George O. Smith

“ Ten minutes before they landed at 6, McBride picked up the phone and called 1. He spoke to his apartment. "Hello Enid," he said.
"John! What's all the shouting about?"
"La Drake tried to run her crate through the lens. She broke it."
"Who's la Drake?"
"Some dame. Look, Enid, what do you do to handle a headstrong female? Besides giving her enough rope to commit self-destruction?"
"What's her purpose in life?" asked Enid McBride.
"Proving that men are inferior animals."
"I won't answer that one," chuckled McBride's wife. "Look, John, where is this man-killer?" ”

“ Always there would be men with Carlson's gift of super-perfect balance, and they would find their life work in maintaining the life-giving lenticular warp in space.
Carlson slumped wearily in his chair and smiled tiredly. "O.K.," he said. Caldwell started the crude drive and the surface flitter started to cross the lens to Station 1.
On Pluto, the first sign of renewed life was a flash of light in the sky. It started as an expanding pinpoint and burst out over a quarter of the sky before it diminished to a safe value. ”

“ Unless I'm mistaken, all of you are far too busy to bother with a headstrong female."
The phone was silent for a few seconds, and the sounds of a light scuffle came over the line. Then a cool contralto came.
"I'm Sandra Drake," it said with a world of impertinence. "No man is going to tell me where I can't go!"
"Sister," snapped McBride, "you keep that up and we'll jolly well tell you where you can go!" McBride hung up and redoubled his efforts on the charge-reversal generator. "Women," he snarled, twisting the generator controls as though he had the Drake woman by the throat. ”

“ Pluto is a strange planet in many ways. Perhaps it may even be classed as a "man-made" planet, since if it were not for man and his works, Pluto might as well have never been. But Pluto was found abundant in uranium, and then came man to change the ultra-frigidity of Pluto's surface, and to endow Pluto with a breathable atmosphere by transporting great shiploads of the frozen gases found on Umbriel. Then man set up cities, and since the face of Pluto had never been scarred by any kind of intelligent life, the planners had a free and open hand. ”

“ I'd scream like a stuck pig if any man decided that I couldn't take care of myself. But I have enough sense to realize that all of the courtesies that men offer me are tokens of their affection and not gestures toward someone who cannot get in out of the rain without help. ”

“ Look, Doc, I don't want to kill anybody by making him work when he's likely to keel over, but we need Carlson if we ever needed any man. Darn it, why are there so very few men with supersensitive balance? ”

“ When we approach the station, we use a little gadget known as an electrostatic gradient indicator which is useful over short distances, and with which we adjust our charge-difference to a sane value. Pluto and the solar system in general can thank their stars that the carbon-chain molecules that go into the human system are stable enough to resist dissolution. We are able to maintain the lens on less than enough charge to kill us all, though the boys in the odd-numbered stations report a lower metabolism than those in the even numbered ones."
McBride paused. ”

“ An occasional relay would snap shut for the briefest of instants and make instantaneous circuits that caused minor imperfections of the lens.
The cycle damped to zero in ten minutes, and then the men in the second element stations surveyed their bruises and began to pick up the mess; from every cabinet, from every bench, from every shelf, tools, supplies, and instruments had been thrown. They lay in profusion throughout the stations and must be replaced before the men could make a move toward repair. ”

“ Across the Devil's Range went the uranium to Mephisto, where it was smelted down into pigs. It was then put on barges and floated down the River Styx to Hell, which lies across the River Styx from Sharon; both cities quartering on the Sulphur Sea.
It was loaded onto the ships of space at Hell, and then raced across the void, sunward to the Inner System where it was used.
But the names are but locationally appropriate. Hell is no fuming, torrid city. It is temperate with a perfect climate. ”

“ Yeah, she's one of those fool females that isn't content with being equal to any man—she's got to prove she's better! And she doesn't care how many people she hurts doing it. If Sandra Drake gets through the lens to Pluto, she'll get her ears toasted right. ”

