Subspace Explorers Part 7

"That's a h.e.l.l of a picture, chief. I simply can't visualize top-bracket executives acting that way."

"You haven't handled enough people for years enough. They can't act any other way. What I've been wanting to do, every time she sticks her d.a.m.ned s.e.xy neck out, is wring it... wait a minute; that gives me an idea... yes, that'll work. The minute they find out for sure they must all suspect it already-that you're an honest-to-G.o.d metal-wizard I can kick their teeth right down their throats. They'll all tear into their jobs like that many hundred-ton cat tractors."

"But listen! You can't tell 'em-we've got to keep it dark, the way we find the stuff."

From most people, yes; but from anybody with a brain? One, of course, could be luck. Two might-just barely-be coincidence. But the next one? I won't have to tell them, even now. I'll make the method certain the same way you did-by denying its possibility."

"Could be, at that... so maybe we'd better make it a straight tri-di survey for everything you're interested in. That would save time, in fact, over all. What kind of a list would that be?"

"Here." Maynard reached into a drawer and sailed a sheet of paper across his desk. "The full want list, which we boiled down to the must-haves."

Deston caught the paper and read it. "Is that all?" "Isn't that enough? You're a brute for punishment." "I'm surprised, is all, that gold isn't on it."

"Gold" Maynard snorted. "Besides currency base, jewelry, and show, what's it good for? We've never touched it and never intend to-produce a few tons too much and you upset the economy instead of benefitting it."

"I never thought of it that way, but that's right. Okay, chief, we'll flit. I'll keep you posted. 'Bye."

Deston strode out and Maynard flipped a switch. "Please get Wharton, Bender, Camp, Byrd, Train, and Purdom and bring 'em into the conference room. No note-pads and no recorder."

"Very well, sir," Miss Champion said; and in a few minutes four men and three women were walking toward the long table at the head of which Maynard sat.

"I for one was busy, Mister Maynard!" Cecily Byrd snapped. She was something under thirty, five feet ten in her nylons, and beautifully built. She moved with the lithe grace of a trained dancer. Her thick, brick-red, medium-bobbed hair was naturally and stubbornly curly; with a curliness no hair-dresser had ever been able to subdue. Her untannable skin was heavily freckled and, except for a touch of lipstick, she wore no make-up. Her features, while regular enough, were too bold and too strong by far for prettiness. Her mien was sullen and defiant; her eyes-smoldering green fires-swept the bare expanse of table. "What? No pads and pencils? No mikes? Isn't this conference going to be of such gravid and world-shaking import that its every word and nuance should be preserved for the edification of all ages to come?"

"Shut up, Byrd, and all of you sit down."

The red-head gasped and all the others stared; for this was something new. President Maynard had never before spoken to any one of them except in formal terms. Wondering and silent, they all sat down and Maynard smiled at them wolfishly one by one. After a long half minute of this he spoke.

"I've been looking forward to this moment for a long long time" he gloated. "But first, I wonder if any one of you has any idea of why I put up with all eight of you so long? Such intractable, intransigent h.e.l.lions; such knuckle-dusting, back stabbing, rampaging jerks as you all have been?"

"That's easy!" the red-head snapped, before any one of the eager others could say a word. "Hog-the-talent. Dog-in-the-manager. Standard Operating Procedure."

"Wrong. You're also wrong in claiming to be busy. Not one of you has even the remotest inkling of what the word means. But you are all going to find out. How you'll find out! As soon as this meeting is over each of you will be handed a planetary-project authorization and will..."

"What?" "Huh?" "Where?" 'How come?" Six voices shouted or shrieked almost as one.

"Whereupon each of you will proceed to design and staff a full-scale, optimum-tonnage plant, exactly as you want it. Each of you will have full authority and full responsibility..."

"Full authority. Yeah," Percival Train broke in, bitingly. He was a big, handsome, hard-bodied young man, with bushy, crew-cut brown hair and highly cynical-at the moment-gray eyes. "Except that I'll be told exactly what to do and exactly how to do it and then it'll be my fault when the whole d.a.m.ned operation goes stinko. Full authority, h.e.l.l! I've heard that song, words and music, before."

From me?" Maynard asked quietly. "Well... no."

"Nor will you. You'll be on your own; subject to Top Management only in matters of policy-such as no pirating of personnel from each other, for instance. That's so none of you can come around later, b.i.t.c.hing and bellyaching that your flop was clue to the way we cramped your style. If each of you does a job, and I hope you will; fine. Anybody who doesn't will get fired. I would enjoy firing you, Train, and Byrd. Any questions?"

