“And he won his bet of fifty bucks, junior. Don’t forget that.”
“And that brings us down to you, Hiram Lee. You made eighty-three trips with Space Combo in the VME triangle. Your education cost Central Assignment a lot of time and money. There aren’t enough trained pilots who can stand the responsibility.”
“The monotony, you mean.” Lee stood up suddenly, his fists on his slim waist. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again. When I started, it was a fine racket. You took off on manual controls and got your corrections en route from Central Astro. You made the corrections manually. You ripped off in those rusty buckets and the acceleration nearly tore your guts out. When I started we had a mean time of one five nine days from Earth to Venus. The trip was rugged. As a pilot you were somebody.
“Then some bright gent had to invent the Tapeworm. Central Astro plots your entire trip and sends the tape over. You coordinate the Tapeworm with takeoff time and feed in the tape. You’ve got a standby Tapeworm with a duplicate tape and you’ve got an escape tape which you feed in if anything goes too far off.
“The pilot sits there like a stuffed doll and the tape does everything. You don’t even have to worry about meteorites. The Pusher obliques the little ones off and the Change-Scanner gives you an automatic course correction around the big one. It just got too dull, Brent. I’m not a guy who wants to play up to the rich passengers and tickle the babies under the chin and say kitcheekoo. I took three years of rocking chair circuits and then I quit. And I won’t go back.”
“What makes the job you’ve got so attractive, Lee? You’re just a foreman and nursemaid to a bunch of Harids working in your herb patches.”
Lee smiled tightly. “I keep ’em working and I tell ’em what to do and I try to keep them happy. You know the final psycho report on them. Their culture is much like the culture of ants on Earth — with one exception. They have a high degree of emotional instability. Did you ever see a Harid run berserk? A bunch of them are picking away and all of a sudden one will stop and start swaying his head from side to side. The others light out for far places. The one who has gone over the edge starts clicking those teeth of his. He lets out a scream that would split your head wide open and comes at you with his arms all coiled to strike. Bullets won’t stop them. You haven’t got time to mess with a powerpack and turn a ray on him. All you need is a knife. You just step inside the arms, slice his head clean off and get out of the way fast. See this scar? I didn’t move fast enough six months ago.”
Shane looked puzzled. “Then danger is an integral part of your pattern of living. Are you trying to tell me there’s no danger in space?”
“It’s a different kind, Brent. Once every few years a ship gets it. The people on it don’t even know what happened. I like a little danger all the time.”
“Would you consent to an alteration of glandular secretions to take away this yen for danger?”
“And start kissing babies again? Not a chance! Every Saturday I draw my pay and I hit all the joints along the Allada Strip. You meet some interesting people. All Sunday I have a head and a half. On Monday I’m out in the weeds again with my crew of Harids.”
“Central Assignment isn’t going to like my report on this.”
Lee chuckled. “I sure weep for you pretty boys in gray. Tell them to mark my file closed and tell them where to file it for me, will you?”
Shane Brent stood up slowly, looking more than ever like a big sleepy animal. “Suppose, Lee, that you could take a route on one of the old ships? Manual controls, magnetic shoes, creaking plates — all the fixings.”
Lee stared down at the table top for a few seconds. He said softly: “Nothing in this world would keep me out of space, brother. Nothing!”
Shane Brent asked: “And what if you had control of a modern job and had orders to take it so far that Central Astro couldn’t give you a tape?”
Lee grinned. “That’d be O. K., too. I hate those smug characters sitting there in their ivory tower and supplying little strips of plastic to do the job that good pilots should be doing.”
Shane Brent looked rueful. “Well, I guess you’ve licked me, Hiram. This will be the first time I’ve ever had to report back a complete failure.”
“Do them good back there,” Lee said, grinning. He stared curiously at Brent. “You know, Brent, you don’t look like a guy who’d get much of a bang out of all this investigation junk. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll get you a gang of Harids. These Solaray people are O. K. to work for. Stick around. On Saturday we’ll hit the Strip. There’s a little gal dancing at Brownie’s. A Seattle gal. Blonde. She won’t even give me the right time, but you just might manage to—”
Brent grinned. “I better think that one over. Sorry to have taken so much of your time, Lee. See you around.”
Shane Brent stood at the window and watched Hiram Lee walk off in the direction of the drying sheds. Already the thick heat had put a sheen of perspiration across the broad muscular shoulders of Lee. He walked with the carefree swing of an independent man of strength and courage. Shane Brent sighed, walked out into the heat and headed for the Solaray Communications Building.
He showed his credentials to the pretty clerk and said: “I’ll need a private screen and a closed circuit and the usual guarantee of secrecy. It will be a charge to Central Assignment.”
He went into the small room she had indicated, and opened the switch under the dead screen. A muted hum filled the room.
“Central Assignment,” he said.
Thirty seconds later a clear feminine voice said: “Central Assignment.”
“Brent calling. Give me Allison, please.”
Allison’s face suddenly filled the screen. He was a white-haired man with a florid face and an air of nervousness and vitality.
“Hello, Shane,” he said quietly. “Closed circuit?”
“Of course, Frank. I’ve got a report on Hiram Lee.”
“Good! Let’s have it. I’ve got the recorder on.”
“Here goes. Memorandum to F. A. Allison. From Shane Brent. Subject: Personnel for Project 81 — Pilot Investigation. Case of Hiram Lee. Hiram Lee has been carefully investigated and it is recommended that permission be given the undersigned to approach Lee with an offer to join Project 81. Lee is alert, capable, strong, dependable to a sufficient degree. His training is excellent. He will need little indoctrination. Quinn is to be commended for recommending him to Central Assignment. It is believed that the probable seven-year duration of the trip will not discourage Lee. It is also believed that the calculated risk of one in four of returning from the Project flight will not deter Lee. Permission is requested to contact Lee and furthermore to sound him out on becoming a colonist, dependent, of course, on his finding a suitable woman to accompany him.”
Allison, who had been listening with interest, said: “Good work! You have the authority you request.”
“Have you got a line on the executive officer for Project 81 yet, Frank?”
Allison frowned. “Not yet, Shane. But something will turn up. Foster and Brady have filled most of the remaining slots. Denvers will go along as head physicist for the refinement of the drive brick for the return. Central Astro had given us the takeoff date as, let me see, ninety-three days from today.”
“Pushing us, hey?”
“Can’t be helped. It’s either then or about three years from then. Say, Shane, instead of returning right away, see what you can find there in the line of an executive officer. Report if you get a line on anybody. Good-by, Shane.”
“Good-by, Frank.”
As the screen went blank, Shane sighed, cut the switch and walked out. At the front exit he went up the stairs to the platform, stepped into the waiting monorail suspension bus, found an empty seat. He felt drained and weary. Frank Allison was a difficult taskmaster. His personal affection for Allison made the job no easier.