Larry had once been offered a very lucrative contract by a textbook publisher to do a series of books titled: The Poseur’s Guide to Physics, The Poseur’s Guide to Chemistry, The Poseur’s Guide to Astronomy, and so on down the list of the sciences. He refused, because it would have become a sameness after the first book or two. He was lazy, he loved to play, he tired of a subject easily, he drank too much beer, and he was in top demand whenever there were problems with a project in any field.
Larry Gomulka was a man who knew a little bit about everything. He was omnivorous in his continued learning. He was interested in everything under the sun, and inside the sun, and in the black holes of space. He was a jack of all trades. Had he chosen a field and applied himself to it he could, in all probability, have been a landmark genius. By scattering his interests he was not tops in any specific field, but he was a master at putting things together. Larry was the top problem solver of the century. Not once but many times Larry had walked into a stalled project, talked trash with puzzled scientists who wondered what that clown was doing there, confused them with bad jokes and rapid changes of subject, talking with physicists about the properties of antimatter, the sex urge of the Predicted Moth, and, infuriatingly, without even seeming to try, solved the problem with a simple comment which left dedicated scientists tearing their hair in frustration. Larry had the ability to put it all together, to relate the work of one specialist to others.
Routine work was impossible when Larry was around. When he showed up in the lab, Art and Doris halted their work. The three of them burst into Dom’s office. Dom shook hands and examined Larry’s round, beaming face and wondered what Doris saw in the man.
Larry ordered in a vile brand of beer, dominated the conversation with wild tales of adventures in India, where the government had paid him well to set up a workable optional method of family planning. Between tales he threw in a question or two about the current project, sometimes not waiting for an answer before burping happily and moving forward into another change of subject.
Dom noted a look of almost maternal adoration in Doris’ eyes. He drank too much, laughed until his stomach muscles ached at Larry’s outrageous tales. When he finally retired to his quarters he fell into bed with a self-hating groan, disgusted by his overindulgence. He was awakened by Larry’s cheerful whistling from the office. He repeated the groan which had been his last waking sound, called for breakfast in the office, dressed, shaved. He took his time, knowing that Larry was at his desk, going over the specifications. He came into the office just in time to accept his breakfast tray. Larry had his feet on the desk. Papers were scattered everywhere.
“Crazy design,” Larry said.
“Insane,” Dom said.
“Looks damned impossible.”
“It is.”
“The impossible takes a little longer,” Larry said. One of his more irritating habits was the use of glib, trite old phrases. It was just another one of the things you had to forgive if you worked with Larry.
“Coals to Newcastle,” Larry said.
“Water to Mars,” Dom said.
“Can you carry water and phosphates in the same hull?”
“If you use a lot of water here on Earth to wash it out,” Dom said. “Or, you could use the second and subsequent loads of water for agricultural purposes on Mars, or run it through a purifier.”
“This hull would hold a helluva sample of the atmosphere of Jupiter,” Larry said.
“Thousands of tons of it?” Dom asked.
“J.J.’s not being totally open with you, is he?”
“I don’t know. He claims that the ship was sold to the budget makers as a tanker and that if it’s built at all it will have to be able to serve as a tanker.”
“So, I guess we build him a tanker,” Larry said.
“Just like that.”
“Damn the torpedoes,” Larry said.
Dom was beginning to feel better with each bite of his breakfast. “The preliminary layout is neither feasible nor economical,” he said.
“The preliminary layout is junk,” Larry said. “If you put the entire industry to work on it it would take years just to build the outer hull.”
“And there’s not much of the aerospace industry left.”
“They’re making intrauterine devices and toasters,” Larry said. “It’s too big. We’d have a helluva time just getting it to hold together under its own weight in the gravity of the moon, much less Jupiter. The mission is incompatible with the design. What we need is a small, thin hull built solidly around a minimum crew’s quarters and the power plant. Instead, we’re thinking of building a pressure hull around a large volume of space.”
“Which will have to be pressurized.”
“To what?” Larry asked.
“Forty-five thousand pounds per square inch.”
“Jesus,” Larry said. Then, “Here’s how we’ll do it. You’re hung up in the old forest-and-trees analogy. You’re looking on the ship as one unit.”
“Isn’t it?” Dom asked.
“Why should it be?”
“It’s a ship. It’s self-contained. It’s a unit.”
“Why?”
“Pressure on the widest portion of the hull is distributed to every other part of the hull,” Dom said.
“So we make that force work for us, instead of against us.”
“How?”
“You ever hear of mush bonding?”
“No,” Dom said.
“They’re working on it at Caltech. Mush bonding. You expand the distance between molecules and inject alloying atoms. The whole thing compresses under pressure.”
“I’m listening,” Dom said.
“The technique utilizes superheating. Need lots of power.”
“There’s ample power on board,” Dom said.
“We’ll run the seams along the length of the hull instead of around it,” Larry said.
Dom’s breakfast, unfinished, was forgotten. The idea of running welding seams along the length of the hull was damned silly, except that Larry was reaching for pencil and paper. Dom pushed the wheeled breakfast tray aside and leaned over Larry’s shoulder.
“The seams slip over each other,” Larry said, “as they are compressed. The more pressure you apply, the tighter the bond.”
“What’s the limitation?”
“Don’t ask me, you’re the pressure-hull engineer,” Larry said.
“Larry, get the hell out of here,” Dom said. “Get me all the dope on mush bonding. Brief it down for me at first. Talk with Art when you’re ready and see if the technique can be applied to hull metals.”
“I was thinking about taking Doris into L.A.,” Larry said.
“Not a chance.”
“Slave driver.”
“Out,” Dom said.
“That’s gratitude. Solve a man’s problem and he throws you out,” Larry complained.
Dom wasn’t listening. He was drawing busily. He didn’t even hear the door close behind Larry. Two hours later he was putting figures into the computer, because the basic research on mush bonding had been tossed into his lap by Larry. He worked from his desk, communicating with Doris and Art by a closed video circuit. Doris’ computers hummed and clacked out possibilities. Art smoked cigarette after cigarette and began to cough.
It came out looking like a ship, with the traditional cylindrical shape, but it would be unlike any other ship ever built. The hull would be constructed of mono-welded longitudinal sections joined by thicknesses of mush bonding. The more pressure was applied to the hull, the more the mush-bonded sections compressed, and the stronger they became. At three thousand atmospheres, the hull would have partially wrapped around itself, compressing the ship into a solidarity held by massive beams across J.J.’s bedamned cargo hold. It would cost billions. It would be huge, but it would work if the mush bonding worked.