Hal Clement - Bulge

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Bulge

MAC HOERWITZ CAME back to awareness as the screen went blank, and he absently flicked the

switch and reset the sheet-scanner. He had not really watched the last act. At least, he didn't think he

had. He knew it so per-fectly that there was no way to be certain whether Pros-pero's closing words

were really still in his ears or that it was simply memory from earlier times.

Two things had been competing with The Tempest for his attention. One was the pain where his left

index fingernail had formerly been, and the other was a half-serious search through his memory to decide

whether Shakespeare had ever used a character quite like Mr. Smith. The two distractions were closely

connected, even though Smith had not removed the nail himself. He had merely ordered Jones to do it.

Hoerwitz rather doubted that Shakespeare would have been satisfied with a Smith. The fellow was

too simple. He knew what he wanted and went after it with-out knowing or caring what anyone else in

the picture might care. He was an oversized two-year-old. Shake-speare would have made him more

complicated and more believable, even back in his Henry the Sixth days.

It was a nice idea, with perhaps some scholarly merit. But it didn't really help with the present

problem. This was more a piece of post-Edwardian melodrama than a carefully thought out

Shakespearean plot. The hero had been trapped by armed villains, in a situation from which there was no

obvious escape, and was being forced to help them commit grand larceny.

Of course in a piece of Prohibition-era fiction he would have refused steadfastly to help, but Hoerwitz

was no flapper's hero. He was eighty-one years old and had a mass of just one hundred pounds

distributed along his seventy inches of height. He could not possibly have lifted that mass against Earth's

gravity. He smiled in spite of the pain of his hand when he recalled the facial expressions when Smith and

his three followers had first seen him.

They had gone to a great deal of trouble to make their approach unobtrusive. They had arrived near

the apogee point of the station's six-day period instead of making the just-after-perigee rendezvous which

the freighters found more economical. This had served the double purpose of making fairly sure there

would be no other ships present and of being harder to observe from Earth. At one hundred seventy

thousand miles or so, a one-mile asteroid is visible to the naked eye and a modest-sized spaceship can be

seen in a good telescope, but one has to be looking for them deliberately.

It was a rendezvous, of course, rather than a landing. The latter word means nothing on a celestial

body where a spacesuited man weighs about a quarter of an ounce. They had made the rendezvous

skillfully enough so that Hoerwitz had not felt the contact—or at least, hadn't noticed it over the sound

effects accompanying Hamlet's stepfather's drinking. There had been no trou-ble about entering, since the

airlock leading "under-ground" or "inside," whichever way one preferred to think of it, was plainly visible

and easily operated from without. The possibility of anyone's stealing the horse from this particular stable

had not occurred seriously to anyone responsible for building the place; or if it had, he had attached more

weight to the likelihood of space emergencies which would need fast lock action.

So Mr. Smith and his men had entered and drifted down the tunnel to the asteroid's center not only

unop-posed but completely unnoticed, and Mac Hoerwitz's first realization that he was in trouble had

come after the final peal of ordnance ordered by Fortinbras.

Then he had turned on the lights and found that Hamlet had four more spectators, all carrying

weapons. He had been rather startled.

So had the others, very obviously, when they had their first good look at him. Just what they had

ex-pected was hard to say, but it must have been some-thing capable of more violence than the station

man-ager. The leader had put away his gun with almost an embarrassed air, and the others had followed

his exam-ple.

"Sorry to surprise you, Mr. Hoerwitz," the intruder had opened. "That was a very good sheet. I'm

sorry we missed so much of it. Perhaps you'd let me run it again sometime in the next few days."

Mac had been at a loss to reconcile the courtesy with the armament.

"If all you want is to see my library, the weapons are a bit uncalled for," he finally got out. "I don't

know what else I can offer you except accommodation and communication facilities. Do you have ship

trouble? Did I miss a distress call? Maybe I do pay too much attention to my sheets—"

"Not at all. We'd have been very disappointed if you had spotted our approach, since we made it as

unobtru-sive as possible. You are also wrong about what you can give us. Not to waste time, we have a

four--thousand-ton ship outside which we expect to mass up to ten thousand before we leave, with the

aid of your Class IV isotopes."

"Six thousand tons of nuclear fuel? You've been ex-panding your consciousness. It would take sixty

hours or more if I reprogrammed every converter in the place—only one of them is making Class IV

now, and the others are all running other orders. There's barely enough conversion mass in the place for

what you want, unless you start chipping rock out of the station itself. I'd guess that on normal priority

you'd get an order like that in about a year, counting administrative time for the initial request."

"We're not requesting. As you know perfectly well. You will do any programming necessary, without

regard to what is running now, and if necessary we will use station rock. I would have said you'd chip it

for us, but I admit there's a difference between the merely illegal and the impossible. Why do they keep a

wreck like you on duty out here?"

Hoerwitz flushed. He was used to this attitude from the young and healthy, but more accustomed to

having it masked by some show of courtesy.

"It's the only place I can live," he said shortly. "My heart, muscles, and bones can't take normal

gravity. Most people can't take free-fall—or rather, they don't like the consequences of the medication

needed to take It indefinitely. That makes no difference to me. I don't care about muscle, and I had my

family half a century ago. This job is good for me, and I'm good for it. For that reason, I don't choose to

ruin it. I don't intend to do any reprogramming for you, and I'd be willing to bet you can't do it yourself."

Smith's gun reappeared, and its owner looked at it thoughtfully. The old man nodded toward it and

went on, "That's an argument, I admit. I don't want to die, but if you kill me it certainly won't get you

further." Mac found that he wasn't as brave as his words sounded; there was an odd and uncomfortable

feeling in his stomach as he looked at the weapon. He must have covered it well, however, because after

a moment of thought the intruder put the gun away again.

"You're quite right," he said. "I have no intention of killing you, because I do need your help. We'll

have to use another method. Mr. Jones, please carry out our first stage of planned persuasion?"

Fifteen minutes later Hoerwitz was reprogramming the converters as well as he could with an

unusable left hand.

Smith, who had courteously introduced himself dur-ing the procedure, had gone to the trouble of

making sure his victim was right-handed before allowing Jones to start work. It would, as he said, be a

pity to slow the station manager down too much. The right hand could wait.

"How about my toes?" Hoerwitz had asked sarcastically, not yet fully convinced that the affair was

serious.

"It seems to have been proved that feet have fewer nerves and don't feel pain as intensely," replied

Smith. "Of course, the toes will still be there if we need them. Mr. Jones, start with the left hand."

Mac had decided almost at once that the visitors were sincere, but Jones had insisted on finishing his

job in workmanlike style. Smith had supported him.

"It would be a pity for you to get the idea that we weren't prepared to finish anything we started," he

pointed out.

As he floated in front of the monitor panels readjust-ing potentiometers and flow-control relays,

Hoerwitz thought furiously. He wasn't much worried about his guests actually getting away with their

stolen fuel; what he was now doing to the controls must be showing on repeaters in Elkhart, Papeete, and

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Hal Clement - Bulge

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