Randall Garrett

“ Crayley smiled faintly. "Why do you use waldoes to repair a generator on a ship?"
The major looked at Crayley to see if he was kidding, then said, "A man can't live five seconds near an unshielded generator, and you have to take the shielding off to get at the innards. But I don't see how that applies. Each repair job is different. I'll admit that I'm not a drive engineer—I wouldn't know the first thing about repairing one—but I do know that the engineer has to use remote control hands because the work is so delicate. ”

“ There was, Crayley admitted, nothing malicious about it. Klythe was not trying to suppress Crayley; there was just nothing else he could do. There is nothing malicious about an asteroid, either, but when one lies directly athwart the orbit of a spaceship, either the ship must veer aside or the asteroid blasted out of the way. And Crayley was not the type to change his orbit.
There was no malice or hatred on Crayley's part, either. One does not hate an asteroid.
He pushed open the door to Klythe's outer office and allowed the Space Force major to follow him in. ”

“ Sure, I'll admit that it would have taken my boys a little time in disassembly to get the hang of this new generator, but we'd have made it up in recording time. That's the way the goddam military mind works! Nuts!"
Crayley rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger. "Is the team ready for recording today?"
Klythe grinned. "As close as they'll ever be. It takes time to get a team accustomed to my way of doing things. They hate my guts for the way I've yelled at them. But it's as much my fault as theirs. If their own engineer were to take over one of my crews, he wouldn't have any better results. ”

“ The robot glided into the tunnel itself.
The inside of the tunnel was still fiercely hot; the new generator glowed a yellow orange, and the waldo secondaries had been warped and ruined by the heat.
And on the floor, human in shape only, lay what had once been Berin Klythe.
The mobiles went to work to take care of the glowing hulk of the ruined generator.
Crayley looked at the safety engineer. "There's not much I can do down here," he said. "You take care of the bodies, will you?" ”

“ Crayley rubbed his mustache and waited for the greetings to get themselves over with. The major was trying to act nonchalant, but it was easy to see that he was somewhat in awe of Klythe. Klythe had taken the Big Gamble and won, and not very many people had done that. In the first place, the government only picked a few of the very best men to go through Rejuvenation. Men who were necessary, brilliant, useful. Men like Berin Klythe, who was important and a genius. ”

“ Our analysts suspect that whoever or whatever is doing it doesn't know we're intelligent. What it boils down to is this: we have an interstellar war on our hands."
Klythe nodded slowly after a moment. "I get it. That's why you asked for this funny modification of the drive generator—the new J-233. It isn't supposed to be a drive generator at all."
"That's right," said Major Stratford, "it's a weapon."
"Why tell us now?" Crayley asked softly. "I mean, you've ordered the thing; we've practically got it ready. Why not leave us in the dark?" ”

“ Crayley had been a little afraid that Klythe's enthusiasm wouldn't be up to par on this project, but it evidently was.
He was rubbing his hands together, a nervous smile playing around his mouth, coming and going unpredictably.
"Well, we'll see today. Major Stratford will be here with the Space Force Research Staff at fourteen hundred to watch the first one off. I hope the bugs aren't too rough on us."
"Nothing will go wrong," Crayley assured him. ”

“ The hands and arms and fingers of the waldoes in the screen worked together with precision as they put the last finishing touches to the generator unit. Finally they were finished; the arms assumed the "ready" position.
Crayley almost held his breath. Everything depended on Klythe now. Klythe, with his impatience, his pride in a piece of work well done, his eagerness to be sure of perfection; Klythe himself was the only weak link in the chain that led to his own death.
The tunnel was still flooded with radioactivity. In production, that wouldn't matter ”

“ Every day, some physicist comes up with a new idea on sub-nucleonics. Within a week or so, enough of these ideas have snowballed to produce a slight modification that will improve a spacedrive—increase its speed, improve its efficiency, and so on. Within six or eight months, enough improvements have built up to make it worthwhile to incorporate them into the drive we're building. If North American used production line robots, we'd have to rip out the whole bunch and rebuild 'em to make the new generator. ”

“ Crayley stroked his mustache and nodded. The material used in the interior of the model was supposed to approximate the highly radioactive material in the real thing as closely as possible, but there might be just enough difference in critical spots to require some small adjustments in the tape. If a man's hand applied just enough pressure and torque to twist a piece of copper wire just so, it might be too much or too little for a radioactive alloy wire that would be used in the same place in the production piece. ”

“ What I mean is, we usually attribute it to another loss in our fight against the natural forces of the planet. The colony's gone; you blame disease, the flora, the fauna, the storms, everything else. Then you try to re-establish the colony. ”

“ Klythe turned and headed for the door, followed by Crayley and the other engineers. Silently, the technicians followed after.
The original model of the generator lay on a work table in one of the recording rooms. Around it were the recording stations, the seats and controls each of the techs would occupy.
Klythe waved at the seats. "All right, men—to begin with, each of you occupy your regular team position. Let's get this thing disassembled. I want to see how it goes."
The model was just that—a model. It had been built with ordinary metal and plastic; it could never be energized. ”

“ Because the ordinary robotic device is a specialist; it can, at most, do two or three things—usually only one. And if you eliminate the thing that a particular robot does, or change it a little, you have to rebuild the tools and re-arrange them before reprogramming the whole line. ”

“ Crayley climbed into a suit and adjusted the air flow. Then he walked over to where the safety technicians were putting on the primary gloves for the mobile waldoes. From each control board, a long snake of cable ran to the mobile it controlled. The safety men switched on the power and the mobiles rolled down the corridor out of sight.
Crayley watched their progress over the shoulder of one of the safety techs. The screen showed the walls of the corridor sliding by. Then there was a shifting as the camera panned to the left. After several more turns, the robot came to the door of Tunnel Nine. ”

“ It's cooled down a little now, but that generator must still be burning." He stopped for a second, then: "Nobody got out of it alive. We're sending in the mobiles now. The secondaries in there won't work. It's going to be a rough job because we'll have to use cables; we couldn't possibly get a UHF beam through that static."
The safety men were setting up a monitor screen bank for the mobile waldoes. Two of them, four-foot wheeled robots with TV cameras mounted where human heads would be, rolled up to the closed door. ”

“ He waved a hand at the screen. "—is recorded. It's routine. Why spend all the money on those tape-controlled robots when much simpler machines can be made to do the job?"
I wonder, Crayley thought to himself, if this blockhead knows which end of his ship to point up when he's taking off? "Two reasons, Major. In the first place, building a sub-nucleonic converter is also a delicate job—as delicate as repairing it. In the second place, we have something here that will save money in the long run. ”