'No cars.'
'No oil wells, practically.'
They shifted.
From an underwater dome they gazed out at an artificial reef made from old car bodies. The shapes seemed to blend, their outlines obscured by mud and time and swarming fish. Bent and twisted metal bodies had long since rusted away, but their outlines remained, held by shellfish living and dead. Ghosts of cars, the dashboards and upholstery showing through. An occasional fiber-glass wreck showed as if it had been placed yesterday.
The reef went on and on, disappearing into gray distance.
All those cars.
'People used to joke about the East River catching fire and burning to the ground. It was that dirty,' said Whyte. 'Now look at it.'
Things floated by: wide patches of scum, with plastic and metal objects embedded in them. Jerryberry said, 'It's pretty grubby.'
'Maybe, but it's not an open sewer. Teleportation made it easier to get rid of garbage.'
'I guess my trouble is I never saw anything as dirty as you claim it was. Oil slicks. Lake Michigan. The Mississippi.' Maybe you're exaggerating. 'Just what has teleportation done for garbage collection?'
'There are records. Pictures.'
'But even with your wonderful bottomless garbage cans, it must be easier just to dump it in the river.'
'Ahh, I guess so.'
'And you still have to put the gupp somewhere after you collect it.'
Whyte was looking at him oddly. 'Very shrewd, Barry. Let me show you the next step.'
Whyte kept his hand covered as he dialed. 'Secret,' he said. 'JumpShift experimental laboratory. We don't need a lot of room, because experiments with teleportation aren't particularly dangerous…'
but there was room, lots of it. The building was a huge inflated Quonset hut. Through the transparent panels Jerryberry could see other buildings, set wide apart on bare dirt. The sun was 45 degrees up. If he had known which way was north, he could have guessed longitude and latitude.
A very tall, very black woman in a lab smock greeted Whyte with glad cries. Whyte introduced her as 'Gemini Jones, Phd.'
'Gem, where do you handle disposal of radioactive waste?'
'Building Four.' The physicist's hair exploded around her head like a black dandelion, adding unnecessary inches to her height. She looked down at Jerryberry with genial curiosity. 'Newstaper?'
'Don't ever try to fool anyone. The eyes give you away.'
They took the booth to Building Four. Presently they were looking down through several densities of leaded glass into a cylindrical metal chamber.
'We get a package every twenty minutes or so,' said Gem Jones. 'There's a transmitter linked to this receiver in every major power plant in the United States. We keep the receiver on all the time. If a package gets reflected back, we have to find out what's wrong, and that can get hairy, because it's usually wrong at the drop- ship.'
Jerryberry said, 'Drop-ship?'
Gemini Jones showed surprise at his ignorance. Whyte said, 'Backup a bit, Barry. What's the most dangerous garbage ever?'
'Give me a hint.'
'Radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. Most dangerous per pound, anyway. They send those wastes here, and we send them to a drop-ship. You've got to know what a drop-ship is.'
'Of course I-'
'A drop-ship is a moving teleport receiver with one end open. Generally it's attached to a space probe. The payload flicks in with a velocity different from that of the drop-ship. Of course it's supposed to come tearing out the open end, which means somebody has to keep it turned right. And of course the drop-ship only operates in vacuum.'
'Package,' Gem Jones said softly. Something had appeared in the metal chamber below. It was gone before Jerryberry could quite see what it was.
'Just where is your drop-ship?'
'Circling Venus,' said Whyte. 'Originally it was part of the second Venus expedition. You can send anything through a drop-ship: fuel, oxygen, food, water, even small vehicles. There are drop-ships circling every planet in the solar system, except Neptune.
'When the Venus expedition came home, they left the drop-ship in orbit. We thought at first that we might send another expedition through it, but-face it, Venus just isn't worth it. We're using the planet as a garbage dump, which is about all it's good for.
'Now, there's no theoretical reason we can't send unlimited garbage through the Venus drop-ship, as long as we keep the drop-ship oriented right. Many transmitters, one receiver. The payload doesn't stay in the receiver more than a fraction of a second. If it did get overloaded, why, some of the garbage would be reflected back to the transmitter, and we'd send it again. No problem.'
'What about cost?'
'Stupendous. Horrible. Too high for any kind of garbage less dangerous than this radioactive stuff. But maybe we can bring it down someday.' Whyte stopped; he looked puzzled. 'Mind if I sit down?'
There were fold-up chairs around a card table with empty pop bulbs on it. Whyte sat down rather disturbingly hard, even with Gem Jones trying to support his weight. She asked, 'Can I get Doctor Janesko?'
'No, Gem, just tired. Is there a pop machine?'
Jerryberry found the pop machine. He paid a chocolate dollar for a clear plastic bulb of cola. He turned and almost bumped into Gemini Jones.
She spoke low, but there was harsh intensity in her voice. 'You're running him ragged. Will you lay off of him?'
'He's been running me!' Jerryberry whispered.
'I believe it. Well, don't let him run you so fast. Remember, he's an old man.'
Whyte pulled the cola bulb open and drank. 'Better.' He sighed. . and was back in high gear. 'Now, you see? We're cleaning up the world. We aren't polluters.'
'Right.'
'Thank you.'
'I never should have raised the subject. What have you got for the mall riot?'
Whyte looked confused.
'The mall riot is still going on, and they're still blaming me.'
'And you still blame JumpShift.'
'It's a matter of access,' Jerryberry said patiently. 'Even if only ten men in a million, say, would loot a store, given the opportunity, that's still about four thousand people in the United States. And all four thousand can get to the Santa Monica Mall in the time it takes to dial twenty-one digits.'
When Whyte spoke again, he sounded bitter. 'What are we supposed to do, stop inventing things?'
'No, of course not.' Jerryberry pulled open another bulb of cola.
'What, then?'
'I don't know. Just. . keep working things out.' He drank. 'There's always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean you should stop solving problems?'
'Well, let's solve this one.'
They sat sipping cola. It was good to sit down. The old man's running me ragged, thought Jerryberry.
'Crowds,' he said.
'Right.'
'You can make one receiver for many transmitters. In fact. . every booth in a city receives from any other booth. Can you make a booth that transmits only?'
