"Where's Bordman?" demanded Chuka in that resonant bass voice of his.
"I'm ready to report for degree-of-completion credit that the mining
properties on Xosa II are prepared as of today to deliver pig iron,
cobalt, zirconium and beryllium in commercial quantities. We require
one day's notice to begin delivery of metal other than iron at the
moment, because we're short of equipment, but we can furnish chromium
and manganese on two days' notice--the deposits are farther away."
He dumped the pig of metal on the second desk, where Aletha sat with
her perpetual loose-leaf volumes before her. The metal smoked and began
to char the desk-top. He picked it up again and tossed it from one
gloved hand to the other.
"There y'are, Ralph!" he boasted. "You Indians go after your coups!
Match this coup for me! Without fuel and minus all equipment except of
our own making--I credit an assist on the mirror, but that's all--we're
set to load the first ship that comes in for cargo! Now what are you
going to do for the record? I think we've wiped your eye for you!"
Ralph hardly looked up. His eyes were very bright. Bordman had
shown him and he was copying figures and formulae from a section of
the definition book of the Colonial Survey. The book started with
the specifications for antibiotic growth equipment for colonies
with problems in local bacteria. It ended with definitions of the
required strength of material and the designs stipulated for cages
in zoos for motile fauna, sub-divided into flying, marine, and solid
ground creatures: sub-sub-divided into carnivores, herbivores, and
omnivores, with the special specifications for enclosures to contain
abyssal creatures requiring extreme pressures, and the equipment for
maintaining a healthfully re-poisoned atmosphere for creatures from
methane planets.
Redfeather had the third volume open at, "_Landing-Grids, Lightest
Emergency, Commerce Refuges, For Use Of._" There were some dozens
of non-colonized planets along the most traveled spaceways on which
refuges for shipwrecked spacemen were maintained. Small forces of
Patrol personnel manned them. Space lifeboats serviced them. They
had the minimum installations which could draw on their planets'
ionospheres for power, and they were not expected to handle anything
bigger than a twenty ton lifeboat. But the specifications for the
equipment of such refuges was included in the reference volumes for
Bordman's use in making colonial surveys. They were compiled for
the information of contractors who wanted to bid on Colonial Survey
installations, and for the guidance of people like Bordman who checked
up on the work. So they contained all the data for the building of a
landing-grid, lightest emergency, commerce refuge type, for use of, in
case of need. Redfeather copied feverishly.
Chuka ceased his boasting, but still he grinned.
"I know we're stuck, Ralph," he said, "but it's nice stuff to go in the
records. Too bad we don't keep coup-records like you Indians."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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