“Then I think our work is done.”
“I’m sure it is! ” I told him. “In an hour or two, the ship will be fused and vaporized. Our atoms will be spinning around in that ring. If you do have communications equipment that will reach civilization, you’d better start sending now.”
We have equipment.” With an absent nod, he turned to call into the room behind him. “Jefferson, please adjust the compensator to Ming’s constants. She’ll compute the instrumental corrections.”
He swung quickly back to me.
“And you, Barron.” He spoke as crisply as an actual admiral. “Get back to your instruments and keep our orbit plotted.”
I slid back to the ’scopes, grateful for anything to keep my mind off the unconquerable force that would presently be flattening the splintered atoms that once had been our bodies into its black and perfect sphere. The first orbit I plotted was still the same deadly ellipse. So was the second. The third was . . . incredible!
A straight green line!
A tangent to the last ellipse, but straight as a light ray. I took another observation, and replotted the readings unbelievingly. And the same green line narrowed out of the tank. I turned the amplification down with unsteady fingers, and saw that it crossed the orbit of Jupiter, still unbending. The computer told me that it would bring us home to the station, a full month ahead of schedule.
“Well, Barron.” Knedder was in the air behind me, squinting at me with what looked like a faint amusement. “Think you can stop the ship when we get there ? ”
“We can brake in Jupiter’s atmosphere,” I answered mechanically, staring at that impossible line. “But I don’t think I understand—”
Knedder chuckled.
“Sorry for all the needless secrecy, but your high brass was afraid we’d make them look too foolish if we failed,” he said apologetically. “Free to tell you all about it now. Weren’t risking our necks in that million-gravity field for a batch of useless data. Trying to tame gravity. Did it!”
“Huh?” I had to snatch for the guide rail. “You mean we’re really out of that—that trap?”
“Nothing to it, any more.” He grinned happily. Our theoretical investigations had already established the basic principles, and the experimental compensator we brought along was designed to level out the field of the ship. What we lacked was the electro-gravitic constants. Once we had determined them with adequate precision, all we had to do wa3 get it going.”
The whiff of ammonia left in the tanks was enough to dock us at the station, after the braking maneuvers around Jupiter had absorbed the most of our excess momentum. Knedder and his colleagues went back to Earth to publish their discoveries, and I tried to get the Starhawk decently rearmed.
In spite of all the inside thrust I could muster, my requests and requisitions were unfavorably considered. Headquarters said she was obsolete. Once the proudest vessel in the Guard, she is now rusting on Earth, a mere museum for all the sightseers who come to gawk at Knedder’s first compensator.
I ignored the impertinent suggestion that I might care to remain aboard as a curator, or perhaps as an additional exhibit. I have retired from the Guard. Ion-drive captains, it appears, are now as obsolete as ion-drive ships. Now that the new electro-gravitic craft are using the hundred million gravities of Cerberus to catapult them out toward the stars, we have been left behind.
But an old spaceman learns to make the best of things, and Operation Baby Giant, for all its disappointments, was not a total loss. It gave me another good yarn to tell at the club.
Guinevere For Everybody
• • •
The girl stood chained in the vending machine.
“Hi, there!” Her plaintive hail whispered wistfully back from the empty corners of the gloomy waiting room. “Won’t somebody buy me?"
Most of the sleepy passengers trailing through the warm desert night from the Kansas City jet gaped at her and hurried on uneasily, as if she had been a tigress inadequately caged, but Pip Chimberley stopped, jolted wide awake.
"Hullo, mister.” The girl smiled at him, with disturbingly huge blue eyes. The chains tinkled as her hands came up hopefully, to fluff and smooth her copper-blond hair. Her long tan body flowed into a pose that filled her sheer chemistic halter to the bursting point. “You like me, huh?”
Chimberley gulped. He was an angular young man, with a meat-cleaver nose, an undernourished mouse-colored mustache, and three degrees in cybernetic engineering. His brown, murky eyes fled from the girl and fluttered back again, fascinated.
