Where I Wasn't Going Part 18

"If I know you, Dr. Ishie; and you, too, Mike--you haven't eaten," she said with a smile. "Now, have you?"

"Millie," said Mike, "you've just reminded me that I'm as hollow as a deserted bee-stump after the bears get through with it!"

"Little Millie," said Ishie, looking up at the figure nearly as tiny as his own, "you must be telepathic as well as beautiful. Confusion say 'Gee, I'm hungry!'"

"I'm told that the fate of the satellite depends on you two," Millie smiled. "I thought I'd just give our fate a little extra chance. Now drop what you're doing and light into this.

"After that, if you've got a job for a mere biologist, I've got my lab readied up where it can last till I get back and--I'm not bad with a soldering iron. Meantime, why don't you let Paul and Tombu go eat while you eat?"

"Good idea," said Mike. "You two. You heard the lady. We gotta give our fate the benefit of victuals. Scat."

As soon as the physicist and the engineer were settled to the plastic containers of food and coffee she had brought, wolfing them down hungrily, Millie opened up.

"While we're alone, I'm going to speak my piece," she said. "You two will do me the honor of not taking offense if I say that you have the most brains and the least consciences aboard--and I happen to share the latter characteristic."

The two looked up guiltily and waited.

"Now don't stop eating, for I'm not through talking," she said. "That magneto-ionic effect canceler you dreamed up would probably cancel the six hundred forty pound magneto-ionic effect pull you dreamed up--if such a thing existed.

"What I want to know ... don't stop eating until you've decided whether you're going to let me in on your game or not ... is what really does exist? I might be of some help, you know."

"But--" Mike and Ishie simultaneously choked over their food, looked at each other, and then Mike blurted out, "but how could _she_ know?"

"Don't worry," said Millie. "I'm probably the only one. It takes a person with little conscience and much imagination--takes a thief to catch a thief, I mean--yes, I think I mean that quite literally.

Besides, I can help with some of that gla.s.sware that disappeared out of my supplies several days ago. Oh yes, I knew it was gone and where it went--but I figured any purpose you had was a good one, Ishie.

"But for how I personally canceled the idea of your magneto-ionic effect from the flare--it just happens that last night I was curious while everybody was asleep. When Bessie first came on duty this morning, I offered to relieve her while she had a cup of coffee, and I got a half-hour all by myself with the Cow. The captain wasn't up yet.

Her console's so simple anyone with a basic knowledge of computers and cybernetics could figure her out.

"Practically the first question I asked--something about our orbit--the Cow told me that the information was top secret, and to get it I must go to the proper channel and identify myself as Mike. I started to intercom you, Mike, to tell you that your machinations were showing, but Bessie came back about then. I hung around to see what would happen, and pretty soon Bessie asked the Cow about the same question--but instead of getting the same answer, the Cow told her that an external magneto-ionic field was pulling us out of line.

"So I went up to your engineering place. I rather thought you'd like to know what the Cow had told me--but Dr. Ishie was there, and so instead I went about my own business until I could figure things out.

"Now I couldn't figure things out. But I could figure there's a monkey wrench somewhere--and since the two of you have been sticking together like Siamese twins, I know it will be perfectly all right to ask you in front of Ishie.

"Now," she finished, "do I get my girlish curiosity satisfied? You don't have to tell me. I'll just keep on being puzzled quietly and without indicating the slightest magneto-ionic dubiousness, if you'd rather. But I might be helpful; and I _would_ like to know."

"Confusion say," Ishie declared through the side of his mouth, "that he who inadvertently puts big foot in mouth is apt to get teeth kicked loose. We are very lucky, Mike, that it was Millie who asked the question of the Cow at that time. Besides, we've got to tell somebody sooner or later. We can't just run off by ourselves.

"Yes, Millie, I think you have a job," he said. "Your help here will be appreciated, of course. But what we really need is a way of bridging the gap between ourselves and the rest of the personnel before it gets too wide. How's your P.R. these days?"

"That's something I learned in a hard school, public relations," she answered nonchalantly. "De-segregation was just beginning when I was a girl back in Georgia. But maybe I'd better know what the gap is."

The two began to talk, interrupting each other, incoherently outlining the Confusor and the various forces it exerted, and the--what Mike kept calling the inertial fish hook.