The six looked at each other, almost in consternation. Even "Curly" Byrd was mute. Finally Train spoke. "Maybe... to be tossing out that kind of money... this, on top of Barbizon and Belmark, really blows the plug. But I still don't think that Mrs. Deston is a metalwitch. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course she isn't," Rose Purdom, a plumpish, fortyish blonde put in. "Or she'd have done it before. It's a new talent. Mister Deston. Those huge finds were just to prove to a certain hard-nosed tyc.o.o.n that he could do it. That's what's really back of this gigantic super-merger."

"If any or all of you want to believe in that supernatural twaddle it's all right with me," Maynard said, dryly. "What I am authorized to say is that the firm of Deston and Deston Incorporated has, by marked improvements in instrumentation and techniques, been able to take noteworthy strides in the science or art of locating large deposits of certain metals."

"Comet-gas!" Train rasped. "You're right, Rose, it's Deston. Es macht mir garnichts aus who finds the stuff, or how; but just one question, Mr. Maynard. Are you going to play this straight, on a first-found-first-out basis?"

"Absolutely. Thus, either Wharton or Camp will probably be first, the lady Byrd here last. Probably all of you, however, except Byrd, will have your locations before you're ready for them."

"But if probability governs, I might come in first," Cecily Byrd said, looking pointedly at Maynard.

"The possibility, although vanishingly small, does exist," Maynard admitted. "Therefore, if that event occurs, I want you all to know now as a fact that it will be because rhenium is discovered first in a non-selective survey, and not because..." He paused and his icy gray eyes scanned as much of a highly-sculptured green garment as was visible above the table's top, "I repeat, not because of our Doctor Byrd's generosity with her charms; which, by the exercise of super-human self-control, I have managed so far to resist. Now go back to your offices, all of you, and start earning part of your pay."

The red-head flushed hotly-it was the first time anyone there had seen her blush-but not even that blast could dampen the enthusiasm of the melee that followed. They shook hands all around; they whacked each other-including Maynard and Miss Champion-on the back; the men kissed the women-including Miss Champion-vigorously; and they all babbled excitedly. In fact, it took fifteen minutes for Maynard to get them out of the conference room.

And the six engineer-scientist-executives who finally left that room w ere very different from the six who had entered it such a short time before.

The Destons and MetEnge, on a fifty-fifty basis, had bought from InStell the Procyon's hulk, as is, at its appraised value for machinery and sc.r.a.p. InStell had been glad to sell her on that basis; for in the still-somewhatsuperst.i.tious public mind she was, and under any possible disguise would remain, an irreparably jinxed and hoodooed death-ship.

She was now completely reconditioned; not as a pa.s.senger liner, but as an armed and armored, completely self-contained, subs.p.a.ce-going independent worldlet with a population of just under a thousand people. There were no unmarried men or women aboard, and most of the couples had children. Every man and every woman had pa.s.sed a series of physical, mental, and psychological examinations.

With this special ship, then, and with this super-special crew, the Destons set out.

In the con-room there was now a forty-foot tri-di of the galaxy, with an eight-inch, roughly globular cl.u.s.ter of red dots in a spiral arm, much nearer to one edge than to the center of the huge lens. The Destons sat at two bewildering-instrumented desks. Behind them stood big, hard, tough Captain Theodore Jones, with his platinum-blonde wife Bernice. Her left hand rested upon his right shoulder; her spectacular head rested thoughtfully upon her hand.

At Jones' left, toward the ma.s.sed control-boards of the ship, his fifteen top officers stood at ease; at his right was a group of twenty-odd scientists.

"So that's what all explored s.p.a.ce amounts to." Jones pointed at the tiny globe in the enormous, discus-shaped, light-point-filled volume which represented the galaxy. "I simply would not have believed it. d.a.m.n it, Babe, are you sure that thing is to scale?"

"To within one percent, yes. That's why Bobby and I are going to work fourteen hours a day instead of six. I'm not going to try to tell any of you what to do"-Deston's eyes swept both groups= because each of you knows more about his own job than I do. So let's get at it.

The Procyon flashed to the nearest one of the ninety five colonized planets and Carlyle and Barbara Deston taped their three-dimensional surveys; the man on metals, the woman on oil, coal, water and natural gas. Nor was her part :my less important than his. The use of fuels as such, while large, was insignificant in comparison with their use in petrochemistry. Led by Plastics, that industry had grown so fast that not even WarnOil's fantastic expansion had been able to keep up with it.

