The Unorthodox Engineers Read online

  “Soil erosion.”

  “Yes, exactly, and on a catastrophic scale. Once the sand got to work on the unprotected soil nothing thereafter got the chance to germinate. More soil dried up and blew away, hence more sand. We’re still picking up viable seeds from the deep diggings, but all the shallow seeds are either dead or had started growth only to be uprooted.”

  “When did this happen—the erosion?”

  “Can’t tell with certainty, but it appears to slightly pre-date the extinction of the Tazoons themselves. Whether these two factors are related is something only further research can prove. But it seems likely. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes, but only to pose another,” said Fritz. “I don’t understand how any culture technically able to explore the neighbouring satellites could have been wiped out by anything as foreseeable and reversible as soil erosion. And why migrate to the tropics when the soil fertility remained in the temperate belts?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nevill honestly. “It’s a difficult problem. The Tazoons were not even humanoid, and the probability is that neither their physiology nor their culture had anything in common with our own. It could be very misleading if we attempted to interpret their actions by simple extrapolation of what we might have done in similar circumstances.”

  “A good point,” agreed Fritz. “I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I’ll bear it in mind. Thanks, Philip, you’ve given me something to think about.”

  Having established that the U.E. squad was reasonably well quartered, Fritz turned his attention to the transport problem. This brought him back to Jacko who had compiled a transport survey which he presented with as much enthusiasm as if it had been his own death warrant.

  “We’re in trouble, Fritz. Of the thirty ground-cats originally provided for the enterprise only ten are still functioning. Two hundred hours operating life on Tazoo reduces a cat to a condition where you couldn’t sell it for scrap. By sorting bits and pieces we could probably reconstruct another couple of cats, but no matter how you cut it, it’s not going to be very long before we start walking.”

  Fritz stared disconsolately at a virgin notebook. “What about tractors and heavy equipment?”

  “They’re not too bad—but only by virtue of the fact that most of them are still in sealed crates. Once they’re broken-out there’s no reason to suppose they’ll last any longer than the cats do. This combination of corrosion and abrasion is something to which I’d not cheerfully expose a clockwork mouse.”

  “All right,” Fritz sighed. “What protection can we give to the cats to extend their working life?”

  “A lot of the vehicle we can plastic coat, as they do with the Knudsens. The engines are a more difficult problem. Some genius thought of providing them with standard aluminium-alloy turbine housings, and what the Tazoon atmosphere does to the alloy makes my flesh creep. Even the vitreous liners devitrify and release particles of silica into the bearings.”

  “Don’t bother to describe,” said Fritz, “what that does to the bearings. I think we have to face the fact that while we might save most of the cats themselves we aren’t going to be able to save many of the engines. We could devise a system of enclosing the engines in an inert atmosphere— but I doubt if we have the facilities here to do a permanent job. We then also need a supply of controlled pH, moisture-free oxygen for the air intake. I think we could produce that by electrolysis, but I doubt if we can handle it in sufficient quantities to be of much value.”

  “And so on ad-infinitum,” said Jacko ruefully.

  Fritz nodded. “Well, let’s try it anyway. I want two cats modified. Plastic-coat them everywhere possible, seal the engine compartment and fill it with a nitrogen and hydrogen mixture of non-ignitable composition. Get our micro-Linde column working for the nitrogen and make an electrolysis plant for the hydrogen. You’ll need both the Linde and the electrolytic plant to get enough oxygen for the air-supply for the engine intakes, and you’d better dilute the oxygen with any nitrogen you can spare, then adjust the turbines to run on that.”

  “And what do I keep the oxygen in?” asked Jacko.

  “They’ve a fair supply of the plastic poly-polymer they use for spraying the huts. It shouldn’t be beyond our capacity to blow a gasbag from that.”

  “It all sounds feasible,” said Jacko after some thought, “but I doubt the capacity of the micro-Linde to give us all the nitrogen we need.”

