"Morning, boys." Morrell pointed into the field. "Who's working on the barrel?"
"Sergeant Pound, sir," one of the sentries answered.
"I might have known." Morrell opened the gate and went inside. One of the sentries closed it after him. As he hurried toward the barrel, he called, "You're up early today, Sergeant."
"Oh, hello, sir." Sergeant Michael Pound was a broad-shouldered, muscular man with close-cropped brown hair and a neat mustache showing the first silver threads. "The carburetor still isn't what it ought to be, you know."
"I'm not surprised, seeing how long the whole vehicle's been sitting there doing nothing," Morrell answered. "How are you going to get it clean?"
Sergeant Pound held up a coffee can. "There's this new solvent called carbon tetrachloride. It gets grease off of anything," he said enthusiastically. He was wild for any new invention; that was what had drawn him into barrels in the first place. "It's wonderful stuff-nonflammable, a really excellent cleaner. Only one drawback." He plopped the carburetor into the can.
"What's that?" Morrell asked, as he was surely supposed to.
"If you use it indoors, it's liable to asphyxiate you," Pound replied. "Some people are fools, of course. Congressmen get excited about that sort of thing. They want to ban the stuff. If you ask me, anyone who's dumb enough not to read the label deserves whatever happens to him." He had no patience with incompetent people, no doubt because he was so all-around competent himself.
Morrell slapped him on the back. "It's damn good to see you again, Sergeant, to hell with me if it's not."
"Thank you very much, sir," Michael Pound replied. "I felt I was wasting my time these past few years in the artillery. Of course, the Army would have thrown me out on my ear if I'd tried to stay in barrels, but the men in charge of things aren't exactly the smartest ones we've got, are they?"
"I believe I'll plead the Fifth on that one," Morrell said, laughing. "Do you think you could do a better job of it?"
"Sir, I'm sure I could." Pound wasn't joking. Because he did so many things well, he thought he could do anything. Sometimes he turned out to be right. Sometimes he was disastrously wrong. Occasional disasters did nothing to damage his self-confidence.
"How did you put up with going back to the artillery after the Barrel Works closed down?" Morrell asked.
"Well, for one thing, sir, like I said, if I hadn't they would have found something else even worse for me to do-or they would have thrown me out altogether, and that wouldn't have been good, not when the collapse came," Pound said. "And besides, I always thought the politicians would eventually come to their senses. I just never imagined they'd take so long."
"Who did?" Morrell said. He'd asked for Sergeant Pound by name when he came back to Leavenworth. The man was worth his weight in gold-which, considering his massive frame, was no mean statement. If he occasionally suffered delusions of omnipotence… well, nobody was perfect.
"Knaves. Fools and knaves," he said now: one of his favorite phrases.
"You'd better be careful," Morrell warned him. "You're starting to sound like you belong in the Freedom Party."
"Oh, no, sir. I didn't say they were a pack of traitors who need to be lined up against a wall and shot." Pound had no trouble imitating the Freedom Party's impassioned rhetoric. He added, "Besides, that Featherston is a dangerous lunatic. If he gets elected this fall, he's liable to show just how dangerous he is."
"I wish I could tell you you were wrong," Morrell said.
"He's liable to prove as troublesome to us as those Action Francaise people are to the Kaiser," Pound said. "What can you do about a government that hates you if a majority voted it into office?"
"Get ready to fight," Morrell answered. "That's what we're doing here."
"How soon before we have a real barrel with specifications based on the experimental model here?" Sergeant Pound asked, taking the carburetor out of the carbon tetrachloride and setting it down on a rag.
"They're saying six or eight months in Pontiac," Morrell replied. "That's what they're saying, but I'll believe it when I see it. Bet on a year, maybe longer."
"Disgraceful," Pound said. "So much time not even frittered away- thrown away, for heaven's sake." He rubbed the carburetor with the rag, then passed it to Morrell. "This thing is better, though. I think it's really clean now, clean enough to work the way it's supposed to."
"I hope you're right," Morrell said. "Put it back in the engine, Sergeant. We'll gas up the beast and see if it runs."
"Right, sir." Pound opened the louvers on the engine compartment-one improvement over Great War barrels the experimental model did boast was a separate engine compartment, which drastically reduced noise and noxious fumes for the crew. As Pound turned a wrench, he went on, "You know, we really ought to have a diesel engine in here, not one fueled by gasoline. A fire starts, gasoline goes up like a bomb. Diesel fuel just burns quietly. The men in the fighting compartment have a much better chance to get away."
"That's a good idea," Morrell said. Pound was full of ideas, good, bad, and indifferent. "Model after next, we ought to think about incorporating it." He pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and scribbled a few lines so the idea wouldn't be lost.
"Why waste time, sir?" Sergeant Pound asked. "Why not put it right into the model they're working on now? That way, we'd have it."
"We'd have it-eventually," Morrell answered. "How many plans would they have to change to put a new engine in that compartment? How many dies and stamps and castings would they have to revise? I don't know the exact number, but it's bound to be a big one."
"We ought to do this right," Pound insisted.
"We will-eventually." Morrell used that word again. "Right now, that we're doing it at all is miracle enough, if you ask me. Just remember, I was in Kamloops a few weeks ago, and you were an artilleryman. Let's get something finished, and then we can set about improving it."
"Everything ought to be right the first time," Pound muttered.
"Not everything is. That's why they put erasers on pencils," Morrell said. "Or are you one of those people who fill out crossword puzzles in ink?" He was fond of those puzzles himself. Their popularity had exploded since the collapse. They gave people something interesting to do, and you could buy a book of them for a dime.
Michael Pound looked puzzled. "Of course, sir. Doesn't everybody?" He sounded altogether innocent. Was that sarcasm, or did he really believe people were so generally capable? Morrell suspected he did. Like most men, he judged others by his own standards, and those standards were pretty high. After bending to get a better look at the connection he was making, he said, "I've got a question for you, sir."
"Go ahead," Morrell told him.
"Where do you suppose we could be if we hadn't spent all this time lying fallow, and how big a price will we pay because we did?"
"We'd be a lot further along than we are now, and we'll have to find out. There. Aren't I profound?"
"That's hardly the word I'd use, sir," Michael Pound replied.
He didn't say what word he would use, which might have been just as well. Morrell said, "Shall we see if this miserable thing actually runs now?"
"It had better," Pound said.
He was properly a gunner by trade, but he could drive. He slid down through the turret-an innovation when the experimental model was new, but a commonplace in barrel design nowadays-and into the driver's seat at the left front of the vehicle, next to the bow machine gun. When he stabbed the starter button, the engine wasted no time roaring to life.