Finally Mike took over. "To put it simply," he said, "our pet didn't do at all what we expected--it hooked in on inertia and it took us off. A confusing little Confusor--but Millie--it's a s.p.a.ce drive! A real, honest-to-gosh s.p.a.ce drive!"

Millie gulped. It was far, far more than she had expected. Perhaps this was another form of disguise like the magneto-ionic....

"Are you sure?" Then she answered her own doubts. "Of course you're telling the truth now. That's not something you two would play games about." Then in awe--"You've really got it!"

"But why, then," she said, uncomprehending, "are you hiding it?" But before they could answer, she answered her own question again. "You'd have to. Of course. Otherwise it'll be strangled in red tape.

Otherwise n.o.body'll let you work on it any more, except as head of a research team stuck off somewhere. Otherwise, Budget Control would take it over and make a fifteen-year project out of it--and the two of you will probably have it in practical operation...."

She looked at the molds and wiring taking form all across the machine shop.

"Oh, no! You'll have it in operation--soon!"

"Yes, soon--and we hope soon enough." Ishie sighed, then grinned impudently. "There is," he said, "the little matter of the fact that--in all innocence but nevertheless quite actually--we wiped out Thule Base.

"If we don't get the big Confusor in operation very soon, it may be that we shall spend a good deal of time in Earth's courts proving our innocence while someone else botches most thoroughly the job of creating a Confusor that could take us to the stars. And that," he added mournfully, "neither of us would enjoy. We might not even be able to prove our innocence, for there would be many very anxious to prove us sufficiently guilty to keep us out of the way for many years.

"So you see," he said, "you have a very real P.R. problem. Our a.s.sistants here could work better if they knew what they were doing.

The people aboard the wheel would be most excited by a s.p.a.ce drive, and would give us every aid.

"But what the law says, it says--and the captain would have no choice but to put us in irons if he heard, though I think our captain is such that he would not want to do it.

"We must tell everyone what we have, for where the wheel takes us, they will go. But we can't tell them, for if we tell anyone, it will get back to Earth--and we murdered Thule, according to the law of Earth.

"It is a very neat problem," he said.

Major Steve Elbertson arrived first at Project Hot Rod, and trailing behind him on their scuttlebugs, the other six men.

As he slipped through the lock and out of his s.p.a.cesuit, he reached down the neck of his coveralls and carefully extracted the Security key in its flat, plastiskin packet, from between his shoulder blades.

At least the villainous captain had not gotten his hands on this, he thought, and whatever damage had been done to Hot Rod probably could be quickly repaired.

He had heard of the hunt for the key, and been silently amused, though he had volunteered no information to his briefing officer, Chauvenseer.

Stepping forward as briskly as a sick rag doll, he fitted the key into the Security lock and snapped open the bar that prevented Hot Rod's use.

As the others entered, he turned to them. Supporting himself against the edge of the console and managing to look perfectly erect and capable despite his weakness, he said: "I have instructed each of you to learn as much as you could of the operation of this device. It is now necessary that the civilian scientists," he p.r.o.nounced the "civilian" as though it were a dirty word, "be relieved of their rule over this weapon, and that the military take its proper place, as the masters of the situation. I trust each of you has learned his lessons carefully, because it is now too late for mistakes--although we have with us a.s.sistance far superior to that of the civilians.

"Gentlemen," he said, and his voice took on power as he talked, "it is a pleasure to re-introduce to you a companion whom you have known as Lathe Smith.

"This, gentlemen," he said formally, gesturing one of the men forward, "is the Herr Doktor Heinrich Schmidt, of whom you would have heard were you familiar with the more erudite of the developments of s.p.a.ce physics.

"Dr. Schmidt," he added, "it is a pleasure to be able to again accord you the courtesies and respect that are your due.

"Now for myself," he continued, "it may surprise you to know that I, too, have a somewhat more advanced rank than you have suspected."

Deliberately he unpinned the major's insignia that he wore, and brought out a sealed packet, opened it, and pinned on four stars.

"Gentlemen," he finished, "may I introduce myself? General Steve Elbertson, commanding officer of all s.p.a.ce forces of the United Nations Security Forces.