The Unorthodox Engineers Read online

  Nevill glanced at his sketch map and drew a line through two diagrammatical blocks. “It’s all yours,” he said, “but don’t drive yourself twitchy trying to comprehend too much too fast. You have to absorb alien environments rather than understand them. Sooner or later the pieces fit themselves into place. And Heaven knows there’s enough pieces available for fitting—a jigsaw embracing the life and work of a complete culture.”

  “Seems that we’ve just got ourselves a subway,” said Fritz, as he rejoined Jacko at the workings. “We need to make some progress. Lets open up the building here and see what’s inside.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Jacko suspiciously.

  “You,” said Fritz. “I’m going below again to see if I can trace any control connections running up from below. I want you to go in there and see if you can find anything similar running down. We’ll meet at the end of the shift and compare notes. You know what to look for—cable groupings or isolated wiring; anything which suggests that it might have a control or power function.”

  “You’re really set on this idea?” Jacko said. “About using it, I mean.”

  “Certainly,” said Fritz. “Let’s face it, if Fritz van Noon can’t restart an alien subway then who the blazes would you expect to do it?”

  “That’s what I’ve always respected about you, boss—your modesty,” said Jacko.

  An hour later they met again at the portals of the building.

  “There’s a sort of power and control complex which appears to come down somewhere near the further end here,” said Fritz.

  Jacko nodded. “I’m sure I came across the other end of that,” he said. “There’s a channel running through the basement of the building, and the complex rises into that, and is then split into sections which are fed to the floors above.”

  “What’s it like in there?” asked Fritz.

  “Weird,” said Jacko. “There’s no other word to describe it. It’s like the epitaph to an insane, overgrown spider with compulsive delusional tendencies.”

  Fritz grinned. “I can imagine it all too clearly.”

  Jacko’s description of the basement of the building was, if anything, an understatement. The ground floor proved inconceivably worse, and the situation deteriorated rapidly as they ascended to the higher floors.

  The subway had possessed the crude simplicity of a functional unit, but the detail and complexity of the levels in the building above defied analysis or description. For a long time no object which they examined provided any sort of clue as to its function, and they traversed the cluttered levels with an increasing sense of dismay and frustration. As with most of the larger buildings only the top storeys had suffered any considerable decay, and the sand and damp had not penetrated into the interiors to any great extent, so that the state of preservation on the levels in which they were interested was impressive.

  However, Fritz’s spirits were nearing their lowest ebb as he battled with an ocean of incomprehensibilities. When he wandered into the final gallery, he stopped, groping for form in the alien pattern, then seized a glimpse of illuminated understanding and fanned it into a flame.

  “Jacko! Do you know what this is? Don’t you see—electrical control gear.”

  Jacko was unimpressed. “If this is their idea of electrical control gear I should hate to see their version of a collection of crazy, twisted maypoles.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Fritz. “The approach may be alien, but the underlying logic is inescapable. Unless I miss my guess this is an automatic switching system, and from its complexity I should think it’s pretty comprehensive. It may even be the only switching system for the whole of the Tazoon subways. You realize what that means?”

  “About fifteen years’ circuit analysis,” said Jacko morosely.

  “No—well, yes, but look at the condition of this stuff. The preservation is as good here as it is in the subway itself. The chances are it’s still functional. We might only have to re-connect the power to get the whole thing back into operation.”

  “Perish the thought!” said Jacko. “I may be a bit naive, but assuming—just for the sake of argument— that what we’ve found is a subway, where would you get the energy to power it? Subways need a lot of power, and if the Tazoons ran out of it where are you going to get more?”

  “We’ll worry about that later. It may not be easy, but I have one advantage the Tazoons didn’t have— access to the complete technologies and resources of a scientific culture. And one quite alien to anything here. We could possibly persuade Colonel Nash to bring an MHD oscillating-plasma generator out from Terra, but it would need a lot of shouting. As an unorthodox engineer I’d prefer to locate the original Tazoon power source and see if a completely fresh engineering approach could start it producing again.”

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Jacko.

  “Hmm, get Harris and a couple of the electrical boys to join me here to try and analyse the circuit logic. Meanwhile you take the rest of the squad below and start dismantling the train. Between us we should discover enough about the way the Tazoons handled electricity and mechanisms to have a fair idea of how to make things work.”

  “You think so?” asked Jacko. “I still haven’t forgotten what you did to that damned harp.”

  Fritz’s team did indeed manage to isolate a certain amount of circuit logic, and once a few principles were established the work progressed rapidly. They concentrated mainly on the huge switching columns, swiftly realizing that what at first sight could be mistaken for relative crudity was in fact a cunning and sophisticated short-cut technique to solve a highly complex sequence-switching problem. Among other things they discovered that the assembly was probably built to handle alternating current with an efficiency peaking at about ten kilocycles a second, although such periodicity seemed unlikely in practice.

  The current handling capacity of the assembly was staggeringly high. Breakdown voltages too were significant, but afforded no real clues as to the normal operating potentials. Safety precautions against unshielded conductors were non-existent, and they were forced to the conclusion that either the equipment was designed to operate unattended or else the physiology of the Tazoons had rendered them immune to electric shocks which would prove lethal to their Terran counterparts.