Day after day, planet after planet, they surveyed the ninety five colonized and all the virgin planets they had scanned so sketchily on their first trip. Deston found immense deposits of several of the "wanted" metals, including copper, and Barbara found plenty of water and fuels. Tungsten and tantalum, however, were no more abundant on any of those planets than they were on Earth; and rhenium existed only in almost imperceptible traces. Therefore the Procyon set out, on an immensely helical course, toward the center of the galaxy.

On their first expedition the Destons had learned so much that they could work any planet whose sun they could see. Now, as their psionic powers kept on increasing, their astronomers had to push the Procyon's telescopes farther and farther out into the immensity of s.p.a.ce to keep them busy.

Days lengthened into weeks, and life aboard the immense sky-rover settled down into a routine. Adults worked, read, studied, loafed, and tuned in programs of entertainment and of instruction. Children went to school and/or played just as though they were at home. In fact, they were at home. Except that physical travel outside the hall was forbidden, life aboard the starship was very similar to, and in many ways more rewarding_ than, life in any village of civilization.

Deston and Barbara, however, worked and slept and ate-and that was all. Fourteen hours per day every day of every week is a brutal shift to work, especially at such grueling tasks as theirs; but the entire expedition had been built around those two and they wanted to get the job done.

Chapter 8 THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK s.p.a.cEPORT.

Galactic Metals moved its main office from Earth to Galmetia. WarnOil's was already on Newmars. InStell moved to Newmars. Many other very large firms moved from Earth to various "outplanets." Thus, while there was a great deal of objection to the formation of such a gigantic "trust" as METALS AND ENERGY, INCORPORATED, there was nothing that WestHem's government could do about it. While GalMet was now a whollyowned subsidiary of MetEnge, neither its name nor its operation had been changed in any way.

In GalMet's vast new building on Galmetia, President Upton Maynard sat at the head of a conference table. At his left sat Executive Vice-President Eldon Smith and Comptroller Desmond Phelps. At his right were Darrell Steams, head of GalMet's legal staff, and Ward Q. Wilson, Chief Mediator of WestHem. Miss Champion sat at her desk, off to one side. Wilson was speaking.

... no over-riding authority, of course, since MetEnge is a Newmars corporation and GalMet's legal domicile and princ.i.p.al place of business is here on Galmetia. While such tax evasion is not..."

"Let's keep the record straight, Mr. Wilson," Maynard said sharply. "Not evasion; avoidance. Avoidance of Earth's ruthlessly confiscatory taxation was necessary to our continued existence. Under such taxation our basic principle of operation, which the founders of GalMet inaugurated over two hundred years ago, could not possibly have remained implemented.

"Do you think it's accidental that we are the largest firm in existence? It isn't; it is due absolutely to the fact that, very unlike capital in general, we have adhered strictly to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest.

Simply stated, that Principle is: Don't be a hog. You make more, over the long pull, by letting the other fellows make something, too. Most important, it's non-inflationary, even though the standard of living is continually rising. If we had stayed on Earth and gone along all these years with blind, stupid, greedy, grasping conventional Capital, what would the price of steel have been today? What would the dollar have been worth?"

"Nevertheless, there has been some inflation..."

"How well we know it!" Phelps, the moneyman, broke in. "Whose fault is it? Your government's deficit spending-cradle-to-grave security-reckless, foolhardy installment buying-the whole inflated credit situation. We, on the other hand, do not use credit. We buy sight-draft attached-to-bill-of-lading and sell the same way. Hard money and cash on the barrelhead. We have it before we spend it."

"I'm not saying that your principle hasn't worked very well for you, up to now. You haven't had a real strike for half a century, until now. Not because of the stable dollar or of your principle of operation, however, but simply because no union was strong enough to fight you to a finish. Now, there is one. The UCM controls all copper mining and Burley Hoadman controls the UCM. The situation, gentlemen, is now desperate; it is a civili- zation-wide emergency. It is intolerable that all industry should come to a halt because of your refusal to settle this strike. You know that all industry must have at least some new copper to operate at all."

"We do," Maynard said. "You are saying that since Hoadman will not settle for anything less than double the present scale-already tops-we must cave in and pay it? And surrender to all the other unions that will jump onto the gravy train? That the subsequent inevitable surge of inflation won't hurt? You know exactly what the spiral will be."

Wilson glanced at his microphone and said nothing.

