Chaney said: “No.”
The engineer seemed pained. “Perhaps you should read a good book on tachyon deflector systems.”
“Perhaps. Where will I find one?”
“You won’t. They haven’t been written.”
“But it all sounds like perpetual motion.”
“It isn’t, believe me. This baby eats power.”
“I suppose you need that nuclear reactor?”
“All of it — it serves this lab alone.”
Chaney revealed his surprise. “It doesn’t serve the station outside? How much does it take to kick this thing into the future?”
“The vehicle requires five hundred thousand kilos per launch.”
Chaney and Arthur Saltus whistled in unison. Chaney said: “Is that power house protected? What about wiring? Transformers? Electrical systems are vulnerable to about everything: sleet storms, drunken drivers ramming poles, outages, one thing after another.”
“Our reactor is set in concrete, Mr. Chaney. Our conduits are underground. Our equipment is rated for at least twenty years continuous service.” A wave of the hand to indicate superior judgment, superior knowledge. “You needn’t concern yourself; our future planning is complete. There will be power to spare for the next five hundred years, if need be. The power will be available for any launch and return.”
Brian Chaney was skeptical. “Will cables and transformers last five hundred years?”
Again the quick annoyance. “We don’t expect them to. All equipment will be replaced each twenty or twenty-five years according to a prearranged schedule. This is a completely planned operating system.”
Chaney kicked at the concrete tank and hurt his toe. “Maybe the tank will leak.”
“Polywater doesn’t leak. It has the consistency of thin grease, and is suspended in capillary tubes. This is ninety-nine percent of the world’s supply right here.” He followed Chaney’s lead and kicked the tank. “No leak.”
“What does the TDV push against? That polywater?”
The engineer looked at him as if he were an idiot. “It floats on the polywater, Mr. Chaney. I said the thrust against a screen, a molybdenum screen provides the momentum to displace temporal strata.”
Chaney said: “Ah! I see it now.”
“I don’t,” Arthur Saltus said mournfully. He stood at the nose of the vehicle with his nose pressed against the transparent bubble. “What guides this thing? I don’t see a tiller or a wheel.”
The engineer gave the impression of wanting to leave the room, of wanting to hand over the instruction tour to some underling. “The vehicle is guided by a mercury proton gyroscope, Mr. Saltus.” He pointed past the Commander’s nose to a metal cube within the bubble, nestled alongside the camera. “That instrument. We borrowed the technique from the Navy, from their program to guide interplanetary ships in long-flight.”
Arthur Saltus seemed impressed. “Good, eh?”
“Superior. Gyroscopes employing mercury protons are not affected by motion, shock, vibrations, or upset; they will operate through any violence short of destruction. That unit will take you there and bring you back to within sixty-one seconds of your launch. Rely on it.”
Saltus said: “How?” and Major Moresby seconded him. “Explain it, please. I am interested.”
The engineer looked on Moresby as the only partly intelligent non-engineer in the room. “Sensing cells in the unit will relay back to us a continuous signal indicating your time path, Mr. Moresby. It will signal any deviation from a true line; if the vehicle wavers we will know it immediately. Our computer will interpret and correct immediately. The computer will send forward the proper corrective signals to the tachyon deflector system and restore the vehicle to its right time path, all in less than a second. You will not be aware of the deviation or the correction, of course.”
Saltus: “Do you guarantee we’ll hit the target?”
“Within four minutes of the annual hour, Mr. Saltus. This system does not permit a tracking error greater than plus or minus four minutes per year. That is on target. The Soviet couldn’t do any better.”
Chaney was startled. “Do they have one?”
“No,” Gilbert Scabrooke interposed. “That was a figure of speech. We all have pride in our work.”
Seniority was all. Major Moresby made the first trial test, and then Commander Saltus.
When his turn came, Chaney undressed and stored his clothing in the locker. The hovering presence of the engineer didn’t bother him but the prying eyes of the two television cameras did. He couldn’t know who was on the other side of the wall, watching him. Wearing only his shorts — the one belated concession to modesty — and standing in his bare feet on the concrete floor, Chaney fought away the impulse to bolster his waning ego by thumbing his nose at the inquisitive cameras. Gilbert Scabrooke probably wouldn’t approve.
Following instructions, he climbed into the TDV.
Chaney wriggled through the hatch, lowered himself onto the sling-like bed, and promptly banged his head against the camera mounted inside the bubble. It hurt.
“Damn it!”
The engineer said reprovingly: “Please be more careful of the camera, Mr. Chaney.”
“You could hang that thing outside the bucket.”
Inching lower onto the flimsy bed, he discovered that when his feet reached the kickbar there was insufficient room to turn his head without striking either the camera or the gyroscope, nor could he push out his elbows. He squinted up at the engineer in protest but the man’s face disappeared from the opening as the hatch was slammed shut. Chaney had a moment of panic but fought it away; the drum was no worse than a cramped tomb — and better in one small respect: the transparent bubble admitted light from the ceiling fixtures. Still following the detailed instructions, he reached up to snug the hatch and was immediately rewarded by a blinking green bull’s eye above his head. He thought that was nice.
Chaney watched the light for a space but nothing else happened.
Aloud: “All right, move it.” The sound of his voice in the closed can startled him.
Twisting around at the expense of a strained neck muscle and another glancing blow off the camera, he peered through the bubble at the outside room but saw no one. It was supposed to be empty during a launch. He guessed that his companions were in the lab beyond the wall, watching him on the monitors as he had watched them. The sounds had been thunderously loud in there, causing acute pain to his eardrums.
Chaney’s gaze came back to the green light against the hull above his head, and discovered that a red light beside it was now blazing, blinking in the same monotonous fashion as its brother. He stared at the two lights and wondered what he was supposed to do next. Instructions hadn’t gone beyond that point.
He was aware that his knees were raised and that his legs ached; the interior of the bucket wasn’t designed for a man who stood six feet four and had to share the space with a camera and gyroscope. Chaney lowered his knees and stretched out full length on the webbed sling, but he had forgotten the kickbar until his bare feet struck it. The red light winked out.
After a while someone rapped on the plastic bubble, and Chaney twisted around to see Arthur Saltus motioning for him to come out. He opened the hatch and sat up. When he was in a comfortable position, he found that he could rest his chin on the rim of the hatch and look down into the room.