  The apparatus which logically should have been metering equipment, however, made no sense at all.

  Somebody was soon at work rigging up a communicator to connect the switching gallery with the subway below. When the line was functional Jacko was the first to make a call.

  “Fritz, we’ve run into a snag on this train dismantling project. We can’t get the blasted thing apart. Tell me I’m crazy if you like, but I’d swear the train was cast as a whole and not fabricated—moving parts included.”

  “Cast in a pattern of that complexity, in steel?” asked Fritz incredulously.

  “Not steel,” said Jacko. “Titanium, unless I judge my metals wrong.”

  Fritz van Noon pressed his eyes tightly shut. Every time he thought he was making some progress, the planet whipped the legs from under him. “That only makes it worse,” he said grimly. “Come to think of it, we were being a bit naive expecting a long-extinct culture to leave something which could be dismantled with a hammer and a pair of pliers. Is there no hope at all?”

  “We could take a cutting laser and chop it into two-inch slices, but I doubt if Nevill would react favourably to the idea.”

  “Come to think of it,” said Fritz, “neither would I. Better abandon the project, Jacko, and come back up here. I think I’ve got a better idea anyway.”

  “Is this a new plan, or just good, honest desperation?”

  “I’m looking at it this way: there are two ways of making a piece of equipment yield the secret of its function—you can dismantle it and worry the principle out of its components, or you can simply set it operating.”

  “I hope I’m misunderstanding you,” said Jacko. “For one ghastly moment I had the idea you were propo
sing to re-start the Tazoon subway without knowing how it worked.”

  “Can you think of a faster way of finding out how it works than by seeing it in action?”

  “Is one allowed to resign from the project?” asked Jacko. “Or is suicide the only logical form of escape?”

  “You can also be beaten to death by your superior officer. The boys claim they have unscrambled the power lines in the gallery here, and we’ve made a guess at what should prove to be the main input lines.”

  “So?”

  “So I want to trace them back to source. Then we can start investigating whether or not we can restart the native power producing plant. I want every man I can get employed on tracing those lines, Jacko, and I want you to supervise personally. Remember, we have to get the whole thing operational inside three months if we’re to beat Nash’s deadline.”

  “I still think it’s a waste of time,” said Jacko. “If we’re right that the Tazoon civilization collapsed because of lack of power, what chance have we of finding it thousands of years later?”

  “I suspect the answer is quantitative,” said Fritz. “They were trying to run a civilization, we’re trying only to run a subway. I’d estimate our requirements at perhaps one ten-millionth of theirs or less. Viewed in that light it doesn’t seem too difficult a task, now does it?”

  Six

  Nevill’s team had concentrated on clearing only the tops of the taller buildings. Generally the sand penetration into the interiors was not total, and thus they had access to large modules of Tazoon architectural environment without having to wait for the total clearance which ultimately would follow as resources became available. Once gaining the interior of a building they were relatively free to explore the entire contents of the lower levels. Archaeologically, the finds were so numerous that complete classification and analysis would take many decades.

  So Nevill set up specialist study groups to make a complete analysis of certain typical areas as a guide to rapidly separating the unique from the mundane when new areas were opened up. Representative samples were carefully crated for transport to Terra, where a more exhaustive examination could be undertaken.

  For the next two weeks Fritz himself was kept fully employed in his role as authority on alien science and technology, and the sheer mass of work confronting him could have kept him comfortably occupied for several years at least. It was now painfully obvious that the staff of the Tazoon expedition could have been increased a hundredfold and still the finds would have been more numerous than the researchers.

  Fritz’s own work in the field was hampered by the fact that he was working without assistance, the entire complement of the U.E. squad being devoted to locating the elusive power source for the subway.

  On this latter point even Nevill had been unable to offer any help. Although detailed maps of the sectors of the buried city were beginning to be built up there was nothing in them which suggested any power generation or distribution facilities. This was not conclusive, because in very few areas had it yet been possible to excavate below the level of the basic terrain on which the city had been built, and what lay underneath was still a subject for conjecture, but the pattern of conductors disappearing into the depths was sufficient to convince Fritz that whatever the source it was probably not located within the city confines.

  Jacko’s report did not appear to illuminate the situation.

  “I tell you, Fritz, that main power input cable you gave us was nothing of the sort. For fifteen blasted days we’ve traced that thing. A cable it may be, but it’s a distribution circuit if it’s anything at all.”

  Fritz scowled. “Are you sure you didn’t lose it and pick up another cable in error?”

  “Do me a favour!” said Jacko. “We were feeding a signal into the thing at the switching house and picking it up all the way down the cable. I tell you that thing is a distribution complex originating, not terminating, at the subway building.”

  Fritz sat up sharply. “Distributing power where?”

  “Well—I hate to tell you this, but it covers a fair proportion of the Southern plain. The cable divides and sub-divides ad-infmitum as far as we can tell. We counted divisions into roughly forty thousand pairs and that still left a fair majority—but we gave up when we found what was at the end of a dozen or so of the minor pairs. I’ll give you three guesses… ”

  Fritz saw what was coming. “I can imagine… those damned Tazoon harps.”

