Inside, there was no resistance to his cautious finger. The spoolshaped hollow space was empty.
Under Motor Force-field Inoperative the manual said simply: Remove and replace rhodopalladium nodules.
Alvah looked. He found the tiny sockets where the nodules ought to be, one in the flanged axle-head, the other facing it at the opposite end of the chamber. The nodules were not there at all.
Alvah went into the storage chamber. Ignoring the increasingly forceful protests of his empty stomach, he spent a furious twenty minutes locating the spare nodules. He stripped the seal off the box and lifted the lid with great care.
There were the nodules. And there, appearing out of nowhere, was a whirling cloud of brightness that settled briefly in the box and then went back where it came from. And there the nodules were gone.
Alvah stared at the empty box. He poked his forefinger into the cushioned niches, one after the other. Then he set the box down with care, about-faced, walked outside to the platform and sat down on the top step with his chin on his fists.
“You look peaked,” said B. J.‘s firm voice.
Alvah looked up at her briefly. “Go away.”
“Had anything to eat today?” the girl asked.
Alvah did not reply.
“Don’t sulk,” she said. “You’ve got a problem. We feel responsible. Maybe there’s something we can do to help.”
Alvah stood up slowly. He looked her over carefully, from top to bottom and back again. “There is one thing you could do for me,” he said. “Smile.”
“Why?” she asked cagily.
“I wanted to see your fangs.” He turned wearily and went into the floater.
HE puttered around for a few minutes, then got cold rations out of the storage chamber and sat down in the control chair to eat them. But the place was odious to him with its gleaming, useless array of gadgetry, and he went outside again and sat down with his back to the hull near the doorway. The girl was still there, looking up at him.
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry about this.”
The nutloaf went down his gullet in one solid lump and hit his stomach like a stone. “Please don’t mention it,” he said bitterly. “It was really nothing at all.”
“I had to do it. You might have killed somebody.”
Alvah tried another bite. Chewing the stuff, at any rate, gave him something to do. “What were those things?” he demanded.
“Metallophage,” she said. “They eat metals in the platinum family. Hard to get them that selective―we weren’t exactly sure what would happen.”
Alvah put down the remnant of nutloaf slowly. “Who’s ‘we’? You and Bither?”
“Mostly.”
“And you ― you bred those things to eat rhodopalladium?”
She nodded.
Then you must have some to feed them, said Alvah logically. He stood up and gripped the railing. “Give it to me.”
She hesitated. “There might be some―”
“Might be? There must be!”
“You don’t understand. They don’t actually eat the metal―not for nourishment, that is.”
“Then what do they do with it?”
“They build nests,” she told him. “But come on over to the lab and we’ll see.”
At the laboratory door, they were still arguing. “For the last time,” said Alvah, “I will not come in. I’ve just eaten half a nutcake and I haven’t got food to waste. Get the stuff and bring it out.”
“For the last time”, said B. J., “get it out of your head that what you want is all that counts. If you want me to look for the metal, you’ll come in, and that’s flat.”
They glared at each other. Well, he told himself resignedly, he hadn’t wanted that nutloaf much in the first place.
They followed the same route, past the things that chirruped, croaked, rumbled, rustled. The main thing, he recalled, was to keep your mind off it.
“Tell me something,” he said to her trim back. “If I hadn’t got myself mixed up with that farmer and his market basket, do you still think I wouldn’t have sold anything?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, why not? Why all this resistance to machinery? Is it a taboo of some kind?”
SHE said nothing for a moment.
“Is it because you’re afraid the Cities will get a hold on you?” Alvah insisted. “Because that’s foolish. Our interests are really the same as yours. We don’t just want to sell you stuff―we want to help you help yourselves. The more prosperous you get, the better for us.”
“It’s not that,” she said.
“Well, what then? It’s been bothering me. You’ve got all these raw materials, all this land. You wouldn’t have to wait for us―you could have built your own factories, made your own machines. But you never have. I can’t understand why.”
“It’s not worth the trouble.”
He choked. “Anything is worth the trouble, if it helps you do the same work more efficiently, more intel―”
“Wait a minute.” She stopped a woman who was passing in the aisle between the cages. “Marge, where’s Doc?”
“Down in roundworms, I think.”
“Tell him I have to see him, will you? It’s urgent. We’ll wait in here.” She led the way into a windowless room, as small and cluttered as any Alvah had seen.
“Now,” she said. “We don’t make a fuss about machines because most people simply haven’t any need for them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Alvah argued. “You may think―”
“Be quiet and let me finish. We haven’t got centralized industries or power installations. Why do you think the Cities have never beaten us in a war, as often as they’ve tried? Why do you think we’ve taken over the whole world, except for twenty-two Cities? You’ve got to face this sooner or later―in every single respect, our plants and animals are more efficient than any machine you could build.”
Alvah inspected her closely. Her eyes were intent and brilliant. Her bosom indicated deep and steady breathing. To all appearance, she was perfectly serious.
“Nuts,” he replied with dignity.
B.J. shook her head impatiently. “I know you’ve got a brain. Use it. What’s the most expensive item that goes into a machine?”
“Metal. We’re a little short of it, to tell the truth.”
“Think again. What are all your gadgets supposed to save?”
“Well, labor.”
“Human labor. If metal is expensive, it’s because it costs a lot of man-hours.”
“If you want to look at it that way―”
“It’s true, isn’t it? Why is a complicated thing more expensive than a simple one? More man-hours to make it. Why is a rare thing more expensive than a common one? More man-hours to find it. Why is a―”
“All right, what’s your point?”
“Take your runabout. You saw that was the thing that interested people most, but I’ll show you why you never could have sold one. How many man-hours went into manufacturing it?”
Alvah shifted restlessly. “It isn’t in production. It’s a trade item.”
She sniffed. “Suppose it was in production. Make an honest guess. Figure in everything ― amortization on the plant and equipment, materials, labor and so on. You can check your answer against wages and prices in your own money―you’ll come pretty close.”
Alvah reflected. “Between seven-fifty and a thousand.”
“Compare that with Swifty’s Morgan Gamma―the thing you raced against. Two man-hours― just two, and I’m being generous.”
“Interesting,” said Alvah, “if true.” He suppressed an uneasy belch.
“Figure it out. An hour for the vet when he was foaled. Call it another hour for amortization on the stable where it happened, but that’s too much. It isn’t hard to grow a stable and they last a long time.”