Charles Cottrell

“ Goil stood up. "I've heard enough of your gibberish. Willy is a thief and you are a pathological liar. What you have just told me is pure fantasy, a yarn concocted to try to protect you and Willy. I have little doubt but what you really believe it yourself. Mr. Weston, you are a sick man."
"I told you it would sound incredible.
"Willy only steals or alters the normal sequence of events so that accidents involving human injury won't happen. Sometimes his behavior patterns are simple, sometimes complex. But always—always the synergism, syndrome, or whatever you want to call it, is the same. ”

“ Aloud I said:
"What has Willy to do with this, Mr. Goil? Willy is one of our best men, completely trustworthy."
"A hard worker and really ambitious," added Orrin.
"No doubt," Goil said acidly. "Ambitious to his own ends. I've checked Mr. Maloon's personnel records and I found some interesting things. Mr. Maloon is not any sort of qualified engineer. Or even an expert technician. Why, he's not even a good journeyman of any trade. His only approach to some sort of claim to formal training is a single correspondence course!"
"He's a good hard-working technician!" defended Orrin. ”

“ The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorse of a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or needed in a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, this was a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use need plenty of power.
And that must have been when Willy decided on a reason for having his own private asteroid. He would add the drive unit to it and make it mobile. He must have sparkled with the idea for the rest of the day. I recall his accident report saying the tug was a total loss. Of course, no one checked Willy's decision on that. ”

“ A quick-thinking engineer must have thrown a filter somewhere in the scope's innards, for the scene became sort of an X-ray one in which the glare of the light no longer impeded vision. The heart of the fury could easily be seen as it expanded itself, feeding and growing on the solid matter within its reach. ”

“ Goil thought it over for a while. Then he said, "Yes. More than I can imagine. We have the rock and the freighter, two moving bodies, meeting in space by pure chance. Space is too vast for that sort of thing. It can't happen."
"Mars and the freighter are two moving bodies in space that are going to meet," I pointed out.
"Yes, but the ship was originally headed on a course to Mars. And Mars is much bigger."
"True," I conceded. "But the asteroid is also on an interception course with the freighter. And it is a lot bigger than the freighter." ”

“ There is at least one in almost every patch. We use that as the core, and by planting a large gravity generator on it and feeding it a great deal of power, it and the asteroid attracts most of the nearby debris. The gravity generator has been souped up tremendously. It burns out rather quickly, but it operates long enough for our purposes. There is a respectable layer of assorted sizes of asteroids hugging the core. And there are several miles of dust surrounding everything. After the gravity generator has burned out, the big attraction dies out, of course. ”

“ But always, there is this synergism of Willy's; a compulsion to do some crazy thing, or to build some silly gadget, even if he has to steal to do it. And the inevitable end that sometimes quite obviously prevents injury, and other times leaving the results a mystery. Once the purpose has been accomplished, Willy loses all interest. I have histories, documented cases of Willy's influence. Files of tape recordings of his synergisms in action. ”

“ Then I realized that I had everything here; a million asteroids to choose from, and I could slip one of the gravity generators in the middle of it. And I could hitch the drive from the smashed tug to it, and install a sub-space energizer. Except for an atmosphere generator it would be equipped enough for a start. I could finish equipping it later. So I got an asteroid and took a sub-space energizer and a gravity generator from supply—they are expendable—and got the drive off the wrecked tug. I installed them on the rock."
Willy ended his story abruptly. ”

“ He so seemed to measure Willy at a glance, drawing, no doubt, also from his recent examination of Willy's records, and the personality profile he had gleaned from it. Willy (he probably reasoned) for all his foibles would be basically truthful, especially if confronted by Authority. And he apparently was timid and obviously worried. Therefore, he must have some cause to worry. Therefore, the impact of direct action should produce quick results. Mr. Goil asked:
"Willy, we'd like to know what happened to the gravity generator and the sub-space energizer." ”

“ It spreads the matter out thin. The gravitors work very well in the hot vapor. Behind each ship is towed a gravitor. Each gravitor is set to attract a particular metal, somewhat the way a magnet attracts iron, again loosely comparing. A magnet, as you know, attracts by magnetic force. The gravitors are adjusted to attract a metal by selecting its gravitic attraction. As the gravitor ships pass through the vapor, the gravitors behind them attract the metal they are set for. When load size has been reached, they are taken to the cache near the station. ”

“ Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unit out of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words to the effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. And Archie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellow he is.
Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothing more than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on the high side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This was so no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and get curious. ”

“ There is a freighter out of control enroute from Ganymede to Mars. Unless the freighter can be brought under control, it will have to be abandoned."
So what, I thought. It's happened before. So some company loses a freighter. They're insured.
Artie's voice went right on uninterrupted by my sour thoughts. "The present course of the ship is interception of Mars. Unless the course can be changed, the ship might plunge into Mars."
So what again? They're still insured. The crew can abandon ship in the lifeboats. So the ship makes a microscopic dent in Mars. It's better than 99% wasteland. ”

“ Orrin can back me up. The tug lost steering control the other day and crashed into one of the larger asteroids. It was demolished. The accident report and destruction data are a little slow getting into the records section."
"That's right," said Orrin. "Willy Maloon made the inspection and I certified it. Total loss. The tug was going mighty fast when it hit."
"Where are the remains?" asked Goil.
"Whenever anything big enough is destroyed," I answered, "it is placed with the next batch of asteroids to be vaporized. The metals are recovered that way, so the thing is not quite a total loss. ”

“ I nodded to the stuff I had tossed on his desk. "Look at those. The chart particularly. I got the course plotted by Artie Jones. I checked the path and timing of both Willy's asteroid and the freighter. Willy's asteroid is due to come out of sub-space in about six hours at this point."—I pointed to an X I had marked on the chart—"And the freighter will be at the same point at the same time."
Goil said nothing, but examined the chart and the computation figures, and finally the tapes. He shook his head a number of times as if he didn't want to believe but did not dare not to. ”

“ Goil, Willy is the exact opposite of an accident prone. Willy is a safety prone. No accidents involving personal injury ever happen when he is around. Not even minor ones."
Goil looked hostilely skeptical at me. "I seem to recall some accident reports you sent in. ”

“ They are the gravitor tugs. They are ready to move in."
I stepped up the magnification on the screen. Goil watched a number of great, ugly ships line abreast, head for the glowing clouds, enter, and disappear from sight.
"Those tugs are modifications of the scientific ships that sweep close to the sun to observe solar phenomena first hand. They are impervious to the relatively low heat of the vapor. They will do the fringes first. The center is still too turbulent. By the time they complete the fringes, the center will be calm enough to sweep. They work their way inward all the time." ”

“ Goil promptly informed Orrin that not only was he (Goil) a teetotaler, but also that he was opposed to drinking by anyone else, especially by company employees during duty hours, and in a place other than an authorized area such as the recreation room or the station bar. He told him further that he would not condone such practices while he was around; his immediate job was to inspect operations personally. His accompanying teams would dig deeply into other matters such as personnel, supplies, overall operations efficiency, and so on. Work would begin as soon as possible. ”

“ Naturally, among the asteroids there was no rising and setting of the sun to help designate the passage of time. The reference to night and day is a habit which persists with space men no matter which part of the system they happen to be in. ”

“ He finished off by saying, "Long-range scopes are looking for the ship now. As soon as it is located and magnifiers thrown into the circuit, it will be 'vised. I'll have the signals relayed to the rec room trideo. ”