“Won’t you buy me?” She caressed him with her coaxing drawl. “You’d never miss the change, and I know you’d like me. I like you.”
He caught his breath, with a strangled sound.
“No!” He was hoarse with incipient panic. “I'm not a customer. My interest is—uh—professional.”
He sidled hastily away from the shallow display space where she stood framed in light, and resolutely shifted his eyes from her to the vending machine. He knew machines, and it was lovely to him, with the seductive sweep of its streamlined contours and the exciting gleam of its blinding red enamel, He backed away, looking raptly up at the glazing allure of the 3-D sign:
GUINEVERE
THE VITAL APPLIANCE!
NOT A ROBOT-WHAT IS SHE?
The glowing letters exploded into galaxies of dancing light, that condensed again into words of fire. Guinevere, the ultimate appliance, was patented and guaranteed by Solar Chemistics, Inc. Her exquisite body had been manufactured by automatic machinery, untouched by human beings. Educated by psionic processes, she was warranted sweet-tempered and quarrel-free. Her special introductory price, for a strictly limited time, was only four ninety-five.
“Whatever your profession is, I’m very sure you need me.” She was leaning out of the narrow display space, and her low voice followed him melodiously. “I have everything, for everybody.”
Chimberley turned uncertainly back.
“That might be,” he muttered reluctantly. “But all I want is a little information. You see, I’m a cybernetics engineer.” He told her his name.
“I'm Guinevere." She smiled, with a flash of precise white teeth. “Model 1, Serial Number 1997-A-456. I’d be delighted to help you, but I am afraid you’ll have to pay for me first. You do want me, don’t you?”
Chimberley’s long equine countenance turned the color of a wet brick. The sorry truth was, he had never whole-heartedly wanted any woman. His best friends were digital computers; human beings had always bored him. He couldn’t understand the sudden pounding in his ears, or the way his knobby fists had clenched.
“I'm here on business,” he said stiffly. “That’s why I stopped. You see, I’m a trouble-shooter for General Cybernetics.”
“A shooter?” Psionic educational processes evidently had their limits, but the puzzled quirk of her eyebrows was somehow still entrancing. “What’s a shooter?”
“My company builds the managerial computers that are replacing human management in most of the big corporations,” he informed her patiently. “I’m supposed to keep them going. Actually, the machines are designed to adjust and repair themselves. They never really go wrong. The usual trouble is that people just don’t try to understand them.”
He snapped his bony fingers at human stupidity.
“Anyhow, when I got back to my hotel tonight, there was this wire from Schenectady. First I’d heard about any trouble out here in the sun country. I still don’t get it.” He blinked at her hopefully. “Maybe you can tell me what’s going on.” “Perhaps I can,” she agreed sweetly. “When I’m paid for.” “You’re the trouble, yourself,” he snapped back accusingly. “That’s what I gather, though the wire was a little too concise—our own management is mechanized, of course, and sometimes it fails to make sufficient allowances for the limitations of the human employee.”
“But I’m no trouble,” she protested gaily. “Just try me.” A cold sweat burst into the palms of his h
ands. Spots danced in front of his eyes. He scowled bleakly past her at the enormous vending machine, trying angrily to insulate himself from all her disturbing effects.
“Just four hours since I got the wire. Drop everything. Fly out here to trouble-shoot Athena Sue—she’s the installation we made to ran Solar Chemistics. I barely caught the jet, and I just got here. Now I've got to find out what the score is.”
“Score?” She frowned charmingly. “Is there a game?”
He shrugged impatiently.
“Seems the directors of Solar Chemistics are unhappy because Athena Sue is manufacturing and merchandising human beings. They’re threatening to throw out our managerial system, unless we discover and repair the damage at once.”
He glowered at the shackled girl
“But the wire failed to make it clear why the directors object. Athena Sue was set to seek the greatest possible financial return from the processing and sale of solar synthetics, so it couldn’t very well be a matter of profits. There’s apparently no question of any legal difficulty. I can’t see anything for the big wheels to dash their gears about.”
