Garamond shook his head. “When I said we are going back, I didn’t mean all of us, in a body. I meant that I am going back, together with any of the crew who are sufficiently determined to make it — even if that means only half-a-dozen of us.”
“But…”
“We’re going to build a fleet of perhaps ten aircraft. We’re going to incorporate as much redundancy as is compatible with good aerodynamics. We’re going to fly our ten machines towards Beachhead City, and each time one of them breaks down we’re going to take the best components out of it and put them in the other machines, and we’re going to fly on.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll get there, even with the last aircraft.”
“There’s no guarantee I won’t.”
“I’m afraid there is.” O’Hagan’s pained expression had become even more pronounced. “There’s this problem of direction which we have already discussed. Unless you’ve got a really accurate bearing on Beachhead City there’s no point in setting out.”
“I’m not worried about getting a precise bearing,” Garamond said, making a conscious decision to be enigmatic. He was aware that in the very special circumstances of the Bissendorf’s final flight the whole concept of command structure, of the captain-and-crew relationship, could easily lose its validity. It was necessary at this stage to re-establish himself in office without the aid of insignia or outside authority.
“How do you propose to get one?”
“I propose instructing my science staff to attend to that chore for me. There’s an old saying about the pointlessness of owning a dog and doing your own barking.” Garamond fixed a steady challenging gaze on O’Hagan, Sammy Yamoto, Morrison, Schneider and Denise Serra. He noted with satisfaction that they were responding as he had hoped — already there were signs of abstraction, of withdrawal to a plateau of thought upon which they became hunters casting nets for a quarry they had never seen but would recognize at first sight.
“While they’re sorting that one out,” Garamond continued, speaking to Napier before any of the science staff could voice objections, “we’ll convene a separate meeting of the engineering committee. The ship has to be cut up to get the workshop floors level, but in the meantime I want the design definition drawn up for the aircraft and the first production tapes prepared.” He got to his feet and walked towards the improvised plastic hut he was using as an office. Napier, walking beside him, gave a dry cough which was out of place issuing from the barrel of his chest.
“TB again?” Garamond said with mock sympathy.
“I think you’re going too fast, Vance. Concentrating too much on the nuts and bolts, and not thinking enough about the human element.”
“Be more specific, Cliff.”
“A lot of the crew have got the Orbitsville syndrome already. They don’t see any prospect of getting back to Beachhead City, and many of them don’t even want to get back. They see no reason why they shouldn’t set up a community right here, using the Bissendorf as a mine for essential materials.”
Garamond stopped, shielded his eyes and looked beyond the ship towards the plot of land, marked with a silver cross, where forty men and women had been buried. “I can understand their feelings, and I’m not proposing to ride herd on those who want to stay. We’ll use volunteers only.”
“There could be less than you expect.”
“Surely some of them, a lot of them, have reasons for getting back.”
“The point is that you aren’t proposing to take them back, Vance. The planes won’t make it all the way, so you’re asking them to choose between staying here in a strong sizeable community with resources of power, materials and food — or being dropped somewhere between here and Beachhead City in groups of ten or less with very little to get them started as independent communities.”
“Each plane will have to carry an iron cow and a small plastics plant.”
“It’s still a hell of a lot to ask.”
“I’ll also guarantee that a rescue mission will set out as soon as I get back.”
“If you get back.”
A dark thought crossed Garamond’s mind. “How about you, Cliff? Are you coming with me?”
“I’m coming with you. All I’m trying to do is make you realize there’s more to this than finding the right engineering approach.”
“I realize that already, but right now I’ve got all the human problems I can handle.”
“Others have wives and families they want to get back to.”
“That’s the point — I haven’t.”
“But…” “How long do you think Aileen and Chris will survive after I’m presumed dead? A week? A day?” Garamond forced himself to speak steadily, despite the grief which kept up a steady thundering inside his head. “The only reason I’m going back is that I have to kill Liz Lindstrom.”
Although it had been equipped and powered to carry out one emergency landing on the surface of a planet, the Bissendorf was in a supremely unnatural condition when beached with its longitudinal axis at right angles to the pull of gravity. The interior layout was based on the assumption that, except during short spells of weightlessness, there would be acceleration or retardation which would enable the crew to regard the prow as pointing ‘upwards’ and to walk normally on all its levels. Now the multitudinous floors of the vessel had become vertical walls to which were attached, in surrealistic attitudes, clusters of consoles, pedestals, desks, chairs, lockers, beds, tables and several hundred machines of varying types and capabilities. Because design allowance had been made for periods of free-fall — most small items, including paperwork, were magnetically or physically clamped in position — very little material had fallen to the lowermost side of the hull, but many of the ship’s resources could not be tapped until key areas were properly orientated to the ground.
Teams of forcemasters using valency cutters and custom-built derricks began slicing the Bissendorf’s structure into manageable sections and rotating them to horizontal positions. The work was slowed down by the need to sever and reconnect power channels, but within a week the cylinder of the central hull had been largely converted into a cluster of low circular or wedge-shaped buildings. Each was roofed with a plastic diaphragm and linked by cable to power sources on the ground or within the butchered ship. The entire complex was surrounded by an umbra of tents and extemporized plastic sheds which gave it the appearance of an army encampment.
Garamond had placed maximum priority on the design and workshop facilities which were to create his aircraft, and the work was advancing with a speed which would have been impossible even a century earlier. The assembly line was already visible as nine sets of landing skids surmounted by the sketchy cruciforms of the basic airframes.
After weighing all considerations, the computers from the spaceship had decreed that the stressed-skin principle of aircraft construction, universal to aviation, should be abandoned in favour of the frame-and-fabric techniques employed in the Wright Brothers era. This permitted most of the high technology and engineering subtlety to be concentrated in a dozen pieces of alloy per ship, and the tape-controlled radiation millers hewed these from fresh billets in less than a day. The plastic skinning could then be carried out to the standards of a good quality furniture shop, and the engines — standard magnetic pulse prime movers — fitted straight from the shelf. It was the availability of engines, of which there were twenty-one in the Bissendorf’s inventory, which had been the main parameter in deciding upon a fleet of nine twin-engined ships which would set out upon the journey with three powerplants in reserve.