Miss Champion entered a couple of pot-hooks in her notebook. Maynard went on: "Your opinion is not for the record. I understand. This is an election year, and because the dear pe-pul are getting out of hand the administration sent you here to tell us to give Hoadman everything he wants-or else. They're junking financial stability completely to get themselves re-elected."

"No, I was not going to..."

"Not so crudely, of course; but n.o.body has put any pressure at all on Hoadman."

"We can't." Wilson spread his hands out helplessly and Miss Champion made a few more marks in her book. "All popular sentiment is for the union and against you. You are altogether too big."

"Or not big enough-yet," Maynard said, savagely. "Also, in the public mind, the salaries of all you tyc.o.o.ns are altogether too high."

"High, h.e.l.l!" Smith snarled. "How about Hoadman's take? He drags down more than all four of us put together!"

"Whether or not it is true, that point is irrelevant. The pertinent fact is that Senator Wrigley of California is preparing a bill to annex both Newmars and Galmetia to the Western Hemisphere."

Smith whistled. "Brother, They went a h.e.l.l of a long ways out after that one!"

Wilson said nothing.

Steams stared thoughtfully at the mediator, then said, "It's unconst.i.tutional. Obviously. It violates every principle of Interplanetary law."

Better yet, it's unenforceable," Smith said. "Admiral Porter knows as well as we do that his handful of tomato-juice cans wouldn't stand the chance of the proverbial nitrocellulose cat in h.e.l.l."

"One more thing," Maynard said. "Ninety five other planets wouldn't like it, either. Have you thought about what a good, solid boycott would do to Earth?"

"The possibility has been considered, and the consensus is that there can be no effective boycott. Labor will hold..."

"Hold it!" Maynard snapped. "You know-at least you should-that the organizations of the Planetsmen are no more like the labor unions of Tellus than black is like white. They are in favor of automation. They want change. They want advancement by ability, not seniority. As opposed to that att.i.tude, what do your unions want, Mr. Wilson?"

Wilson pursed his lips in hesitation and Smith said, "I'll answer that for you, then, Mr. Wilson. They want security, period, but they don't want to have to earn it. They want everything handed to them on a platter. Advancement by seniority only-all they have to do is stay alive. No changes allowed except more pay and more benefits for fewer hours of exactly the same work. Strictly serf labor and that's the way they like it. Security, h.e.l.l! It's exactly the same kind of security, if they had brains enough to realize it, as they'd have in jail."

"It has been computed," Wilson said, ignoring Smith's barbed opinion, "that in an emergency outplanet Labor will support that of Earth. Furthermore, public opinion is very strongly opposed to such gigantic trusts, combines, and monopolies as you are. And finally, at the worst, the inevitable litigation would take a long time, which would...?" Wilson paused, delicately.

"It would," Maynard agreed, grimly. "It would cramp us plenty and cost us plenty; and the administration could and would pull a lot of other stuff just as slimy."

Wilson neither confirmed nor denied the statement and Maynard went on. "Okay. We'll sign up for everything Hoadman demands; even the voice in management and the feather-bedding. Also, well make the wage scales and fringe benefits retroactive to cover all hours worked on and after July first."

"May I ask why? They might yield that one point." "Why should they?" Smith sneered. "It's just out of the goodness of our hearts. You may quote me on that" "And that isn't all," Maynard went on. "We wanted a three-year contract, but Hoadman wouldn't add a day to his one-year position. So we'll do even better than that. Type a memo, please, Miss Champion. What we've said, and add, Cancellable by either party on ten days' notice in writing'!"

"What?" The mediator was shaken out of his calm. When Maynard handed him the signed memorandum he handled it as though it might bite. Just what have you robber barons got up your sleeves?"

"Nothing but our arms," Smith a.s.sured him. "What could we have? Haven't your spies kept you informed of our every move?"

(No outsider as yet knew anything about Project Belmark, which was ready to go into full production.) "I don't like this at all-not any part of it," Wilson said, thoughtfully. "I don't think I will recommend signing any contract containing a cancellation clause. Even though I can't see it, I know there's a hook in it somewhere... and I think I know what it is... but Hoadman is perfectly sure that...?"

"Go ahead, ask me," Smith said. "I'll answer-I'm not under oath. You smell something because you can think. Hoadman can't. Even if he could, and even if there were a hook in the thing, he'll grab it. He'll have to. If he doesn't, the miners will throw him out on his ear. Besides, he'll love it. Imagine the headlines= BURLEY HOADMAN, GIANT BRAIN OF LABOR, BRINGS MIGHTY GALMET TO ITS KNEES'."

