The Unorthodox Engineers Read online

  “Because,” said Fritz, “as far as we can tell the whole system is interlocked back to a master computing house of such complexity that it will likely take years to unravel the individual controls. For reasons best known to themselves the Tazoons did not appear to have been in favour of local circuit isolators, so we have to accept the whole—or nothing at all. I’m making a formal request, sir, for you to leave. If you remain I can’t be responsible for the consequences.”

  “Are you staying, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then we stay too. I appreciate it’s your show, but I think you’re over-stressing the danger angle.”

  “Very well,” said Fritz. “But remember it was your decision.” He returned wearily to his communication point. “Jacko, prepare to switch on.”

  “Have they gone?”

  “No, they insist on staying to see the fireworks.”

  “Ouch! I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “If I did,” said Fritz, “the chances are that nothing would persuade me to stay on this platform while you throw that switch. Bring the current up to a maximum over thirty seconds and hold it there for three minutes. If you can’t contact me on the communicator immediately you’ve switched off again then get down here fast with all the emergency equipment you’ve got.”

  “Right,” said Jacko. “And good luck! I’m giving you a count-down of ten… ”

  Seven

  If Fritz van Noon was prepared for the worst experience of his life he was still unprepared for the sheer intensity and quality of the impressions which assaulted him. The whole tunnel cavity lit up in a kaleidoscope of lights of unbelievable colour-range and brilliance. The air grew rapidly and uncomfortably hot and choking with acrid vapours which his lungs could not accept and which burned his skin like the breath of a playful blowlamp.

  But it was the noise that dug furrows in his soul. A series of rising screams from a dozen mechanical throats passed up through the audible range and into the low ultrasonic, causing dust fires to break out at intervals along the platform. Devices hammered and clattered and chattered in a cacophony which clawed at his eardrums with red-hot needles. Literally every fragment of the installation vibrated or resonated or contributed in some way to the atmosphere of screaming, explosive thunder. Ominously, the train which Fritz had stationed himself to watch, held motionless for a full minute then discharged itself in a rumbling, grinding ricochet into the station and down the further tunnel, accompanied by a cataclysmic roar which contained all the acoustic qualities of a continuous collision with an unending series of cheap tin tea-trays.

  Scarcely had the first train disappeared from view than another skeleton juggernaut hurled itself upon the station and drove a hectic and furious path straight down the line and was gone before his senses could properly interpret its arrival. Fritz cringed before the shock-wave of its passing and watched his precious monitoring instruments scatter in all directions. He ground his teeth in mental pain at the sound of the mechanical anguish of tortured metal biting into tortured metal. Sparks and white-hot fragments showered the platform and peppered his clothing with a pattern of small singed holes.

  Colonel Nash and his entourage were now crouched against the wall further down the platform, white-faced and with their hands over their ears, while some noise-making instrument above aimed horrific noises at their heads. Under their feet the dust smouldered with a repulsive miasmatic odour which seemed to hit them in waves.

  Fritz flinched as yet another train entered the station, this one fighting to halt itself with a spine-chilling screech of unseen brakes which fought valiantly to kill the considerable momentum. He gritted his teeth and watched its progress until it finally shuddered to a halt. With his monitoring equipment out of action he was forced to estimate the vehicle’s speed mentally and make a rough guess at the G-forces which would act on the passengers of a vehicle involved in such a drastic reduction of speed. The answer told him more about the physiology of the Tazoons than Nevill had deduced in the previous twelve months.

  Abruptly the power died and his eyes were forced to adapt to the relative dimness of the Terran floodlights. His ears still whistled and ached from their recent battering, and the intolerable heat and humidity made him feel like the occupant of some outlandish turkish bath. Nash climbed unsteadily to his feet, and picked his way carefully around the untidy layers of dust on the platform. His aides, displaying classic pen-pusher courage, made straight for the exit.

  Nash headed towards Fritz.

  “Van Noon!”

  “Sir?” Fritz saluted briefly while trying to balance an audio-frequency spectrum analyser which was in danger of falling off the platform into the channel.

  “I owe you an apology,” said Nash. “Lord, that was ruddy awful! I’m not saying you didn’t warn me—but where in hell did you get all that power?”

  “I’ll be reporting on that, sir, as soon as I’ve tidied a few details.”

  “Very well,” said Nash. “There’ll be a Staff conference at three o’clock tomorrow in my office. I’d appreciate your answer then.”

  He turned and strode off, while Fritz became aware of the communicator buzzing urgently.

  “Fritz, Fritz! Are you all right?”

  “Only just,” said Fritz. “It was grim. Everything was at least five times as fast as its Terran counterpart and about twenty times as noisy, to say nothing of the heat. If that’s a sample of a deserted Tazoon subway in operation I hope I never have to suffer one during the rush hour.”

  “I’ve got news for you,” said Jacko. “We had switching trouble up here on the temporary lines we rigged. According to our calculations we were only able to supply forty-three percent of the total estimated loading. If you’ll hang on for a moment I’ll give you a test run at a hundred percent loading.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Fritz hastily. “For that I’d need some repeaters and telemetry equipment plus a few unattended TV cameras. I’m not staying here for a hundred percent loading run.”

