Industrial Revolution

'Is this your first long space trip?'

'Yes, I was stationed at Port Colorado before the new Administration reshuffled armed service assignments.'

'They did? How come?'

'I don't know. Well, that is, during the election campaign the Social Justice Party did talk a lot about old-line officers who were too hidebound to carry out modern policies effectively. But it sounded rather silly to me.'

Warburton compressed his lips. 'I do not believe it is proper for service officers to discuss political issues publicly,' he said like a machine gun.

Ellen flushed. 'S-sorry, commander.'

Blades felt a helpless anger on her account. He wasn't sure why. What was she to him? He'd probably never see her again. A hell of an attractive target, to be sure; and after so much celibacy he was highly vulnerable; but did she really matter?

He turned his back on Warburton and his eyes on her—a five thousand per cent improvement—and diverted her from her embarrassment by asking, 'Are you from Colorado, then, Miss Ziska?'

'Oh, no. Toronto.'

'How'd you happen to join the Navy, if I may make so bold?'

'Gosh, that's hard to say. But I guess mostly I felt so crowded at home. So, pigeonholed. The world seemed to be nothing but neat little pigeonholes.'

'Uh-huh. Same here. I was also a square pigeon in a round hole.' She laughed. 'Luckily,' he added, 'Space is too big for compartments.'

Her agreement lacked vigor. The Navy must have been a disappointment to her. But she couldn't very well say so in front of her shipmates.

Hm-m-m ... if she could be gotten away from them—'How long will you be here?' he inquired. His pulse thuttered.

'We haven't been told,' she said.

'Some work must be done on the missile launchers,' Warburton said. 'That's best carried out here, where extra facilities are available if we need them. Not that I expect we will.' He paused. 'I hope we won't interfere with your own operations.'

'Far from it.' Blades beamed at Ellen. 'Or, more accurately, this kind of interference I don't mind in the least.'

She blushed and her eyelids fluttered. Not that she was a fluffhead, he realized. But to avoid incidents, Navy regulations enforced an inhuman correctness between personnel of opposite sexes. After weeks in the black, meeting a man who could pay a compliment without risking court-martial must be like a shot of adrenalin. Better and better!

'Are you sure?' Warburton persisted. 'For instance, won't we be in the way when the next ship comes from Jupiter?'

'She'll approach the opposite end of the asteroid,' Blades said. 'Won't stay long, either.'

'How long?'

'One watch, so the crew can relax a bit among those of us who're off duty. It'd be a trifle longer if we didn't happen to have an empty bag at the moment. But never very long. Even running under thrust the whole distance, Jupe's a good ways off. They've no time to waste.'

'When is the next ship due?'

'The Pallas Castle is expected in the second watch from now.'

'Second watch. I see.' Warburton stalked on with a brooding expression on his Puritan face.

Blades might have speculated about that, but someone asked him why the Station depended on spin for weight. Why not put in an internal field generator, like a ship? Blades explained patiently that an Emett large enough to produce uniform pull through a volume as big as the Sword was rather expensive. 'Eventually, when we're a few megabucks ahead of the game—'

'Do you really expect to become rich?' Ellen asked. Her tone was awed. No Earthsider had that chance any more, except for the great corporations. 'Individually rich?'

'We can't fail to. I tell you, this is a frontier like nothing since the Conquistadores. We could very easily have been wiped out in the first couple of years—financially or physically—by any of a thousand accidents. But now we're too far along for that. We've got it made, Jimmy and I.'

'What will you do with your wealth?'

'Live like an old-time sultan,' Blades grinned. Then, because it was true as well as because he wanted to shine in her eyes: 'Mostly, though, we'll go on to new things. There's so much that needs to be done. Not simply more asteroid mines. We need farms; timber; parks; passenger and cargo liners; every sort of machine. I'd like to try getting at some of that water frozen in the Saturnian System. Altogether, I see no end to the jobs. It's no good our depending on Earth for anything. Too expensive, too chancy. The Belt has to be made completely self- sufficient.'

'With a nice rakeoff for Sword Enterprises,' Gilbertson scoffed.

'Why, sure. Aren't we entitled to some return?'

'Yes. But not so out of proportion as the Belt companies seem to expect. They're only using natural resources that rightly belong to the people, and the accumulated skills and wealth of an entire society.'

'Huh! The People didn't do anything with the Sword. Jimmy and I and our boys did. No Society was around here grubbing nickel-iron and riding out gravel storms; we were.'

'Let's leave politics alone,' Warburton snapped. But it was mostly Ellen's look of distress which shut Blades up.

To everybody's relief, they reached Central Control about then. It was a complex of domes and rooms, crammed with more equipment than Blades could put a name to. Computers were in Chung's line, not his. He wasn't able to answer all of Warburton's disconcertingly sharp questions.

But in a general way he could. Whirling through vacuum with a load of frail humans and intricate artifacts, the Sword must be at once machine, ecology, and unified organism. Everything had to mesh. A failure in the thermodynamic balance, a miscalculation in supply inventory, a few mirrors perturbed out of proper orbit, might spell Ragnarok. The chemical plant's purifications and syntheses were already a network too large for the human mind to grasp as a whole, and it was still growing. Even where men could have taken charge, automation was cheaper, more reliable, less risky of lives. The computer system housed in Central Control was not only the brain, but the nerves and heart of the Sword.

'Entirely cryotronic, eh?' Warburton commented. 'That seems to be the usual practice at the Stations. Why?'

'The least expensive type for us,' Blades answered. 'There's no problem in maintaining liquid helium here.'

Warburton's gaze was peculiarly intense. 'Cryotronic systems are vulnerable to magnetic and radiation disturbances.'

'Uh-huh. That's one reason we don't have a nuclear power plant. This far from the sun, we don't get enough emission to worry about. The asteroid's mass screens out what little may arrive. I know the TIMM system is used on ships; but if nothing else, the initial cost is more than we want to pay.'

'What's TIMM?' inquired the Altair's chaplain.

'Thermally Integrated Micro-Miniaturized,' Ellen said crisply. 'Essentially, ultraminiaturized ceramic-to-metal- seal vacuum tubes running off thermionic generators. They're immune to gamma ray and magnetic pulses, easily shielded against particule radiation, and economical of power.' She grinned. 'Don't tell me there's nothing about them in Leviticus, Padre!'

'Very fine for a ship's autopilot,' Blades agreed. 'But as I said, we needn't worry about rad or mag units here, we don't mind sprawling a bit, and as for thermal efficiency, we want to waste some heat. It goes to maintain internal temperature.'

'In other words, efficiency depends on what you need to effish,' Ellen bantered. She grew grave once more and studied him for a while before she mused, 'The same person who swung a pick, a couple of years ago, now deals with something as marvelous as this....' He forgot about worrying.