  “Harps, harps and nothing but harps, and never a string between them. Listening to music I could understand, but can you seriously maintain that they installed millions of loudspeakers across the plain just so that they could listen to the trains? Nobody could be that alien!”

  Fritz thumped the table. “Jacko, you’re a ruddy genius!”

  “Am I?” Jacko blinked.

  “Damn right. You’ve given me the clue I needed. Get the squad together, Jacko, we’re going to re-start the subways of Tazoo.”

  Ten weeks of the precious three months of Colonel Nash’s ultimatum had elapsed before they were in a position to make the preliminary tests. The intervening period had been one of furious activity for the U.E. personnel, and one over which Fritz had draped a veil of secrecy such that nobody outside of his group had any idea of the direction of his slowly unfolding plans. But on the final evening everything was ready. Fresh heavy-duty cables threaded their way out of the subway entrance. On the platform, two dozen floodlights illuminated the mechanical achievements of a culture which had passed many thousands of years before, and shone into the tunnel to light a vehicle which had stopped in that position while Neanderthals still walked the hills and plains of Terra.

  Shortly before sunset Fritz and his team assembled at the subway building. Already the calm stasis of the day was beginning to tremble with unease as the riding cloudrace overhead broke lower, heralding the nightly windy torment of the land. This was no lull before the storm but an increasing tension, a tight coil being further tightened to the inevitable breaking point which was the lash of the sand-filled gale. As the storm broke they hastened inside.

  Fritz found himself more than slightly in awe of what he contemplated doing. Immaculate as was the preservation of these Tazoon artifacts he could not help remembering, as an engineer, the patterns of low temperature creep, the grain growth, the diffusion—all the degradation of properties which fabricated metals might be heir to after a hundred thousand years of rest. Fortunately the Tazoons had understood their materials and their atmosphere well, and apparently had built to last, with a success which was staggering.

  In any case, Fritz was now committed. Sentiment and curiosity apart, the very continuance of the U.E. depended on his ability to re-activate the subway. He could not draw back now even though the whole place threaten to crumble about his head in a welter of dust and thunder.

  As was his custom when there were unavoidable risks to be taken, Fritz alone attended the array of instruments set up in the subway proper. Jacko was in the switching gallery on the other end of the communicator, in a hastily conceived control set-up which included the rest of the relevant monitoring instruments they had been able to piece together.

  Jacko, uncomfortably aware of the danger of Fritz’s position, had sought to dissuade his boss from being present for the actual test run. But Fritz, foreseeing the cataclysmic damage to the installation which might result from the experiment, had decided to be present to gain first-hand experience of the principles of operation—which might by their own employment become hopelessly obscured.

  Five minutes to zero hour, and Fritz took a last check on his instruments. He had already signalled Jacko to begin preliminary switching when he heard footsteps and voices echoing in the corridors leading to the platform. He snatched up the communicator.

  “Hold it, Jacko. I think I’ve got company. Do nothing until you hear from me.”

  “Right,” said Jacko. “But it’s none of our boys down there, I promise you.”

  “No,” said
Fritz, “unless I mistake the gruff undertones it’s Colonel Nash and his aides. I’ll have to get rid of them, of course. We’d get ourselves a bad name if we knocked off all of the top brass in one go.” He slammed down the handset and marched up the platform just as Nash and his retinue arrived.

  “Lieutenant van Noon,” said Nash icily, “I have just been informed of your intention of trying to re-start the Tazoon subway this evening. As this is a project of the first magnitude I think I should have been more directly informed.”

  “You will be, sir, as soon as we have anything to report.”

  “I don’t think you quite appreciate my point,” said Nash. “If you succeed in this it will be the very first Tazoon mechanical artifact of any moment to have been re-started. As such it is a rather—er—historical occasion. Naturally I’d have liked to have been asked to be present.”

  “And I don’t think you quite appreciate my point,” said Fritz. “There comes a stage in the progress of any project which is usually obscured by a notice reading: Danger, Engineers Testing. As far as we know the Tazoon subway is intact and perfectly preserved. From an engineering point of view there is no reason why we can’t switch on the current and have it back in operation as it last was.”

  “Well?” asked Nash ominously. “What’s the problem then?”

  Fritz shrugged. “How do we know that what was normal for the Tazoons is even remotely tolerable for us? The power input for this one sector of the line is quite fantastic by Terran standards. The Tazoons don’t appear to have been fools about the efficiency of power conversion, so I can only conclude that Tazoon subway operation was a pretty hectic procedure. When they throw the master switch upstairs we shall have a sample of Tazoon mechanical environment in the raw. I don’t want anybody down here at that moment who isn’t absolutely essential to the success of the operation.”

  Colonel Nash snorted with irritation. “The best available information to date indicates that the Tazoons were small-boned, avian and somewhat fragile creatures. I am perfectly certain that officers of the Terran Exploratory task force are able to tolerate the conditions in a deserted subway every bit as well as its former occupants. But if you happen to be so unsure of your mechanical aptitude why don’t you switch things on a piece at a time?”