep your heads low.”

  “But—” Fritz protested.

  Another bolt of lightning, bigger and nearer than the first, stabbed into the sand behind them like the bursting of a shell, followed by three almost simultaneously in the near vicinity.

  Desperately slowly the party crawled back towards the cat, which stood as the pitifully-low high-spot of this particular area of terrain. On all sides of them now the jagged lightning cut into the ground with burning shafts of vicious energy, like the arrows of retribution fired by some crazed electric god. Then a shaft burned down on the cat itself. The vehicle sagged in on itself and molten metal seeped down its flanks and dripped onto the red sand of Tazoo.

  “Treads!” Shouted Fritz van Noon, spitting sand. “The bloody treads are metal!”

  “Jesus!” muttered Jacko, “we’ve been travelling in a glorified lightning-conductor!”

  Then mercifully it began to rain. Nevill turned his face to the stinging, acrid precipitation and let out a howl of relief. A few seconds later they were running like half-blinded madmen through the corrosive waters in the direction of the base camp, heedless now of the cracking lightning which had withdrawn to the edge of the rain belt. They were fortunately within a few steps of the base when the wall of sharp, abrasive sand, whipped to fury by a fantastic driving wind, bore down upon them out of the deep purples of the approaching night.

  Two

  “Welcome to Tazoo, Lieutenant!” Colonel Nash beckoned him into the office.

  Fritz explored the still-smarting skin on his face and hands, and was still painfully aware of the puffiness around his eyes. “Thank you, Colonel. That was quite an initiation ceremony out there!”

  Colonel Nash smiled fleetingly. “Unpremeditated, I assure you, but the weather is part of the reason you’re here. A ground-cat is the toughest machine available, but as you saw for yourself, it’s totally incapable of standing up to the environment. The low pH of the rain conspires with the sand to etch and tear the guts out of any transportation contrivance we’ve yet imported to Tazoo. When you consider atmospheric chlorine, hydrogen chloride, free sulphuric acid, plus high humidity and extreme ultraviolet radiation together with an additional nightly sandblast, you can guess that corrosion prevention isn’t the least of our troubles.”

  Fritz shuddered involuntarily.

  “I must admit,” said Nash, “that I haven’t always seen eye to eye with you before on the subject of unorthodox engineering, but if you can come up with a reliable way to transport the archaeological teams around this place I’ll at least be open to persuasion. Certainly no orthodox methods can give us transport on Tazoo at a cost less than the total budget for the entire mission.”

  “What facilities have we?” asked Fritz.

  “Anything you can find, basically. If you need anything shipped out from Terra you’ll need a damn good case to get it because of shipping costs, not to mention the time-delays on freight movements. Certainly we can’t afford to bring any more vehicles out here to be ripped apart. I’m relying on you to delve into your unorthodoxy and come up with something practical.”

  “What progress has been made here?” asked Fritz.

  “A little, but slowly,” said Nash, “largely because of the aforementioned transport limitations.

  Nevill’s team have uncovered some real architectural monstrosities, but the real prize will be finding anything like technological artifacts. If they can do that, and if they’re half as weird as the rest of this planet, it will require all of your peculiar genius to identify and interpret them. We’re expecting to find some very unorthodox engineering from a culture which died around the time the last ice-age began on Terra.”

  “Have there been any signs of a highly scientific culture?” asked Fritz. “The reports I’ve read don’t go into much detail on that.”

  “The preliminary survey party found signs that the Tazoons had visited both of the moons of this planet. And we’re reasonably certain that they also reached the next planet sunward in this system and actually established a base there.”

  “All this sounds highly promising,” said Fritz. “But a hundred thousand years is a long time. Would there be anything left of machines and mechanisms after such a period?”

  “Normally no, of course, but Nevill theorizes that to develop a high-level functional civilization under these climatic conditions the Tazoons must have had some pretty sophisticated technology. Certainly, they knew well enough what they were up against.”

  Van Noon nodded. The trouble was that what was sophisticated technology to one culture, could be impenetrably obscure black magic to another. U.E. had come across one or two of those already…

  “Furthermore,” Nash continued, “ the moist conditions don’t penetrate very far down
into the sand, so that the deeper an artifact is buried the greater are its chances of long-term survival. Deep exploration at a really promising site should give us a slice of Tazoon civilization in a very reasonable state of preservation. The bottom line is that we need only one good site to justify the whole Tazoon expedition.” He glanced up at Fritz. “And that’s precisely what I want you to help us achieve.”

  The next day Fritz found Philip Nevill in the Archaeological HQ, apparently none the worse for his previous day’s exposure.

  “Hullo, Lieutenant van Noon. What can we do for you?”

  “Fritz. I hope you can answer a question. Do you know what happened to the Tazoons themselves—I mean, why did they become extinct so swiftly when they had achieved such an apparently high technological level?”

  Nevill scowled. “You’re equating technology with the ability to manipulate environment and thus ensure a higher survival potential.” He shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. Indications are that they abandoned the populated areas en-masse and migrated towards the equatorial regions. From distribution figures it looks as though the entire population set out for the tropics and were decimated on the way.”

  He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Fritz, this suggests they were fleeing from something biologically intolerable which claimed a great number in flight. That’s our best guess”

  “Drastic climatic change?” asked Fritz.

  “Climatic, no—environmental, possibly. We looked for evidence of major climate changes, but there’s nothing significant that we can trace. The only thing that is recent, geologically speaking anyway, is the sand.”

  “The sand?”

  “Mmm. Probably the result of some ecological imbalance. The major plains appear to have once included prolific forests, such as are still to be found in places around the temperate belts. For some reason, drought or fire or blight perhaps, these forests died. The results were typically Terran in their inevitability.”