That was during the Cold War. Well, then the Cold War hotted up, you know. The missiles flew. The Board got its orders from Washington, hurry-up orders: automate, mechanize, make it faster, boost its size. They took a deep breath and gamely sent the engineers back to the drawing boards.
The orders were to double production and make it independent of the outside world. The engineers whispered among themselves - ‘Are they kidding?’ they asked - but they went to work, and as fast as the designs were approved, the construction machines went back to work to make them real.
The digging machines chugged down into the factory bays again, expanding them, making concealed tunnels; and this time they were followed by concrete- and-armour-plate layers, booby-trap setters, camoufleurs, counter-attack planners.
They hid that plant, friend. They concealed it from infrared, ultra-violet and visual-wave spotting, from radar and sonic echo beams, from everything but the nose of a seeing-eye dog, and maybe even from that They armoured it.
They fixed it so you couldn’t get near it, at least not alive. They armed it - with homing missiles, batteries of rapid-fire weapons, everything they could think of - and they had a lot of people thinking - that would discourage intruders.
They automated it; not only would it make its products, but it would keep on making them as long as the raw materials held out - yes, and change the designs, too, because it is a basic part of industrial technology that planned obsolescence should be built into every unit.
Yes, that was the idea. Without a man anywhere in sight, the cavern factories could build their products, change their designs, retool and bring out new ones.
More than that. They set sales quotas, by direct electronic hook-up with the master computer of the Bureau of the Census in Washington; they wrote on electric typewriters and printed on static-electricity presses all the needed leaflets, brochures, instruction manuals and diagrams.
Tricky problems were met with clever answers. For instance, argued one R&D V.P., ‘Won’t the factory have to have at least a couple of pretty girls to use as models for the leaflets illustrations?’
‘Nah,’ said an engineer bluntly. ‘Look, Boss, here’s what we’ll do.’
He drew a quick and complicated schematic.
‘I see,’ said the V.P., his eyes glazing.
Truthfully, he didn’t understand at all, but then they went ahead and built it and he saw that the thing worked.
A memory-bank selector, informed of the need for a picture of a pretty girl operating, say, an electric egg-cooker, drew upon taped files of action studies of models for the girl they wanted in the pose the computers decreed. Another tape supplied appropriate clothing - anything from a parka to a Bikini (mostly it was Bikinis) - and an electronic patcher dubbed it in. A third file, filmed on the spot, produced the egg-cooker itself, dubbed in as large as life and twice as pretty.
It worked.
And then there was the problem of writing the manuals.
It wasn’t so much the composition of the how-to-do directions. There was nothing hard about that; after all, the whole idea was that the consumer should be told how to operate the thing without his having to know what was under the chromium-plated shell. But - well, what about trade-marked names? Some brain had to coin the likes of Kleen-Heet Auto-Tyme Hardboyler, or Shel-Krak Puncherator.
They tried programming the computer to think that sort of thing up. The computer gulped, clucked and spewed out an assortment. The engineers looked at each other and scratched their heads. Kleen-Krak Boylerator? Eg-Sta-Tik Clocker?
Discouraged, they trailed with their reports to the V.P.
‘Boss,’ they said, ‘maybe we better put this thing back on the drawing boards. These names the machine came up with don’t make sense.’
This time it was the V.P. who said bluntly: ‘Nah, don’t worry. Didn’t you ever hear of Hotpoint Refrigerators?’
So merrily they went on, and the cavern factories were automated.
Then, when the frantically dreaming engineers had them complete, they added one more touch.
Electric percolators need steel, chromium, copper, plastics for the extension cord, plastics for the handle, a different sort of plastic yet for the ornamental knobs and embellishments. So they supplied them - not by stockpiles, no, for stockpiles can be used up, but by telling the vast computers that ran the plant where its raw materials might be found.
They supplied National Electro-Mech with a robot-armed computer that could sniff out its raw materials and direct diggers to the lodes. They added a fusion powerplant that would run as long as its supply of fuel held out (and its fuel was hydrogen, from the water of Long Island Sound or, if that went dry, from the waters bound in the clay, the silicate sand, the very bedrock underneath).
Then they pushed the little red switch to ‘on’, stepped back -and ducked.
Percolators came pouring out by the thousands that first day.
Then the machines began to speed up. Percolators flooded out by the tens of thousands. And then the machines settled down to full production.
‘Ahem,’ coughed one of the engineers. ‘Say,’ he said. ‘I wonder. That little red button. Suppose we wanted to turn it off. Could we?’
Top management frowned. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ they asked. ‘Production - that’s what counts. Then, when the war is won,’ we can worry about turning the fool thing off. Right now, we can’t take the risk that enemy agents might penetrate our defences and cripple our war effort, so the button only works one way.’
Then the war was won. And, yes, they could worry.
3
On the ramp outside Farmingdale, Major Commaigne rattled into his microphone: ‘Korowicz? Back me up and watch for missiles. You’re air cover for the whole detachment. Bonfils, I want you on the road. Draw fire when the trucks come out, and then retire, Goodpastor, you cover the demolition crews. Gershenow, you’re our reserve. Watch it now. They’ll be coming out in a minute.’ He clicked off his microphone switch and stared, sweating, at the ramp.
Bill Cossett shifted nervously in his seat and looked at the rifle in his hand. It was a stripped-down rough-duty model, made to Jack Tighe’s personal specifications, and the only thing you had to remember was that when you pulled the trigger, it would go off. But rifles weren’t much a part of Cossett’s life. He caught himself thinking wretchedly how nice it would be to be back in Rantoul. Then he remembered those crowded blocks of unsold Buicks.
Behind their halftrack, the four other vehicles of the party rattled into position. This ramp was one of eighteen that led from National Electro-Mech’s plant to the outside world. Along it, at carefully randomed intervals, huge armoured trailer-trucks rumbled up, past six sets of iridium steel gates, out into the open air and onto the highways. No driver manned these trucks. Their orders were stamped into their circuits in the underground loading bays. Each had a destination where its load of percolators and waffle irons was to go, and each had the means of getting it there.
Bill Cossett coughed. ‘Major, why couldn’t we just shoot them up as they come out?’