"Ralph has a problem," said Chuka blandly. "He's up there--See? He
needs you. There's a hoist. You've got to check degree-of-completion
anyhow. You might take a look around while you're up there. But he's
anxious for you to see something. There where you see the little knot
of people. The platform."
Bordman grimaced. When one was well started on a survey, one got used
to heights and depths and all sorts of environments. But he hadn't been
up on steel work in a good many months. Not since a survey on Kalka IV
nearly a year ago. He would be dizzy at first.
He accompanied Chuka to the spot where a steel cable dangled from an
almost invisibly thin beam high above. There was a strictly improvised
cage to ascend in--planks and a hand rail forming an insecure platform
that might hold four people. He got into it, and Dr. Chuka got in
beside him. Chuka waved his hand. The cage started up.
Bordman winced as the ground dropped away below. It was ghastly to be
dangling in emptiness like this. He wanted to close his eyes. The cage
went up and up. It took many long minutes to reach the top.
There was a newly-made platform there. The sunlight was blindingly
bright, the landscape an intolerable glare. Bordman adjusted his
goggles to maximum darkness and stepped gingerly from the swaying
cage to the hardly more solid-seeming area. Here he was in mid-air
on a platform barely ten feet square. It was rather more than
twice the height of a metropolitan skyscraper from the ground. The
mountain-crests were only half a mile away and not much higher. Bordman
was acutely uncomfortable. He would get used to it, but--
"Well?" he asked. "Chuka said you needed me here. What's the matter?"
Ralph Redfeather nodded formally. Aletha was here, too, and two of
Chuka's foremen--one did not look happy--and four of the Amerind
steel-workers. They grinned at Bordman.
"I wanted you to see," said Aletha's cousin, "before we threw on the
current. It doesn't look like that little grid could handle the sand it
took care of. But Lewanika wants to report."
A dark man who worked under Chuka--and looked as if he belonged on
solid ground--said:
"We cast the beams for the small landing-grid, Mr. Bordman. We melted
the metal out of the cliffs and ran it into moulds as it flowed down."
He stopped. One of the Indians said:
"We made the girders into the small landing-grid. It bothered us
because we built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We didn't
understand why you ordered it there. But we built it."
The second dark man said with a trace of swagger:
"We made the coils, Mr. Bordman. We made the small grid so it would
work the same as the big one when it was finished. And then we made the
big grid work, finished or not!"
Bordman said impatiently:
"All right. Very good. But what is this? A ceremony?"
"Just so," said Aletha, smiling. "Be patient, Mr. Bordman!"
Her cousin said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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