eye. He was in a room. A room with a curved ceiling and curving walls. Slowly, with infinite care, he hung his head over the side of the bunk. Below him in a form-fitting chair before a bank of instruments sat a small man with yellow skin and blue-black hair. Kurt coughed. The man looked up. Kurt asked the obvious question.
“Where am I?”
“I’m not permitted to give you any information,” said the small man. His speech had an odd slurred quality to Kurt’s ear.
“Something stinks!” said Kurt.
“It sure does,” said the small man gloomily. “It must be worse for you. I’m used to it.”
Kurt surveyed the cabin with interest. There were a lot of gadgets tucked away here and there that looked familiar. They were like the things he had worked on in Tech School except that they were cruder and simpler. They looked as if they had been put together by an eight-year-old recruit who was doing the first trial assembly. He decided to make another stab at establishing some sort of communication with the little man.
“How come you have everything in one room? We always used to keep different things in different shops.”
“No comment,” said Ozaki.
Kurt had a feeling he was butting his head against a stone wall. He decided to make one more try.
“I give up,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “where’d you hide it?”
“Hide what?” asked the little man.
“The fish,” said Kurt.
“No comment.”
“Why not?” asked Kurt.
“Because there isn’t anything that can be done about it,” said Ozaki. “It’s the air conditioner. Something’s haywire inside.”
“What’s an air conditioner?” asked Kurt.
“That square box over your head.”
Kurt looked at it, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. The thing did look familiar. Suddenly a picture of it popped into his mind. Page 318 in the “Manual of Auxiliary Mechanisms.”
“It’s fantastic!” he said.
“What is?” said the little man.
“This,” Kurt pointed to the conditioner. “I didn’t know they existed in real life. I thought they were just in books. You got a first echelon kit?”
“Sure,” said Ozaki. “It’s in the recess by the head of the bunk. Why?”
Kurt pulled the kit out of its retaining clips and opened its cover, fishing around until he found a small screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers.
“I think I’ll fix it,” he said conversationally.
“Oh, no you won’t!” howled Ozaki. “Air with fish is better than no air at all.” But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring parts. He gave a slow quarter turn and the internal thumping disappeared.
“See,” he said triumphantly, “no more fish!”
Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin swept across his face.
“It’s going away! I do believe it’s going away!”
Kurt gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp spicy scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and relaxed in his chair. His face lost its pallor.
“How did you do it?” he said finally.
“No comment,” said Kurt pleasantly.
There was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brainstorm. He was more impressed by Kurt’s casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to admit.
“Tell me,” he said cautiously, “can you fix other things beside air conditioners?”
“I guess so,” said Kurt, “if it’s just simple stuff like this.” He gestured around the cabin. “Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They’ve got it together wrong.”
“Maybe we could make a dicker,” said Ozaki. “You fix things, I answer questions—some questions that is,” he added hastily.
“It’s a deal,” said Kurt who was filled with a burning curiosity as to his whereabouts. Certain things were already clear in his mind. He knew that wherever he was he’d never been there before. That meant evidently that there was a garrison on the other side of the mountains whose existence had never been suspected. What bothered him was how he had got there.
“Check,” said Ozaki. “First, do you know anything about plumbing?”
“What’s plumbing?” asked Kurt curiously.
“Pipes,” said Ozaki. “They’re plugged. They’ve been plugged for more time than I like to think about.”
“I can try,” said Kurt.
“Good!” said the pilot and ushered him into the small cubicle that opened off
“What’s a shower?”
“That curved dingbat up there,” said Ozaki pointing. “The thermostat’s out of whack.”
“Thermostats are kid stuff,” said Kurt, shutting the door.
Ten minutes later Kurt came out. “It’s all fixed.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Ozaki, shouldering his way past Kurt. He reached down and pushed a small curved handle. There was the satisfying sound of rushing water. He next reached into the little shower compartment and turned the knob to the left. With a hiss a needle spray of cold water burst forth. The pilot looked at Kurt with awe in his eyes.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it! That’s two answers you’ve earned.”
Kurt peered back into the cubicle curiously. “Well, first,” he said, “now that I’ve fixed them, what are they
Ozaki explained briefly and a look of amazement came over Kurt’s face. Machinery he knew, but the idea that it could be used for something was hard to grasp.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it!” he said slowly. This would be something to tell when he got home. Home! The pressing question of location popped back into his mind.
“How far are we from the garrison?” he asked.
Ozaki made a quick mental calculation.
“Roughly two light-seconds,” he said.
“How far’s that in kilometers?”
Ozaki thought again. “Around six hundred thousand. I’ll run off the exact figures if you want them.”
Kurt gulped. No place could be that far away. Not even Imperial Headquarters! He tried to measure out the distance in his mind in terms of days’ marches, but he soon found himself lost. Thinking wouldn’t do it. He had to see with his own eyes where he was.
“How do you get outside?” he asked.
Ozaki gestured toward the air lock that opened at the rear of the compartment. “Why?”
“I want to go out for a few minutes to sort of get my bearings.”
Ozaki looked at him in disbelief. “What’s your game, anyhow?” he demanded.
It was Kurt’s turn to look bewildered. “I haven’t any game. I’m just trying to find out where I am so I’ll know which way to head to get back to the garrison.”
“It’ll be a long, cold walk.” Ozaki laughed and hit the stud that slid back the ray screens on the vision ports. “Take a look.”
Kurt looked out into nothingness, a blue-black void marked only by distant pinpoints of light. He suddenly felt terribly alone, lost in a blank immensity that had no boundaries.
