offended, but warned by caution to leave. Physical fear was impossible to him—too many generations had grown and died with no need of it. But it came as a numbing shock that these beings would actually kill another intelligent person. Was life so cheap on Earth?
“Hey! Hey, Fats, stop it!” Slim had awakened at the sound of the commotion, and a hasty glance showed Lhin that he was holding the other’s arms. “Lay off, will you? What’s going on?”
But now Fats was fully awake and calming down. He dropped the metal bar and grinned wryly. “I dunno. I gsess he meant all right, but he was sitting there with that metal thing in his hands, staring at me, and I figured he meant to cut my throat or something. I’m all right now. Come on back, monkey; it’s all right.”
Slim let his partner go and nodded at Lhin. “Sure, come back, fella. Fats has some funny ideas about nonhumans, but he’s a good-hearted egg, on the whole. Be a good doggie and he won’t kick you—he might even scratch your ears.”
“Nuts.” Fats was grinning, good nature restored. He knew Slim meant it as a crack, but it didn’t bother him; what was wrong with treating Marshies and monkeys like what they were? “Whatcha got there, monkey? More pictures that mean nothing?”
Lhirt nodded in imitation of their assent gesture and held out the roll to Slim; Fats’ attitude was no longer unfriendly, but he was an unknown quantity, and Slim seemed the more interested. “Pictures that mean much, I hope. Here is Nra, twenty-nine, under sodium.”
“Eight column periodic table,” Slim told Fats. “At least, it looks like one. Get me the handbook, will you? Ummm. Under sodium, No. 29. Sodium, potassium, copper. And it’s No. 29, all right. That it, Lhin?”
Lhin’s eyes were blazing with triumph. Grace to the Great Ones. “Yes, it is copper. Perhaps you have some? Even a gram, perhaps?”
“Ten thousand grams, if you like. According to your notions, we’re lousy with the stuff. Help yourself.”
Fats cut in. “Sure, monkey, we got copper, if that’s the stuff you’ve been yelling about. What’ll you pay for it?”
“Pay?”
“Sure, give in return. We help you; you help us. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
It hadn’t occurred to Lhin, but it did seem fair. But what had he to give? And then he realized what was in the man’s mind. For the copper, he was to work, digging out and purifying the radioactives that gave warmth and light and life to the crater, so painfully brought into being when the place was first constructed, transmuted to meet the special needs of the people who were to live there. And after him, his sons and their sons, mining and sweating for Earth, and being paid in barely enough copper to keep Earth supplied with laborers. Fats’ mind filled again with dreams of the other Earth creature. For that, he would doom a race to life without pride or hope or accomplishment. Lhin found no understanding in it. There were so many of those creatures on Earth—why should his enslavement be necessary? Nor was enslavement all. Eventually, doom was as certain that way as the other, once Earth was glutted with the radioactives, or when the supply here dropped below the vital point, great as the reserve was. He shuddered under the decision forced upon him.
Slim’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Fats has things slightly wrong, Lhin. Haven’t you, Fats?”
There was something in Slim’s hand, something Lhin knew dimly was a weapon. The other man squirmed, but his grin remained.
“You’re touched, Slim, soft. Maybe you believe all this junk about other races’ equality, but you won’t kill me for it. I’m standing pat—I’m not giving away my copper.”
And suddenly Slim was grinning, too, and putting the weapon back. “Okay, don’t. Lhin can have
Fats’ thoughts contained no answer to that. He mulled it over slowly, then shrugged. Slim was right enough about it, and could do as he wanted with his share. Anyhow—“Okay, have it your way. I’ll help you pry it off wherever it is, or dig it out. How about that wire down hi the engine locker?”
Lhin stood silently watching them as they opened a small locker and rummaged through it, studying the engines and controls with half his mind, the other half quivering with ecstasy at the thought of copper—not just a handful, but all he could carry, in pure form, eas-fly turned into digestible sulphate with acids he had already prepared for his former attempt at collecting it. In a year, the crater would be populated again, teeming with life. Perhaps three or four hundred sons left, and as they multiplied, more and yet more.
A detail of the hookup he was studying brought that part of his mind uppermost, and he tugged at Slim’s trouser leg. “The… that… is not good, is it?”
“Huh? No, it isn’t, fella. That’s what brought us here.
Why?”
“Then, without radioactives, I can pay. I will fix it.”
A momentary doubt struck him. “That is to pay, is it not?”
Fats heaved a coil of wonderful-smelling wire out of the locker, wiped off sweat, and nodded. “That’s to pay, all right, but you let those things alone. They’re bad enough, already, and maybe even Slim can’t fix it.”
“I can fix.”
“Yeah. What school did you get your degree in electronics from? Two hundred feet in this coil, makes fifty for him. You gonna give it all to him, Slim?”
“Guess so.” Slim was looking at Lhin doubtfully, only half-watching as the other measured and cut the wire. “Ever touched anything like that before, Lhin? Controls for the ion feed and injectors are pretty complicated in these ships. What makes you think you can do it—unless your people had things like this and you studied the records.”
Lhin fought for words as he tried to explain. His people had nothing like that—their atomics had worked from a different angle, since uranium was almost nonexistent on the moon, and they had used a direct application of it. But the principles were plain to him, even from what he could see outside; he could feel the way it worked in his head.
“I feel. When I first grew, I could fix that. It is the way I think, not the way I learn, though I have read all the records. For three hundred million of your years, my people have learned it—now I feel-it.”
“Three hundred million years! I knew your race was old when you told me you were born talking and reading, but—galloping dinosaurs!”
“My people saw those things on your world, yes,” Lhin assured him solemnly. “Then I shall fix?”
Slim shook his head in confusion and handed over a tool kit without another word. “Three hundred million years, Fats, and during almost all that time they were further ahead than we are now. Figure that one out. When we were little crawling things living off dinosaur eggs, they were flitting from planet to planet—only I don’t suppose they could stay very long; six tunes normal gravity for them. And now, just because they had to stay on a light world and their air losses made them gather here where things weren’t normal, Lhin’s all that’s left.”
“Yeah, and how does that make him a mechanic?” “Instinct. In the same amount of time, look at the instincts the animals picked up—what to eat, enemy smells, caring for their young… He has an instinct for machinery; he doesn’t know all about it, probably, but he can instinctively feel how a thing should work.1 Add to that the collection of science records he was showing me and the amount of reading he’s probably done, and there should be almost nothing he couldn’t do to a machine.”
There wasn’t much use hi arguing, Fats decided, as he watched what was happening. The monkey either fixed things or they never would leave now. Lhin had taken snips and disconnected the control box completely; now he was taking that to pieces, one thing at a time. With a curious deftness, he unhooked wires, lifted out tubes, and uncoupled transformers.
It seemed simple enough to him. They had converted energy from the atomic fuel, and they used certain forces to ionize matter, control the rate of ionization, feed the ions to the rocket tubes, and force them outward at high speed through helices. An elementary problem in applied electronics, to govern the rate and control the ionization forces.
With small quick hands he bent wires into coils, placed other coils hi relation, and coupled a tube to the combination. Around the whole, other coils and tubes took shape, then a long feeder connected to the pipe that carried the compound to be ionized, and bus bars to the energy intakes. The injectors that handled the feeding of ions were needlessly complicated, but he let them alone, since they were workable as they were. It had taken him less than fifteen minutes.