"Mr. Maynard," Wilson said, "please erase Mr. Smith's remarks and this sentence from the record."

"By no means. Hoadman will of course listen to this supposedly top secret recording, and to hear this bit may-just conceivably-be good for what ails him."

Wilson wriggled uncomfortably and Miss Champion wrote another line of shorthand.

Discussion continued for another hour or so, after which Wilson took his leave.

The union signed, in spite of Wilson's objections, because Burley Hoadman knew that copper mining could not be automated except at prohibitive cost. Then Hoadman announced to THE PRESS: "This shows what a really tightly organized union can do. We are perfectly free to keep ahead of the cost of living and we'll keep it that way, since we can tie them up again any time we please."

Everything remained quiet then-except for some rumblings in other unions, none of which had time to develop into serious strikes-for a couple of weeks. Then GalMet cancelled its contract with the UCM. Simultaneously it announced a reduction in the price of copper to eleven point three six one cents per pound FOB s.p.a.ceport and began to supply all its compet.i.tors with all the copper they wanted. (It did not develop until later that Ajax, Revere, and all other large producers were merging with MetEnge). All mines worked by United Copper Miners shut down. Salaried people were transferred. All machinery was sc.r.a.pped. All properties and buildings were either sold or simply abandoned. Then Maynard talked to the reporters who had for many days been demanding a statement.

"In an economy subscribing fully to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest neither stupidly avaricious capital nor serf labor would exist. Nor would such a corrupt government as we now have. While it may be true that any people deserves the government it gets, this three-p.r.o.nged blight now threatening all civilization is intolerable and something must be done about it. We have begun doing something about it by making an example of Burley Hoadman and his unconscionably greedy United Copper Miners, who..."

"One question, Mr. Maynard!" a reporter broke in. "In using the word we' do you claim to be represent... "I claim nothing!" Maynard snapped. "I state as a fact that I am speaking for the Galaxians-the free men and women and the intelligent capital of the planets. These two component halves of production, eternally irreconcilable on Earth, work together on the planets for the best good of all. To resume: the closed copper mines will not be re-opened. There will never, in the foreseeable future, be any employment anywhere for the skilled craftsmen known as copper miners. We have deliberately automated the entire craft out of existence.

"We do not know whether Hoadman will believe this statement or not. Nor do we care. If he wishes to use up his union's funds in supporting the men in idleness rather than in expediting their absorption into other industries, that is his privilege.

"It has been threatened that other unions will, in spite of contractual obligations, walk out in sympathy with the UCM, to enforce Hoadman's demand that we pay four men double-scale wages to sit on cushioned chairs and play stud poker while one machine does the work. In reply to these threats I say now that we are prepared to cope with such retaliation at any level of action required.

"We are ready even for a complete general strike by all the unions of WestHem. In that case all imports to and all exports from Earth will stop. Earth will stew in its own juice until the vast majority of WestHem's people, the unorganized people, decide to get themselves out of the mess into which, by their own stupidity, laziness, and lack of interest, they got themselves.

This blast was broadcast immediately; and in less than an hour Antonio Grimes, president of the Brotherhood of Professional Drivers, was on Miss Champion's com, demanding access to Maynard.

Since she was expecting the call, he was put on at once.

"Good morning, Mr. Maynard," he began. He was a short man, inclined to fat, with heavy jowls and small, piercing eyes. At the table with him were his three major lieutenants and-not much to Maynard's surprise -WestHem's Secretary of Labor Deissner and Chief Mediator Wilson. "You overlooked the fact that nothing can replace the truck and the freight-copter. The situation, however, is not beyond repair. For a nominal sum, say a quarter-mega, I might not pull the boys off tomorrow morning.

"The trouble with you, Grimes," Maynard said, quietly, "is that while you're smart, clever, and cunning, you can't really think. You haven't got the brain for it."

"That crack'll cost you, Big Shot!" Grimes roared, shedding in the instant his veneer of gentility. "I'll show you who's got a brain, you..."

"Shut up and listen!" Maynard snapped. "If you had had any fraction of a brain you would have known that we knew exactly what you would do."

"Like h.e.l.l you knew! If you did you wouldn't've..." Grimes paused; it became evident that his train of thought had all of a sudden been derailed.

"The only question is, how big a battle do you want for an opener? All over WestHem at once, or just one s.p.a.ceport at first, to see what we have? If you can think at all you'd better start doing it, because the bigger a flop you make the deader you'll be when it's over."