Raymond F. Jones
Production Test
Bryan Kimberly looked with satisfaction at the two-page, four-color advertisement in the magazine on his desk. He leaned back in his chair to get a better perspective. A beautiful piece of art work, the illustration showed a bulbous suited spaceman halfway inside the main tube of one of the ponderous lunar freights. The dazzling streamers of light from his torch illumined the black bore of the tube, to which he was applying an emergency reline patch.
All this against the platinum Moonscape and the black night of space above. Beside the workman stood two companions, watching.
That was nice the way they were arranged, Kimberly thought. One showed the front of the spacesuit; the other gave a clear view of the rear, showing the minimum of equipment which the wearer was required to support.
Blazoned across the bottom of the picture, like a rocket trail going up, was the caption: "Only in a Kimberly can you do this!"
Bryan Kimberly settled deeper in the chair to read contentedly. "Since the first thrust-jet reached escape velocity, Kimberly has meant — freedom! Freedom to leave the prison of the ships that carry men across space, freedom to make the Moon's surface as familiar as our own home towns. Kimberly is the suit that has made the animal, man, adaptable to an environment for which he was never meant. The first human footprint upon the lunar surface was made in a Kimberly. Since then, nearly twenty thousand of these superb spacesuits have carried the pioneers of a new age into the realms of the stars.
"Now, we announce a new and improved Kimberly suit that means even greater freedom, ease, and safely in man's eternal quest to reach out and touch the stars!"
Bryan Kimberly pinched his lower lip thoughtfully. That had looked pretty good in script when he'd first read it. Now, in his pages of "Rocket Flight," it seemed just a trifle too purple. Oh, well — nobody could blame the company for going overboard on this new suit. It was good.
He read on. "For the first time, spacemen are offered an all-fabric suit. In weight alone, this means a reduction of thirty-eight pounds, Earth. The new plastic, Cordolite, of which the carcass is constructed, is conservatively rated at an inflation pressure of three hundred pounds per square inch.
"Most important of all, however, is the tremendous, epoch-making invention, the Kimberly Joint. It is with the utmost pride that we present this new joint to the spacemen of the world.
"Gone forever are the tragic blowouts of the old ground metallic joints. Though the greatest precision has always characterized Kimberly products, we were well aware of the imperfections of the ground joint, and we have devoted the full resources of our laboratories for many years to find a better solution.
"We have it. The Kimberly Joint is a continuous connection, spring compensated joint. Four hundred metallic springs embedded within the Cordolite carcass provide a completely compensated set of joints which assures the spaceman the mobility and freedom of a trunk clad swimmer. The illustration above, taken from an actual photograph, shows the first performance of its kind in history — made possible by Kimberly.
"Note also the new size of communication and pressure compensation equipment. No longer is the spaceman a walking Gargantua with a machine shop on his back!
"Trim! Safe! Comfortable! Kimberly!"
Bryan Kimberly finished with great satisfaction and folded his hands over his just barely perceptible paunch to enjoy the picture. Twenty-seven months of the hardest work he'd ever put in were represented there. He wished there had been time to get in the announcement that Lunar Flightways had equipped their new Lunar Queen all the way through with new Kimberlys for her maiden flight that was even now being completed. They had thirty-six Kimberlys on the Queen and four hundred more ordered for the rest of their fleet.
Maybe they'd run the advertisement again next month. It wouldn't be necessary in order to get business, Kimberly knew. Spacemen had been looking for a continuous, compensated joint since before the first rocket took off.
He glanced at the clock. Time to knock off, and this was going to be one week end that was really off. Two days at their cabin. His wife, Bernice, and their son, Roy would drive up Sunday but for one day of solid sleeping and fishing he'd not see a human being. Bernice was away visiting and he planned to go directly from the office. But it was time to be going if he expected to make it by dark.
His anticipation was broken by the flashing of his secretary's light. He answered with expectant irritation. "Yes?"
"Mr. Johnson of Flightways is on the phone, Mr. Kimberly."
"Tell him I — Oh, put him on!"
Johnson appeared on the small phone panel, sputtering and redfaced, "Kimberly! Where have you been? I've been trying to get you all afternoon."
That was Johnson's customary approach and Kimberly paid no attention.
"We're canceling the order on those suits," said Johnson. "Those three dozen on the Queen are no good. Every one the boys tried out broke down with them. They stink. We're going over to Realworth's ground joints."
"Take it easy, now, Henry," said Kimberly with frozen deliberation. "You know how production is. There may be some bugs in the suits that we've overlooked, but we've tested them frontwards and backwards. We know they're good and we'll back them up."
"Bugs! There're enough bugs to crawl off with the suits."
"Just tell me what the trouble is."
"The Queen landed at Copernicus Central. The passengers were let off as usual and the crew begun getting into the suits for terminal inspection of the hull and jets. Incidentally, those Iron Maidens stink, too. Why can't you figure out some kind of a dog for the joints so a spaceman won't have to get inside one of those things to put the suit on or off?"
"We're working on it," said Kimberly patiently. "We'll get it in time, but you want spacesuits now. And this is better than having to handle the old iron pants with a crane."
"Not much."
"Well, get on. What happened?"
"Twelve of the crew began the inspection. Chief Engineer Medford was watching from a port. All of a sudden one of the boys flipped back an arm like something had hit him with a ball bat. It just hung straight out. Then pretty soon another guy who was bending down on his knees to look below a tube straightened out and shot up nearly sixty feet to the top of the Queen's center deck."
"The joint counterbalances gave way!"
"You guessed it. In less than five minutes every one of those boys was spread-eagled and laid out over the landscape like gingerbread men. Some were still standing, but most were lying on their back and couldn't move a muscle. There has probably not been such a concentration of profound profanity in a location of like area since the beginning of space flight."
"I'm sure we can find —"
"Listen! Do you know how they got back into the ship?"
"I suppose they sent out some more men and hauled them back in."
"That's what Medford thought he was going to do. He sent out three more to attach lines and haul the others in. They got four hooked up and then they were laid out like a cooky cutter had run over them. Four for three — it wasn't a good deal. They still had eleven men to go. Medford tried one more and he only got one hooked up before his suit spread out on him and left him standing there."
"Well — how did they get back in?"
"They didn't. They're still there."
Kimberly sat back in his chair with a fishlike gulp. "Henry, you don't mean — When was — When did this happen?"
Johnson glanced at his watch out of sight of the screen. "Exactly thirty-three and one half hours ago. Those men are —"
"Well, you've got ground joint suits at Copernicus!"
"We'd switched over on the Queen, remember?" Johnson's teeth showed just a trifle now. "We believed in the reputation of Kimberly, and had the locks built for your new suits. We didn't have an iron pants aboard. In the terminal every blasted suit had been shipped out on an emergency call to that freight that exploded four thousand miles off course. You do read the papers?"