  “So do I,” nodded Fritz, “that’s why I said to modify two cats only. There’s plenty of other things to try, but this is the most obvious, and we’ve neither time nor the resources to start nitrogen fixation in a big way.” He went to the window, opened the shutter and stared moodily out at the red and featureless wasteland.

  “Sand,” he said. “Nothing but bloody sand, fine-grained, abrasive and all-pervading. What we need, Jacko, is something completely new in the way of transport on Tazoo. I wonder what the Tazoons themselves employed.”

  Three days later and the modification of the cats was in full swing. Fritz had just returned from inspecting the work when the radio buzzed.

  “Lieutenant Van Noon.”

  “Fritz, Nevill here. I’ve got some work for you.”

  “Bring it over,” said Fritz. “A little more won’t make much difference.”

  “Right. Be with you in about ten minutes. We’ve found what might be some sort of mechanism.”

  “Now you have me interested,” said Fritz. “What is it?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me.”

  Ten minutes later Nevill arrived and eyed the jury-rigged electrolysis plant. Then he signalled to his assistants who dragged a large object into the hut and dropped it on the floor. Fritz looked at it dubiously.

  “I think you’ve come to the wrong department. It looks like the great grandaddy of an alien chicken wishbone once belonging to some grandaddy alien chicken. Why not present it to the biology department?”

  “I did,” said Nevill, “but they sent it right back with the message that you were responsible for investigating machinery.”

  “Machinery?” Fritz surveyed the acquisition moodily. “Have you tried it on the catering people? Perhaps they could turn it into some sort of soup.”

  “Machinery,” said Nevill firmly. “And I’ll tell you why. It isn’t animal, it’s vegetable—Tazoon ironwood to be precise. Also, it didn’t grow that way. It was manufactured, or at least trimmed to shape, as witness the tooling marks. Furthermore, the Tazoons were plenty fond of them because the Southern plain out yonder has them at an estimated density of nearly fifty thousand to the square kilometre.”

  Fritz choked on his words. “Thousand?”

  Nevill nodded. “And that plain is pretty big. If the sampling we have done is representative of the whole area there could be many millions of them on that one site alone. I know the Tazoons were alien beyond our conception of the word, but I just can’t see them producing that many just for the hell of it. That would be an exercise akin to paving the Sahara desert with pencil sharpeners. It’s my belief that the wishbones are something functional. I want you to tell me what they were and what their function was.”

  Fritz nodded. “I’ll let you have a preliminary report in a day or so, but if that’s a machine I should hate to see their idea of a great big alien chicken wishbone.”

  After Nevill had left, Fritz spent a quiet hour examining the thing from all angles and going all over the surface of it with a magnifying glass looking for clues as to its function. Then Jacko had it hauled to the workshop for a more thorough examination. He reported back when the work was completed.

  “I think we have something here, Fritz. You know those nodules on the inner surfaces, well, the fluoroscope shows a dark mass of some foreign material in each. If you’re agreeable we’re proposing to cut one out and see what it is.”

  “Start cutting,” Fritz said, “because if this is a sample of Tazoon engineering then the sooner we get to grips with it the better.�
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  Reluctantly the handsaw cut into the ancient ironwood. Halfway through, the blade screeched complainingly on some hard inclusion. Jacko made another cut at a tangent and suddenly the nodule became detached, and from inside it he shook a large, dusty crystal on to the table.

  “Now that’s interesting!” said Fritz. “There are metal fibres in the structure of the carcass and metallized facets on the crystal. On this evidence I’d say this was some form of piezo-electric device. And see how the crystal is drilled— do you suppose there could have been strings across this thing?”

  Jacko counted the nodules—equal on both sides. “Lord, a harp!” he said in a voice heavy with incredulity.

  Fritz stared at him dubiously. “Or a sound-transducer,” he said. “There are common electrical paths through the ironwood, and connections to the crystals. If you applied an alternating current to those contacts, the crystals would excite the strings in sympathy according to the resonant frequency of the particular system. I wonder what on earth it would sound like?”

