“How are you doing, Jerome?” said Mallat Rill Glevdane, the Dorrinian who was supervising the repairs. “Problems?”
Jerome, who had been forcing mastic into a seam, paused to dab his brow through the open faceplate of his helmet. “Yes—I can’t get a reliable seal here. The mastic isn’t doing a lot of good.”
“How much have you put in?”
“At least a kilo, and I can still hear the air going through. We ought to take the plate off and have a look at the seating.”
An amused expression appeared on Glevdane’s pinched face. “That’s your expert opinion, is it?”
“You don’t need to be an expert to see that this whole system is garbage.”
“It was built forty years ago by Tarn Gall Evalne.” Glevdane no longer looked amused. “He was a Guardian, and one of our most celebrated engineers.”
“He might have been good at carving molecules into netsuke, but he hadn’t a clue about large structures.” Jerome nodded in the direction of Lock 18. “There’s your trouble, right there. Rigid frames built into a semi-rigid tube. Those things are causing the leaks. The rest of the tunnel adapts to rock creep, but the door frames don’t—so you keep on getting sprung plates.”
“If the frames weren’t rigid the lock doors wouldn’t seal.”
“Because they go into the frames. They should he face-fitting. I could design you an airlock door which could take a distortion of five or ten centimetres in the frame and still remain airtight.”
“You must have a truly brilliant mind,” Glevdane said heavily. “I wonder why it is that a man who would presume to instruct Evalne has been assigned such ordinary manual work?”
“That was only because…” Jerome broke off, surprised at himself—after all that had happened—for allowing old preoccupations to affect his current attitudes. Towards the end of his placement interview, sixty-six days earlier, he had been astonished to learn that his lack of formal engineering qualifications were to count against him when his place in an alien society on an alien world was being decided. It seemed monstrously unfair that the same prejudices which had worked against him on Earth could hold sway even when he was in vastly different circumstances and in another man’s body on a remote planet. His youthful habit of arguing with teachers instead of listening to them was still paying a harsh return.
“Anyway,” he said, “I still think the plate should come out.”
“I bow to your expert opinion,” Glevdane said. “Our safety regulations state that, where possible, no more than two workers shall remain in an evacuated section of the tunnel. Can you handle the job with a single helper?”
“You want me to do it?”
“You’re the great practical engineer.” Glevdane’s eyes glinted in the shadowy grotto of his helmet. “Of course, if you prefer me to give the work to a more experienced…”
“I can manage,” Jerome said quickly, concealing his unease at the prospect of trusting his life to a Dorrinian-made vacuum suit. The limitations of the environment had had a profound effect on Dorrinian science and technology. Minerals were plentiful, but oxygen was a precious manufactured commodity and without an abundance of it there had been little progress in metallurgy. Similar constraints had affected the development of glass, plastics and other materials, with the result that many artifacts resembled museum pieces to Jerome’s eyes, devices in which the greater part of the designer’s ingenuity had gone into overcoming his materials’ sheer unsuitability for their purpose. The garment he was wearing was a prime example. To him there was more than a hint of a 19th century diving suit about it, and he suspected it would have been quite impracticable in Earth gravity.
“Very well,” Glevdane said. “You have a complete tool kit here, and I’ll send a man to work with you.” He explained that he and the rest of the crew would observe tunnel safety regulations by withdrawing beyond two locks and sealing them before Jerome disturbed any plating.
Jerome nodded, scarcely listening, as he concentrated on checking his oxygen supply and closing up his helmet. The suit became more claustrophobic than ever when he had clamped the thick face plate, an act of imprisonment which reminded him how much he hated the Dorrinian way of life. Hardly a night ever passed without his dreaming he was back on Earth, walking in the open, feeling the benison of rain on his face, and when he awoke to the sterile warrens of the Precinct it was almost impossible to control the trembling of his limbs. The nights when Donna Sinclair was beside him were easier to bear, but the only thing which gave any direction and meaning to his existence was the long-term prospect of returning to his own world. If furthering that ambition meant working for the Dorrinians, aiding their stealthy invasion of Earth, then he was prepared to push himself to the limit.
“I volunteered to help you, Mister Jerome,” said an approaching worker. “Is it okay if I help you?”
The speaker would have been practically unidentifiable in his sealed vacuum suit, but Jerome recognized the tone and mode of address. He had had a few conversations with Sammy Birkett since his arrival on Mercury, and had found them difficult and embarrassing. The young gardener appeared to have adjusted to his new circumstances with remarkable ease, but Jerome sensed an underlying confusion and terror.
One manifestation was Birkett’s desire to spend as much time as possible with Jerome, talking incessantly about local affairs back in Whiteford. reciting lists of names in the hope of discovering mutual acquaintances. Jerome could sympathize, but found it harrowing to remain long in Birkett’s company. He and Birkett were socially incompatible, whether on Earth or on Mercury, but he had an idea that his aversion for the younger man had a lot to do with the traumatic scene in Pitman’s garden. How was he to relate to a person whose face had burned outwards from the mouth, whose body had puffed and split and shrivelled in a concentration of solar fire?
“Of course you can help, Sammy,” he said, resolving to make the best of the situation. “We’ll show them how these things are done in Whiteford.”
“You bet, Mister Jerome—we’ll sure as hell show them.” The suit radio, Dorrinian micro-engineering at its best, made Birkett’s voice seem to originate within Jerome’s helmet, creating an uncomfortable intimacy. “I’m ready to bust my ass.”
“If I were you I’d avoid that kind of rhetoric,” Jerome said. “Under the circumstances.”
“Sorry, Mister Jerome—cussin’ is just a habit with me.”
“What I meant was that these suits aren’t too…Never mind, Sammy—let’s go to work.”
Jerome watched Glevdane and the other members of the nine-strong work party reach Lock 17 and go through it. They closed the circular door, breaking all radio contact, and a few seconds later an amber light appeared above it, signalling that an airtight seal had been effected. There was a longer wait until the group had retreated beyond the next lock, almost two hundred metres further down the tunnel, then the image of a green circle—the Dorrinian work symbol for PROCEED—flicked briefly in Jerome’s mind.
The simplified telepathic instruction from Glevdane reminded him that the two Dorrinians he had first encountered, Pitman and Belzor, were far from typical of their race in the matter of mind-to-mind communication. All Dorrinians possessed the talent to some extent, but at the median level they could do little more than transmit basic pictures to a known target at short range. With them, telepathy was simply a useful adjunct to verbal communication, and they were almost as much in awe of a Pitman or a Belzor as Jerome had been when first exposed to their powers.
“Check your oxygen and we’ll get started,” Jerome said. He waited until Birkett had inspected his gas tank and had signalled his readiness, then began unfastening the suspect wall plate. It was held in place by slotted screws which were not significantly different from many produced on Earth. Jerome wondered if it had been a case of similar problems engendering similar solutions, or if the Terran personalities imported by telepathy over the centuries had influenced the outlook of Dorrinian designers. Aided by Birkett, he removed all the screws, inserted a lever beneath one edge of the plate and eased it up from its seating. There was an immediate screeching whistle as air began to escape to the surrounding vacuum.