'First of all,' Pethel said, 'you don't know what's over there; you don't have the slightest idea."
'I know what Jim Briskin said in his speech.'
'Briskin, when he made that speech, hadn't been over there either. Second, Mary would never ...'
'I don't mean Mary,' Hadley said. I'm going with someone else, the first person I ever met who really understood and I could talk to instead of live out a fake role in front of. Sparky and I are going to be the first couple to emigrate and take up a new life in a virgin world half-way down the tube of that Jiffi-scuttler. Don't try to talk me out of it; it's impossible. Write out some sort of note that'll get me into TD's labs. We're depending on you, Dar. Two human lives ...'
'Aw for god's sake,' Pethel protested. 'How are you going to live over there ?'
'How did Cally Vale live ?'
'Sands transported one of these old obsolete A-bomb shelters over. Subsurface. Filled with supplies. She lived down in that.'
Hadley said, 'Is the shelter still over there ?'
'Of course. What would be the point of transporting it back ?'
'We'll live in that, then. Until we can build.'
'What happens when the food in the shelter runs out ? Assuming it hasn't already.'
Seating himself on the edge of Dar Pethel's desk, Hadley said, 'I called around. You can pick up one of those colonization units dirt cheap these days; the manufacturers are going broke because virtually nobody is emigrating. They're glad to get rid of one at any price, and the unit contains autonomic farming equipment, well-drilling rig, basic tools for...'
'Okay,' Pethel said, nodding. 'I know what those colonization units contain; I admit one of them can sustain you indefinitely. So you got that part figured out - not bad.'
With fat, sleek pride Hadley said, 'I've even arranged for the unit to be delivered at TD's offices in Washington later today.' He had thought of everything. 'Let's be realistic, Dar; a lot of people are going to be emigrating, and I want to get there first. I want things to be good for me and
Sparky. So will you write out whatever it'll take to get her and me into TD and into that
'scuttler ? I ought to have some priority; I was down in the repair department with Erickson when it happened, remember ?' He waited. Pethel said nothing. 'Come on,' Hadley said. 'The forces of time and change are running against you, Dar. And you know it, deep down inside.'
'Yes, but they always have,' Pethel murmured. He got a sheet of paper, brought out his pen. 'Are you really in - how did you describe it ? - love with her ?'
Hadley said, 'On my mother's honor.'
Wincing, Pethel began to write.
'I'll never forget you for this,' Hadley said. 'And I hate like hell to leave you stranded with no sales manager ... but it can't be helped; she's depending on me.' He explained, 'George Walt, you know, those two mutants who own the satellite, they closed everything down.'
Pethel ceased writing, lifted his head. 'No kidding.' He scowled. 'I wonder what that means. I
wonder what they have in mind.'
'Who cares what they have in mind ?' Hadley said fervently. 'I'm getting out of here.'
'But I'm not,' Pethel pointed out. He slowly resumed writing, deep in frowning thought.
When Leon Turpin, chairman of the board of directors of Terran Development, heard the news about the Pekes he was fit to be tied. How can we get any new industrial techniques out of that!
he asked himself. Dawn men don't have anything on the ball, technologically speaking.
'Flint axes,' Turpin spat out disappointedly. 'So that's what's over there; that's what hopped out of that childish glider. And we've expended a QB satellite, seven million dollars.' Of course there were still mineral rights. The Pekes, according to Don Stanley's report, definitely did not mine; therefore, everything below the soil remained intact.
But that was not enough. Turpin yearned for more. There had to be more. His mind reverted to the fallen satellite. They did manage to knock that out, he realized, and we're still having trouble doing that.
Across from him Don Stanley shifted about restlessly in his chair. 'If you'd like to see the Peking man we brought back, this Bill Smith, as the linguistics machine calls him - '
'If I want to see a Peking man,' Turpin said, 'I'll look in the Britannica. That's where they belong,
Stanley, not walking around on the face of the globe as if they owned it. But I guess it can't be helped, not at this late date.' From his desk he picked up a letter. 'Here's a young couple, Art and
Rachael Chaffy, that want to emigrate over there. The first of a horde. Why not ? Call them up and tell them to come by, and we'll let them go across.' He tossed the letter toward Eton Stanley.
'Should I explain to them the risks ?"
Turpin shrugged. 'I don't see why you should; that's not our business. Let them find out the hard way. Colonists are supposed to be hardy and brave. At least they used to be, in my time. Back in the twentieth century, when we first started landing on the planets. This certainly is no worse than that; in fact it's considerably better.'
'You've got a point, Mr. Turpin.' Stanley folded the letter and placed it in his breast pocket.
The intercom on Turpin's desk said, 'Mr. T, there's an official from the U.S. Department of
Special Public Welfare here to see you. It's Mr. Thomas Rosenfeld, commissioner of the department.'
Cabinet level, Turpin said to himself. A big man. Capable of setting policy. He said to the intercom, 'Send Mr. Rosenfeld in.' To Stanley he said, 'You know what this is going to be ?'
'Bibs,' Stanley said.
'I can't make up my mind whether to tell him or not,' Turpin said. The news about the Pekes would very soon, of course, begin to seep out; it was a temporary secret only. But still, that was better than nothing. The party had just returned from the other side, and the media people who had been along could not possibly have released the news through their services so soon.
Rosenfeld, then, did not know; he could assume that. And could deal with the man accordingly.
A tall, red-haired man, well-dressed, entered Turpin's office, smiling. 'Mr. Turpin ? What a pleasure. President Schwarz asked me to drop by here for a little while and sort of chat with you.
Sound you out, as it were. Is that an original Ramon Cadiz you have there on the wall behind you ?' Rosenfeld walked over to inspect it. 'White on white. His best period.
'I'd give the painting to you,' Turpin said, 'but it was a gift to me. I know you'll understand.' He lied in his feet, but why not ? Why, for purposes of mere etiquette, should he give away a costly work of art ? It made no sense.
Rosenfeld said, 'How's your defective 'scuttler functioning ? Still as defective as ever ? We're very interested in it. We were, even before Jim Briskin's speech ... President Schwarz was exceptionally quick - even for him - to spot the potentialities in this. I don't believe anyone else is able to reach a major decision as efficiently as he.'
This was odd, in view of the fact that no way existed by which Schwarz could have known about the break-through prior to Briskin's speech, Turpin realized. However, he let this pass. Politics was politics.
Don Stanley spoke up. 'How many sleepers do you have in the fedgov warehouses, Mr.
Rosenfeld ?
'Well,' Rosenfeld said dryly, 'the figure generally given is close to seventy million. But actually the true number at this date is more like one hundred million.' He smiled a wry, humorless smile that was more a grimace than anything else.
Whistling, Stanley said, 'That's a lot.'
'Yes, ' Rosenfeld agreed. 'We admit it. Domestically speaking, it's the number one headache here in Washington. Of course as you very well know, this administration inherited it from the last.'
'You want us to put your hundred million bibs through into this alternate Earth ?' Turpin spoke up, weary of formalities.