With both sides trying so hard, their mutual greetings were protracted and exceedingly warm, and only when the rituals were over did Theor Close and Betrun Jun refer to the problems Sam had listed in anticipation of their visit. After a brief discussion, the three of them went down to the heavy equipment barn, where they looked first at a blackened launcher.
“We didn’t design this,” said Theor Close with distaste.
“I know,” said Sam patiently. “If you’d designed it, we wouldn’t have the problem.” Phansuris were all geniuses. Everyone knew that. They didn’t need to rub it in.
Theor preened. “What’s the problem?”
“A settler got burned, on the face and neck. He was too close to the thing, and the back blast off that fire shield got him.”
“What do you use if for?” asked Betrun Jun.
“Certain trace elements in the soil get used up and we need to restore them. The quantities are so minuscule, it’s not economical to try to mix them evenly into the bulk fertilizers, so we wait for the wind to be right, then we go way, way upwind of the settlement, and use this launcher to kick an explosive cannister up about two miles. The mix is very fine, the dust gets wind-spread over hundreds of square miles and it drifts down for days. It’s primitive and untidy, but it’s effective and efficient.”
“The launcher needs a blast control chamber,” said Betrun Jun. “A torus-shaped ring at the base.” He sketched rapidly, holding out the result. “With baffles.”
Sam snorted. “It’s funny-looking. Like a doughnut with a pipe through it.”
“Well, whatever it looks like, the blast will buffet around in the ring shaped chamber without getting loose to burn anybody. This one is easy, and we’ll see to it at once. How many do you need?”
“Eleven, one for each settlement, plus a few spares.”
Jun added the eleven settlements to his list of Hobbs Land facilities, which already included the mines, the fertilizer plant, and Central Management.
“What’s next.”
Sam ticked off the second item. “There’s something faulty in the fuel feed on that 1701 cultivator over there. We had a driver sick from gozon fumes.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Just the driver. He was kind of woozy and angry, that’s all.”
“You’re lucky,” said Theor Close. “We had an operator on Pedaria get a good whiff of gozon and kill three people before they finally stopped him.”
“Funny the chemists can’t come up with something safer,” said Sam.
“They have. It just isn’t as efficient. With the proper safeguards, gozon is all right.” Theor Close took a protective mask from his tool kit, put it on, then opened the pod hatch on the 1701 and drew out the pod. “Where shall I put this?”
Sam looked around and indicated a bare work bench standing to one side.
Theor laid the pod upon it, then returned to the pod hatch. “If you’ve got fumes, likely the problem is in the seal-valve unit. That was the problem on Pedaria. We’re redesigning the whole assembly, and you’ll have these replaced very soon.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, we’ll fix this one.” Theor inserted himself into the hatch and mumbled to himself. Then he came out, with an audible pop, and said to Betrun Jun, “Will you look at it? There’s got to be a flaw in the sphincter-gasket, but I can’t find it.”
A settler drove into the barn on a small multipurpose tractor towing a spray unit behind it.
Betrun inserted himself into the hatch. After a time, he said, “You can’t find one because there isn’t one.” His voice reverberated in the closed space, before he popped out, like a ferf out of a hole. “Are you sure this is the unit, Sam?”
“This is the one,” said Sam, firmly, checking the number painted on the hatch against the one on his list.
The man at the door began to back the tractor.
Jun took another look and popped out again. “The flaw has to be in the fuel pod itself. Where did you put it?”
Sam turned, seeing the pod and the bench and the tractor all in one terrible vision, the sprayer hitting the table, the table falling, the faulty pod going over with it, and the cloud of violet mist that erupted from it, catching the tractor driver in its midst.
“God,” whispered Theor Close, jerking open his tool kit and finding another mask. He shoved it at Sam, who took it almost without thinking. Sam’s eyes were fixed on the driver, who had gone completely blank-faced, like a manikin. Then, slowly, the blankness was replaced, first with craftiness, then with rage. The driver looked around and saw the three of them. He began, slowly, to get down from the tractor.
“He’ll kill us if he gets a chance,” said Betrun Jun, almost calmly. “Us or anything else he can find.”
The man picked up a steel brace bar from the floor and came toward them. He was a very large man, Theor thought. A very large man, moving with the inexorability of a robot.
“Hever,” said Sam. “Give me the bar.”
“He won’t hear you,” whispered Close. “He can’t. He’s all shut in on himself.”
“Hever,” said Sam again. “Give me the bar. Give it to me.” He moved away from the others, drawing the driver’s eyes after him, his feet dancing slowly to one side, so the driver would not lose sight of him.
“Is there an antidote,” asked Sam, almost conversationally.
“No,” said Close. “Not here.”
“Do you have something that will put him out?” asked Sam.
“No,” said Close. “Not with me.”
“What the hell good are you?” asked Sam, still dancing. “There’s an emergency medical kit on the wall over there. That red thing. You’ll find a full kit of painkillers, in slap ampules. You think you could get your hands on those?”
“You have a weapon on your belt,” Jun pointed out. “You’ve got a plate cutter.”
“You have some particular reason for wanting Hever dead?” Sam asked, his voice conveying slight