  They looked at each other in silence for a time.

  “Jacko, start re-stringing what’s left of this thing while I sort out a power amplifier and a few bits and pieces. Together we can make some be-eautiful music.”

  “Right,” said Jacko, “but if your conception of music is anything like your engineering I’m going to dig out some earplugs too.”

  Three

  It took three hours to complete the assembly. Fritz disappeared to the communications hut and returned with an assortment of equipment which he appeared to assemble more by inspiration than by design. When everything was ready he switched on. The first results were shattering, and the electronics needed drastic revision before a reasonably tolerable result was obtained.

  After some final adjustments Fritz pronounced himself satisfied with the results and dropped into a chair to listen attentively, his gaze wandering to the open shutter and the blood-red sunset trailing nakedly beyond.

  “Listen to it, Jacko!” said Fritz happily. “Alien and beautiful beyond recall.”

  “I might just point out,” said Jacko, “that if somebody attempted to re-string a hundred-thousand year old grand piano with random electrical cable and without any idea of the scale and pitch involved, the results would sound equally alien.”

  “I’m in no mood to quibble with one who possesses such a tiny soul,” said Fritz. “To me this is music such as the ancient Tazoons knew it as they walked hand in hand in the eyeless evenings of old Tazoo. Can’t you imagine it, Jacko, this incredible music voiced by a million harps in the blood-red twilight of this alien land?”

  “It makes my head ache,” said Jacko. “What are you feeding into the blasted thing, anyway?”

  Fritz coughed. “Actually it’s the telemetry signals from a weather satellite, but the harp contributes about five-hundred per cent distortion, so you’d never know it from music.”

  “You ought to be locked up! Isn’t there something distinctly loony,” said Jacko, “about the notion of anybody wanting thousands of crazy self-playing harps to the square kilometre. No culture could be that fond of music and survive.”

  “They didn’t survive. And we can’t yet hope to understand so alien a culture. If you want a parallel, think of all the millions of personal transistor radios taken to the beaches on Terra on a public holiday.

  Think how much simpler life would be if they erected loudspeakers at four-foot intervals on all beaches and made full-time listening compulsory instead of merely unavoidable.”

  Despite the warmth Jacko shuddered visibly and closed his eyes, while the complex tones of the harp sang strangely with unfathomable harmonies which did curious things to his stomach. “I’m beginning to get the idea,” he said, “exactly why the Tazoons decided to migrate. Listening to this, I get precisely the same urge myself.”

  At that moment the door was flung open and Nevill, eyes aglow with jubilation, burst into the hut. “Fritz, we’ve done it! A real find at last. To judge from the extent of our soundings we seem to have hit upon the location of a whole damn Tazoon city under the sand.”

  Fritz raised a hand in salute. “Congratulations, Philip! This sounds like the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. Exactly where is this place?”

  “Under our very noses in fact—about twenty kilometres east of here. I tell you, Fritz, there could be a real metropolis down there.”

  He stopped, aware for the first time of the singing harp.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “A genuine Tazoon harp in action,” said Fritz modestly. “Don’t you like it?”

  “No,” said Nevill, “because it isn’t right. Nobody, however alien, would want more than one of anything that sounds like that. Besides”—he winced as the harp screeched into an entirely new scale—“the Tazoons had very small ear cavities. Their audible range was undoubtedly in the medium ultrasonic. Frankly they could never have heard anything pitched as low as that. Sorry! Try and make it do something else like lighting fires or something.”

  And so saying, he was gone, leaving Fritz looking frustrated and trying to avoid Jacko’s eyes. “All right,” he said, “so even I can’t always be right first time.” He turned off the amplifier disconsolately. “I still think it was a good idea.”

  “That’s the second of your good ideas that has run off the rails today,” said Jacko, fingering his ears.

  “Second?” Fritz looked mildly surprised.