Guinevere was rearranging her flame-tinted hair, smiling with a radiance he couldn’t entirely ignore.
“Matter of fact, the whole project looks pretty wonderful to me.” He grinned at her and the beautiful vending machine with a momentary admiration. “Something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish. It took one of our Athena-type computers to see the possibility, and to tackle all the technical and merchandising problems that must have stood in the way of making it a commercial reality.”
“Then you do like me?”
“The directors don’t, evidently.” He tried not to see her hurt expression. “I can’t understand why, but the first part of my job here will be to find the reason. If you can help me—”
He paused expectantly.
“I’m only four ninety-five,” Guinevere reminded him. “You put the money right here in this slot—”
“I don’t want you,” he interrupted harshly. “Just the background facts about you. To begin with—just what’s the difference between a vital appliance and an ordinary human being?”
He tried not to hear her muffled sob.
“What’s the plant investment?” He raised his voice, and ticked the questions off on his skinny fingers. “What’s the production rate? The profit margin? Under what circumstances was the manufacture of—uh—vital appliances first considered by Athena Sue? When were you put on the market? What sort of consumer acceptance are you getting now? Or don’t you know?”
Guinevere nodded brightly.
“But can’t we go somewhere else to talk about it?” She blinked bravely through her tears. “Your room, maybe?”
Chimberley squirmed uncomfortably.
“If you don’t take me,” she added innocently, “I can’t tell you anything.”
He stalked away, angry at himself for the way his knees trembled. He could probably find out all he had to know from the memory tapes of the computer, after he got out to the plant. After all, she was only an interesting product of chemistic engineering.
A stout, pink-skinned businessman stepped up to the vending machine, as the wailing urchin was dragged away. He unburdened himself with a thick briefcase and a furled umbrella, removed his glasses, and leaned deliberately to peer at Guinevere with bulging, putty-colored eyes.
“Slavery!” He straightened indignantly. “My dear young lady, you do need help.” He replaced his glasses, fished in his pockets, and offered her a business card. “As you see, I’m an attorney. If you have been forced into any land of involuntary servitude, my firm can certainly secure your release.”
“But I’m not a slave,” Guinevere said. “Our management has secured an informal opinion from the attorney general’s office to the effect that we aren’t human beings—not within the meaning of the law. We’re only chattels.”
“Eh?” He bent unbelievingly to pinch her golden arm. "Wha-”
“Alfred!”
He shuddered when he heard that penetrating cry, and snatched his fingers away from Guinevere as if she had become abruptly incandescent.
“Oh!” She shrank back into her narrow prison, rubbing at her bruised arm. “Please don’t touch me until I’m paid for.”
"Shhh!” Apprehensively, his bulging eyes were following a withered little squirrel-faced woman in a black-veiled hat, who came bustling indignantly from the direction of the ladies* room. “My—an—encumbrance.”
“Alfred, whatever are you up to now?”
“Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all.” He stooped hastily to recover his briefcase and umbrella. “But it must be time to see about our flight—”
“Sol Shopping for one of them synthetic housekeepers?” She snatched the umbrella and flourished it high. “Well, I won’t have ’em in any place of mine!”
“Martha, darling—”
“I’ll Martha-darling you!”
He ducked away.
“And you!” She jabbed savagely at Guinevere. "You synthetic whatever-you-are, I’ll teach you to carry on with any man of mine!”
“Hey!”
Chimberley hadn’t planned to interfere, but when he saw Guinevere gasp and flinch, an unconsidered impulse moved him to brush aside the stabbing umbrella. The seething woman turned on him.
“You sniveling shrimp!” she hissed at him. “Buy her yourself—and see what you get!”
She scuttled away in pursuit of Alfred.
“Oh, thank you, Pip!” Guinevere’s voice was muted with pain, and he saw the long red scratch across her tawny shoulder. "I guess you do like me!”