“ Circling in ever-decreasing spirals, the particles set up a super-powerful magnetic field parallel to the axis of the lens. As they reached the center of the lens, the alpha particles lost velocity and with their lost speed, they also lost their effect. They died out, and to all effects, disappeared.
The space between the electro-gravitic warp and the magneto-gravitic warp decreased as the fore warp thickened, and then with a sickening swell on the part of the stations themselves, the center of the fore warp touched the center of the aft warp. ”

“ Only man, whose nervous system was not interrupted by magnetic fields, and whose chemistry and physical attributes were not overly disturbed by electronic charges, could have established the correction of the lens.
Carlson and Dr. Caldwell sat out in the center of a magneto-gravitic field that would have destroyed the finest of balance-mechanism, and above an electro-gravitic field that would have prevented the operation of an instrument sensitive enough to detect imperfections in gravitic alignment. ”

“ The electronic charge is so great that a heavy active atom such as bromine will, under the positive charge, lose enough of the outer ring electrons as to inhibit the formation of the more complex atoms, while under the negative charge there will be such an excess of electrons that a heavy element of the zero group, such as xenon, will actually be forced to accept an additional planetary electron and will then combine with some of the more active elements. ”

“ One is electropositive. You haven't got a charge-reversal generator in that crate of yours, because I know darned well that the only place where they have 'em is right here in the lens itself. It's the only place they're needed. Now, Miss Drake, the lens is twenty-two million miles in diameter. It is that size because a disk of that diameter subtends the same arc as the sun does when viewed from Terra. Since the lens is situated halfway between Sol and Pluto, the magnification amounts to the projection of the sun on Pluto equal to the sun on Terra. ”

“ Tiny will be over in just as long as it takes to go around the lens."
"Wait a minute! Cut across, Bob. After all, the lens is down, and we needn't worry about crossing direct."
The phone rang again. McBride picked it up and bellowed: "Hello!"
"Dr. McBride? This is Charles Holloway."
McBride swallowed. Holloway was the planet governor at Pluto. "Yes?" he said in a quieter tone.
"You are aware that Pluto is without his artificial sun?"
"We are also aware that the lens system is without power for some stations, without space-warping equipment for others, and without personnel for still others. ”

“ McBride called Station 9 again. "Fuller? Look, Bob, how's 9?"
"Not good," said Fuller glumly. "Only one thing outbalances the rest. The alphatron went up with the rest of the stuff or Carlson would have been burned to a crisp by now. That means we'll have to run over to 1 and get a new alphatron." ”

“ We might need something in a tearing hurry."
"I shall issue such orders," promised Holloway. "I have also been informed by the astrophysicists that Pluto will lose about two degrees per hour until the lens is re-instated. There is still a lot of very cold material down in the interior of the planet, they say, and it will tend to draw heat from the surface. You know how the heat gradient is from midnight to noon."
"I understand," said McBride. "But we're not sitting around contemplating the temperature on Pluto, or calculating how soon it will be before you can go ice skating on the River Styx. ”

“ Tommy left, and McBride called Station 8. The answer was prompt. "Look, Jimmy, 6 doesn't answer. You send a couple of your men over—not your best, but a couple that you can spare. I'm going to call 4 and get Jud to send a couple of his assistant specialists over, too. I'll be over myself as soon as I can get there; but it will be a long haul for me. It's near the full diameter of the lens, and twenty-two million miles is no stone's throw." ”

“ And since you are superior to men, no doubt you'd prefer legal protection for them—marriage laws designed to assist and protect the weaker and inferior male; labor restrictions so that grasping women may not take advantage of them ”

“ The fact that they were points in space instead of mighty, million mile rings of metal to carry the space-warping charge made the focus of Sol irregular instead of circular, but it served its purpose and men grew used to the scintillating sun.
Certainly, it cost like the very devil, but uranium is not plentiful anywhere else, and men found it economically sound—
John McBride cocked his feet on his desk at Station 1, and began to read his mail. ”