Engineers -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space pirates -- Fiction
By then Hoddan had a cold-metal die-stamper in operation. It was very
large. It drew on the big ship's drive unit for power. One put a rough
mass of steel in place between plastic dies. One turned on the power.
For the tenth of a second--no longer--the steel was soft as putty. Then
it stiffened and was warm. But in that tenth of a second it had been
shaped with precision.
It took two days to duplicate the jungle-plow Hoddan had first been
shown, in new sound metal. But after the first one worked triumphantly,
they made forty of each part at a time and turned out jungle-plow
equipment enough for the subjugation of all Thetis' forests.
There were other enterprises on hand, of course. A mechanic who
stuttered horribly had an idea. He could not explain it or diagram it.
So he made it. It was an electric motor very far ahead of those in the
machines of Colin. Hoddan waked from a cat nap with a diagram in his
head. He drew it, half-asleep, and later looked and found that his
unconscious mind had designed a power-supply system which made Walden's
look rather primitive--
* * * * *
During the first six days Hoddan did not sleep to speak of, and after
that he merely cat-napped when he could. But he finally agreed with the
emigrants' leader--now no longer fierce, but fiercely triumphant--that
he thought they could go on. And he would ask a favor. He propped his
eyelids open with his fingers and wrote the letter to his grandfather
that he'd composed in his mind in the liner on Krim. He managed to make
one copy, unaddressed, of the public-relations letter that he'd worked
out at the same time. He put it through a facsimile machine and managed
to address each of fifty copies. Then he yawned uncontrollably.
He still yawned when he went to take leave of the leader of the people
of Colin. That person regarded him with warm eyes.
"I think everything's all right," said Hoddan exhaustedly. "You've got a
dozen machine shops and they are multiplying themselves, and you have
got some enthusiastic mechanics, now, who're drinking in the vision-tape
stuff and finding out more than they guessed there was. And they're
thinking, now and then, for themselves. I think you'll make out."
The bearded man said humbly:
"I have waited until you said all was well. Will you come with us?"
"No-o-o," said Hoddan. He yawned again. "I've got my work here. There's
an ... obligation I have to meet."
"It must be very admirable work," said the old man wistfully. "I wish we
had some young men like you among us."
"You have," said Hoddan. "They will be giving you trouble presently."
The old man shook his head, looking at Hoddan very affectionately
indeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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