  “Did you discover anything?”

  “Enough. Initially the potential weakness of this system will be confined mainly to its passengers. It’s a Mag-Lev system. The Tazoons were apparently using an adaptation of an A.C. linear motor for traction, with the bottom of the channel as the reactive element. Magnetic repulsion lifts the train clear of the track so that they’re hovering on a magnetic levitation field. I suspect the same principle should be operating on each side to centre the train with respect to the tunnel walls.

  “Only we didn’t have enough current to make it fully effective. The trains were grinding on the track and the walls—hence the appalling noise. With the train held in a mechanically frictionless supporting field the only losses to be overcome are inertia, air-resistance and eddy-currents. No wonder this subway is capable of silly speeds!”

  Fritz looked about him. “I can’t yet see how the current pickup is arranged, but that’s probably inductive too. Suffice it to say we can soon adapt it to our own purposes.”

  “Good.” said Jacko, “But how is this going to produce what we set out to achieve. They asked for a transport system and we’re offering a subway with all that connotes in the way of limited routes and limited points of access. How long do you think that is going to satisfy Nevill?”

  “The rest of his career, I should think,” said Fritz. “The building of a subway is a climactic achievement in the history of any culture, requiring, as it does, the co-ordination of a considerable quantity of technological resources. Therefore you only build subways to connect points which are sufficiently important to warrant such endeavour. Give Nevill a functional subway under this city and he will have immediate and convenient access to all those points of the city which the Tazoons themselves thought worth while making accessible. You not only have a transport system but a considerable pointer to the psychology and cultural habits of the indigenous civilization.”

  When Fritz arrived at the Staff conference he
had the feeling that the rest of the meeting must have been convened about an hour earlier, for the assembly was already engaged in earnest discussion at the time of his arrival. Nevill was leafing forlornly through a formidable pile of notes, reading abstracts, and Colonel Nash was in the chair.

  “Ah, Lieutenant, take a seat. We hope you are going to tell us how you came by that impressive source of energy which enabled you to put on that display last evening in the subway.”

  “I can do more than that,” said Fritz. “I think I can add considerably to our knowledge of the Tazoons themselves. But let’s start with what were referring to as ‘Harps’. I suddenly realized what they really were.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Mechano-electric energy converters—piezo-electric generators, if you like. The harps are merely assemblies of high-efficiency piezo-electric crystals operated by the vibrating strings of the harp. The strings are made to vibrate by the passage of those vicious night winds.”

  “I’m no scientist,” said Nash, “but I would have thought that piezo-electric effects were scarcely of sufficient magnitude to be useful for energy conversion on that scale.”

  “A common misconception,” said Fritz. “Even our relatively undeveloped Terran ferroelectric ceramics are capable of something better than a power generating density of sixteen watts per square centimetre, which has solar cells beaten hollow. The Tazoon crystals are capable of an output of around eighty watts per square centimetre and a conversion efficiency of better than ninety-five percent. An efficiency markedly better than even the most advanced Terran M.H.D. oscillating-plasma reactors, Mechano-electric conversion has always been a highly promising line of development, but hampered by the fact that on Terra there was a scarcity of large-scale sources of mechanical energy of useful frequency.

  “The Tazoons made ultra large scale use of medium-level energy by utilizing the winds to activate the harp strings. A Tazoon ‘harp’ in a typical night wind is capable of an output approaching two kilowatts. This comes out to around a megawatt of power for each square kilometre of plain equipped with ‘harps’.”

  “Are you sure of this, Fritz?” asked Nevill.

  “Perfectly sure. We powered the subway by re-stringing some of the ‘harps’ out on the plains there.”

  “But doesn’t the output vary with the force of the wind?”

  “Oh yes, but with the harps ranged over a wide area the variations average out fairly well.”

  “But how did they obtain their power when there was no wind?”

  “They didn’t,” said Fritz. “We’ve found nothing which would indicate any attempt to store the power nor any suggestion of an alternative supply. When the wind stopped, everything stopped. Thus by habit if not by nature the Tazoons were probably nocturnal.”

  “But this is ridiculous,” said Nevill. “I still can’t conceive that they would fill whole plains with electrical generating transducers.”

  “Why not? They had no particular use for the great outdoors. By and large their native environment was intolerable to them.”

  Nevill sat up sharply. “That’s a highly speculative statement to make. How do you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “Simple,” said Fritz. “Firstly, they were nearly blind, hence the need for such inordinately intense lighting such as we found on the subway. If my calculation is correct even Tazoo at mid-day was a pretty dull affair to their eyes. Secondly, the temperature the subway reached was so far above ambient that it’s a reasonable guess that they couldn’t tolerate outside temperatures for very long. They had a very low body mass and presumably chilled rapidly.”

  “Incredible!” said Nevill. “I knew they were small-boned, but body mass…”

  “If you’d seen the rates of acceleration and deceleration of a Tazoon subway train you’d soon see that only creatures of small body mass wouldn’t be injured by it.”