  “Yes, I forgot to tell you. Your idea for obtaining pure nitrogen for the cats by fractional distillation in the micro-Linde didn’t solve the problem, it merely transferred it. The blasted Tazoon atmosphere’s eaten the guts out of the Linde compressor.”

  “Damnation!” said Fritz. “You’d better get the boys together, Jacko. I want every repairable ground-cat and tractor prepared for operation, and as much heavy lifting and moving tackle as we can acquire.”

  “What are you planning, Fritz?”

  “Let’s face it, Jacko, we can’t keep enough transport in service to do the daily forty-kilometre round-trips to the new site for very long. If that is a major site they’ve found, there won’t be much point in having a base camp this far distant. The logical thing to do is expend all our resources, moving the whole base to the new site.”

  “Jeez,” muttered Jacko. “It’d take months to dismantle this lot and transport it that far.”

  “I said nothing about dismantling. A Knudsen hut is a unit structure. It is capable of being moved as a whole with reasonable care. Can you think of any reason why we shouldn’t just attach a cat or tractor to each hut and haul it bodily over the sand to the new site?”

  “Yes, Colonel Nash and the base psychiatrist, to name only two. A Knudsen could never stand a belting like that and finish in one piece.”

  “Ordinarily, no, but these have been covered with alternate layers of resin and sand to a thickness which has become ridiculous. Dammit, Jacko, you’ve got a metal and sand-filled resin laminate there which must have all of a hundred and fifty times the strength of the original hut.”

  “You’re dead right, of course,” said Jacko. “But I’m going to love seeing you try to explain it to Colonel Nash.”

  “All right,” said Nash, eventually. “You can start moving the base just as soon as the necessary cables and services have been laid. I don’t need to remind you that everything has to be fully secured by sundown. And I warn you that if anything goes wrong… ”

  He leaned back speculatively for a moment.

  “You know, Fritz, I must confess I’m disappointed. I’d expected great things from unorthodoxy, but when it comes to the point you can’t even promise to keep a decent transport system in operation.”

  “A snowflake,” Fritz protested, “wouldn’t stand much chance in Hell unless you had a ton of refrigeration equipment alongside. The fault is not being in Hell, but in being a snowflake. You’ve got a roughly similar position with your cats on Tazoo. A suitable cat could easily be des
igned for these conditions, but it would need Terran resources to build it and a long haul to bring it out here. The cost would be astronomical. The limitation is in associating transport with the idea of a ground-cat.”

  “I’m perfectly aware of that,” said Nash. “In fact it’s the reason I sent for you. You have the reputation for producing the impossible at very short notice. All right—I challenge you to produce.”

  “Miracles we perform immediately,” said Fritz morosely. “The impossible takes a little longer. After all, we’ve only been here a week. “

  Nash watched him narrowly for a moment. “Fritz, frankly I don’t believe anybody has the remotest chance of doing what I ask, but I’m calling your bluff. If you have any sort of transport running on Tazoo in three months’ time I’ll be glad to take back all the harsh things I’ve ever said about U.E. If you don’t I’ll have to send you back to Terra. This expedition wasn’t designed to carry any dead weight.”

  “It’s a challenge I’ll accept,” said Fritz, “but don’t expect to equate transportation with any vehicular form you’re used to, because the chances are a million to one against it looking like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

  Jacko was waiting for him outside the office. “Bad?” he asked.

  “Not good,” said Fritz. “We’ve got three months to crack the transport problem or get kicked out as a bunch of no-good layabouts. The honour—even the continuance of U.E. —is very much at stake. Somehow we’ve got to contrive some sort of vehicle, and this in the face of the fact that we have no source of constructional material capable of withstanding the Tazoon environment.”

  “So where do we go from here, Fritz?”

  “Damned if I know. You go and check the arrangements for the big move. I’m going over to the site to see how friend Nevill is doing. He may have dug up a little inspiration out there—and Heaven knows I could use a little right now.”