To his own surprise, Chimberley was digging for his billfold. He looked around self-consciously. Martha was towing Alfred past the deserted ticket windows, and an age-numbed janitor was mopping the floor, but otherwise the waiting room was empty. He fed five dollars into the slot, and waited thriftily for his five cents change.
A gong chimed softly, somewhere inside the vending machine. Something whirred. The shackles fell from Guinevere’s wrists and flicked out of sight.
SOLD OUT! a 3-D sign blazed behind her. BUY YOURS TOMORROW!
“Darling!” She had her arms around him before he recovered his nickel. “I thought you’d never take me!"
He tried to evade her kiss, but he was suddenly paralyzed. A hot tingling swept him, and the scent of her perfume made a veil of fire around him.
“Hold on!” He pushed at her weakly, trying to remind himself that she was only an appliance. “I’ve got work to do, remember. And there’s some information you’ve agreed to supply.”
“Certainly, darling.” Obediently, she disengaged herself. "But before we leave, won’t you buy my accessory kit?” A singsong cadence came into her voice. “With fresh undies and a makeup set and gay chemistic nightwear, packed in a sturdy chemyl case, it’s all complete for only nineteen ninety-five.”
“Not so fast! That wasn’t in the deal—”
He checked himself, with a grin of admiration for what was evidently an astutely integrated commercial operation. No screws loose so far in Athena Sue!
“Okay,” he told Guinevere. "If you’ll answer all my questions.”
“I’m all yours, darling!” She reached for his twenty. "With everything I know.”
She fed the twenty into the accessory slot. The machine chimed and whirred and coughed out a not-so-very-sturdy chemistic case. Guinevere picked it up and hugged him gratefully, while he waited for the clink of his nickel.
“Never mind the mugging, please!” He felt her cringe away from him, and tried to soften his voice. “I mean, we’ve no time to waste. I want to start checking over Athena Sue as soon as I can get out to the plant. Well take a taxi, and talk on the way.”
“Very well, Pip, dear.” She nodded meekly. "But before we start, couldn’t I have something to eat? “I’ve been standing here since four o’clock yesterday, and I’m simply famished.”
/> With a grimace of annoyance at the delay, he took her into the terminal coffee shop. It was almost empty. Two elderly virgins glared at Guinevere, muttered together, and marched out piously. Two sailors tittered. The lone counterman looked frostily at Chimberley, attempting to ignore Guinevere.
Chimberley studied the menu unhappily and ordered two T-bones, resolving to put them on his expense account. The counterman was fresh out of steaks, and not visibly sorry. It was chemburgers or nothing.
“Chemburgers!” Guinevere clapped her hands. “They’re made by Solar Chemistics, out of golden sunlight and pure sea water. They’re absolutely tops, and everybody loves ’em!” “Two chemburgers,” Chimberley said, “and don’t let ’em bum.”
He took Guinevere back to a secluded booth.
“Now let’s get started,” he said. “I want the whole situation. Tell me everything about you.”
“I’m a vital appliance. Just like all the others.”
“So I want to know all about vital appliances.”
“Some things I don’t know.” She frowned fetchingly. "Please, Pip, may I have a glass of water? I’ve been waiting there all night, and I’m simply parched.”
The booth was outside the counterman’s domain. He set out the water grudgingly, and Chimberley carried it back to Guinevere.
“Now what don’t you know?”
“Our trade secrets.” She smiled mysteriously. “Solar Chemistics is the daring pioneer in this exciting new field of redesigned vital organisms. Our mechanized management is much too clever to give away the unique know-how that makes us available to everybody. For that reason, deliberate gaps were left in our psionic education.”
Chimberley blinked at her shining innocence, suspecting that he had been had.
“Anyhow,” he told her uneasily, “tell me what you do know. What started the company to making—uh—redesigned vital organisms?”
“The Miss Chemistics tape.”
The Best of Jack Williamson Page 35