  “All right,” said Nash, “you seem to have all the answers. Perhaps you also know why the Tazoons become extinct?”

  “I could make a good guess. Even more than ourselves the Tazoons were power dependent animals, for the aforementioned reasons. They had reached a point where they couldn’t exist without power for light and heat, having presumably reached an evolutionary dead-end which had put them out of phase, so to speak, with their native environment. Now remember that they depended on power from the ‘harps’, not having any great resources of alternative fuels, either fossil or nuclear. Remember also that the device frames were made of ironwood from the trees of the forests which used to adorn the plains. I suggest they increased their power generating areas at the expense of the trees until at some point they encountered soil erosion. Normally soil erosion is reversible if the right steps are taken to combat it, but…”

  “Well?” said Nash.

  “Soil erosion led to sand and the sand and wind conspired to form a sandblast which abraded and destroyed the strings of the harps. The failure of the harps meant loss of power— the very power essential to bring in the desalinated sea-water necessary to help combat the soil erosion. The process developed into a vicious circle—more sand, less ‘harps’; less ‘harps’, more sand, and so on ad-infinitum, every day the situation worsening as the sand robbed them of the power they needed to combat its formation.

  “When the sand grew deep enough it even prevented ironwood seeds from rooting, so the rest of the forests gradually died also. The Tazoons, faced with a gradual but unalterable loss of power, took the only course open to them—they tried to migrate to the tropical regions where the climate was life-supporting without the need for power. History seems to record that very few of them ever got there, which is not surprising when you consider that the night-wind was certainly capable of blowing a Tazoon clean into the air.”

  There was several moments’ silence. “And the ‘harps’?” asked Nash. “That was their sole means of power generation?”

  “We’ve found nothing which would indicate otherwise.”

  “What a pity! Philip Nevill had just succeeded in persuading me to lend support for a rather ambitious project. Consequent upon your demonstration of both power production and a potential source of transport, Philip was proposing to re-establish the Tazoon city, initially to cater for archaeologists interested in extra-terrestrial work, but later as a permanent colony and as a supply base for ships moving out to the Rim.”

  “You mean to re-populate the place—turn it back into a living city?”

  “Given time, yes. If possible also irrigate the deserts and reclaim some of the wasteland. It’s a great pity you have such admirable reasons why it can’t be done.”

  “But it can be done,” said Fritz. “Given time and sufficient labour to repair the ‘harps’ there’s enough energy out there to power the whole city and a dozen others.”

  “But I thought the sandblast…”

  “…ruined the strings. Yes, it did—but that was before the advent of Fritz van Noon. The Tazoons probably used a plain metal wire, possibly titanium, which was susceptible to abrasion. Remember they had no organic chemistry to speak of, hence no plastics. We can use a high tensile and extremely tough steel wire with a polysilicone elastomer coating over it, which is a highly abrasion-resistant combination and should give many years’ service without trouble. Unfortunately it will damp the vibrations considerably—but then, we don’t need the degree of either heat or light which the Tazoons found necessary.”

  “And you really believe the Tazoons became extinct because of the lack of a suitably coated wire?”

  “Yes,” said Fritz, “just that. And let it be a lesson to ourselves. We don’t know what factors in our own technology may be lacking when it comes to meeting some new and unexpected crisis. Our development is probably as one-sided as the Tazoons, but in another direction. Therefore nothing but benefit can come from the complete assimilation of every phase of Tazoon science and technology into our own. If colonization can do that, then I’ll see you have the power to colonize.”
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  “For the want of a nail…” said Nevill speculatively.

  “Fritz,” said Nash. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about the possibility of permanently establishing U.E. as a branch of the Terran Exploratory task force instead of merely a section of the Engineering Reserve. How would you react to that? Of course, it would mean promotion….”

  “I should personally welcome the idea, sir,” said Fritz, “but I fear I’ve already accepted another assignment on Tiberius Two. They’re trying to establish a mono-rail system there.”

  “I see,” said Nash. “And just what is there about a monorail system on Tiberius Two that requires your peculiar talents?”

  Fritz coughed discreetly. “I understand it’s something to do with their gravity. Apparently it changes direction by seventy degrees every Tuesday and Thursday morning… ”

  The Pen and the Dark

  The scudder slid through candy-floss clouds of cirrus and strato-cumulus so extremely Earthlike in formation that even the scudder’s well-travelled occupants felt a twinge of nostalgia for home. Far below, the green and gilded fields proudly displayed the rich bust of the planet Ithica ripening in the rays of the G-type primary. The occasional sprawl of town or metropolis betrayed the Terran origin of Ithica’s inhabitants and the results of their desire to recreate the image of a far-off homeworld. With a little imagination this could easily have been mistaken for one of the rarer spots on Earth.

  But when the scudder cleared the haze of the cloud formation, the black and fearsome thing which reared above them was decidedly not of Earth.

  Caught on a sudden and curious downdraught, the scudder dived steeply and then went into a mammoth power-climb that took it soaring into a wide and safe helical orbit around and finally above the livid patch of darkness.