"But why look so glum!" He grinned. "You all should be delighted! We've found out the problem, and it turns out to be nothing at all."
The director spun on him. "Nothing? You insipid biological, can't you see? This is a disaster! We counted on hyperspace to open the stars for us. But it is infernally expensive to use unless we keep the ships small.
"And how can we keep them small if we must build huge, intricate cooling systems that must look out into that boiling hell you found? With the trickle of cryogens we'll be able to maintain during those weeks in hyperspace, it will be nearly impossible to maintain life aboard!
"You say our problems are solved," the director spoke acidly. "But you miss one point, Witness Engineer Forbs! How will we ever find crews to man those ships?"
The director hummed with barely suppressed anger, his eye-cells glowing.
Jason rubbed his chin and pursed his lips sympathetically. "Well, I don't know. But I'd bet with a few minor improvements something could be arranged. Why don't you try recruiting crews from another 'boiling hell'… one where water ice is already melted?"
There was silence for a moment. Then, from the back of the room, came laughter. A mechano with a seal of office hanging from his humaniform neck clapped its hands together and grinned. "Oh, wait till they hear of this on Earth! Now we'll see how the voting goes!" He grinned at Jason and laughed in rich, human tones. "When the biologists find out about this, they'll rise up like the very tide! And so will every closet Ethicalist in the system!"
Jason smiled, but right now his mind was far from politics. All he knew was that his wife and son would not live in shame. His boy would be a starship rider, and inherit the galaxy.
"You won't have any trouble recruiting crews, sir," he told the director. "I'm ready to go back any time. Hyperspace isn't all that bad a place. "Would you care to come along?"
Super-cold steam vented from the director's carapace, a loud hiss of indignation. The Utilitarian bureaucrat ground out something too low for Jason to overhear, even though he leaned forward politely.
The laughter from the back of the room rose in peals of hilarity. Jason sipped his lemonade and waited.
How-2
by Clifford D. Simak
Gordon Knight was anxious for the five-hour day to end so he could rush home. For this was the day he should receive the How-2 Kit he'd ordered and he was anxious to get to work on it.
It wasn't only that he had always wanted a dog, although that was more than half of it-but, with this kit, he would be trying something new. He'd never handled any How-2 Kit with biologic components and he was considerably excited. Although, of course, the dog would be biologic only to a limited degree and most of it would be packaged, anyhow, and all he'd have to do would be assemble it. But it was something new and he wanted to get started.
He was thinking of the dog so hard that he was mildly irritated when Randall Stewart, returning from one of his numerous trips to the water fountain, stopped at the desk to give him a progress report on home dentistry.
"It's easy," Stewart told him. "Nothing to it if you follow the instructions. Here, look-I did this one last night."
He then squatted down beside Knight's desk and opened his mouth, proudly pulling it out of shape with his fingers so Knight could see.
"Thish un ere," said Stewart, blindly attempting to point, with a wildly waggling finger, at the tooth in question.
He let his face snap back together.
"Filled it myself," he announced complacently. "Rigged up a series of mirrors to see what I was doing. They came right in the kit, so all I had to do was follow the instructions."
He reached a finger deep inside his mouth and probed tenderly at his handiwork. "A little awkward, working on yourself. On someone else, of course, there'd be nothing to it."
He waited hopefully.
"Must be interesting," said Knight.
"Economical, too. No use paying the dentists the prices they ask. Figure I'll practice on myself and then take on the family. Some of my friends, even, if they want me to."
He regarded Knight intently.
Knight failed to rise to the dangling bait.
Stewart gave up. "I'm going to try cleaning next. You got to dig down beneath the gums and break loose the tartar. There's a kind of hook you do it with. No reason a man shouldn't take care of his own teeth instead of paying dentists."
"It doesn't sound too hard," Knight admitted.
"It's a cinch," said Stewart. "But you got to follow the instructions. There's nothing you can't do if you follow the instructions."
And that was true, Knight thought. You could do anything if you followed the instructions-if you didn't rush ahead, but sat down and took your time and studied it all out.
Hadn't he built his house in his spare time, and all the furniture for it, and the gadgets, too? Just in his spare time-although God knew, he thought, a man had little enough of that, working fifteen hours a week.
It was a lucky thing he'd been able to build the house after buying all that land. But everyone had been buying what they called estates, and Grace had set her heart on it, and there'd been nothing he could do.
If he'd had to pay carpenters and masons and plumbers, he would never have been able to afford the house. But by building it himself, he had paid for it as he went along. It had taken ten years, of course, but think of all the fun he'd had!
He sat there and thought of all the fun he'd had, and of all the pride. No, sir, he told himself, no one in his circumstances had a better house.
Although, come to think of it, what he'd done had not been too unusual. Most of the men he knew had built their homes, too, or had built additions to them, or had remodeled them.
He had often thought that he would like to start over again and build another house, just for the fun of it. But that would be foolish, for he already had a house and there would be no sale for another one, even if he built it. Who would want to buy a house when it was so much fun to build one?
And there was still a lot of work to do on the house he had. New rooms to add-not necessary, of course, but handy. And the roof to fix. And a summer house to build. And there were always the grounds. At one time he had thought he would landscape-a man could do a lot to beautify a place with a few years of spare-time work. But there had been so many other things to do, he had never managed to get around to it.
Knight and Anson Lee, his neighbor, had often talked about what could be done to their adjoining acreages if they ever had the time. But Lee, of course, would never get around to anything. He was a lawyer, although he never seemed to work at it too hard. He had a large study filled with stacks of law books and there were times when he would talk quite expansively about his law library, but he never seemed to use the books. Usually he talked that way when he had half a load on, which was fairly often, since he claimed to do a lot of thinking and it was his firm belief that a bottle helped him think.
After Stewart finally went back to his desk, there still remained more than an hour before the working day officially ended. Knight sneaked the current issue of a How-2 magazine out of his briefcase and began to leaf through it, keeping a wary eye out so he could hide it quickly if anyone should notice he was loafing.
He had read the articles earlier, so now he looked at the ads. It was a pity, he thought, a man didn't have the time to do all there was to do.
For example:
Fit your own glasses (testing material and lens-grinding equipment included in the kit).
Take out your own tonsils (complete directions and all necessary instruments).
Fit up an unused room as your private hospital (no sense in leaving home when you're ill, just at the time when you most need its comfort and security).
Grow your own medicines and drugs (starts of 50 different herbs and medicinal plants with detailed instructions for their cultivation and processing).