"Sure!" said Joe. "Everything's fine! What's the matter?"
"Mike had a hunch," said the Chief. "And--uh--I remembered I worked on
the job when this dam was built twelve-fifteen years ago." He looked
about him. "It looked different then."
Then he caught Joe's eye and jerked his head almost imperceptibly to one
side. Joe caught the signal.
"I'll see about some more soft drinks," he said. "Come help me fish up
the bottles."
Sally smiled at the other two. She was already inspecting the lunch
basket.
"We still have some sandwiches," she said hospitably, "and some cake."
Haney came forward awkwardly. Mike advanced toward her with something of
truculence. Joe knew what was in his mind. If Sally treated him like a
freak.... But Joe knew with deep satisfaction that she wouldn't. He went
down to the water's edge.
"What's up, Chief?" he asked in a low tone.
"Mike hadda hunch," rumbled the Chief. "Somebody tried to smash the
stuff you brought. They did. But we started gettin' set to mend it. So
what would they do? Polish us off. If they were set to atom-dust the
whole Shed an' everybody in it, they wouldn't stop at four more
murders."
Joe fished for a pop bottle.
"Mike said something like that back at the Shed," he observed.
"Yeah. But you were the one who figured things out. You'd be first
target. Haney and Mike and me--we'd be hard to knock off in a crowd in
Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y'selves. Mike figured you
mightn't be safe. So we checked."
Joe brought up one bottle and then another.
"We're all right. Haven't seen a soul."
"Don't mean a soul hasn't seen you," growled the Chief. "A car left
Bootstrap less than twenty minutes behind you. There were three guys in
it. It's parked down below the dam, outa sight. We saw it. And when we
came up, careful, we spotted three guys hidin' out behind the rocks
yonder. They look to me like they're waiting for somebody to go
strolling back from the shoreline, so's--uh--maybe folks out at the
powerhouse can't see 'em. That'd be you and her, huh?"
Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.
"There's nobody else around," said the Chief. "Who'd they be waiting for
but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They'd take the car
keys. They'd drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There'd be
considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty.
Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who
wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besides maybe hamperin' the
repairin' of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and
me."
Joe said coldly: "I've got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take
those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?"
The Chief snorted.
"Use sense! It's good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a
twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a
hurry. But go huntin' trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up!
I'll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across
the open to get near. Don't say anything to Sally. But we'll keep our
eyes open."
Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney
solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake
and regarding the shore. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from
inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually
strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.
"You said you felt like target practice," he remarked blandly. "Here's
your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma'am?"
Sally smilingly passed him the last. She left the top of the basket
open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally's eyes met
Joe's and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely
to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional
reason for Joe to approve of Sally.
"Me," said the Chief largely, "I'm goin' to swim. I haven't had any more
water around me than a shower bath for so long that I crave to soak and
splash. I'll go yonder and dunk myself."
He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished.
Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the shoreline
and the rocks and brush behind it.
Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.
"But just the same it's crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys
could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolish! We could
do the whole job while the saboteurs weren't looking!"
Sally said with interest: "Have you got the figures? Were they ever
passed on?"
"I spent a month's pay once," said Mike sardonically, "hiring a math
shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of
what we could do!"
Sally answered: "Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer
to sabotage, and, in a way, to space travel! Listen!"
Joe dropped to the ground.
"Shoot it," he said.
He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to
start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to
murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim
ideas that came into his mind.
But Mike was beginning to speak.
"Forget about the Platform a minute," he said, standing up to
gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. "Just
figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they'd
a' had to have a mass ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You'd have
to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on
the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform's up,
that figure'll drop again! Okay! You're gonna land a man on the moon. He
weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink
and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months--twelve hundred
pounds. A cabin seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred
pounds, counting insulation an' braces for strength. That makes a pay
load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have to burn a hundred an' eighty
tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to the moon, and another hundred an'
twenty for every ton the rocket ship weighed. You might get a man to the
moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe. That's with the old fuels.
He'd get there, an' he'd live two months, an' then he'd die for lack of
air. With the new fuels you'd need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy
there, and sixty more for every ton the ship weighed itself. Call it six
hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon."
Sally nodded absorbedly.
"I've seen figures like that," she agreed.
"But take a guy like me!" said Mike the midget bitterly. "I weigh
forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a
day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an' five across.
Bein' smaller, it wouldn't need so much bracing. You could do it for two
hundred pounds. Three hundred for grub and air, fifty for me. Me on the
moon supplied for two months would come to five-fifty pounds. Sixteen
tons of fuel to get me to the moon direct! To carry the weight of the
ship--it's smaller!--fifty tons maximum!"
"I--see...," said Sally, frowning.
He looked at her suspiciously, but there was no mockery in her face.
"It'd take a six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the
moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the
same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd
be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land,
take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back--all in a
sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of what it'd cost to take a
full-sized man one way!"
He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: "Haney, sittin' still you're a
sittin' duck!"
The comment was just. Joe knew that Sally was on the lakeward side of
this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her
and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the
mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while. If someone did intend to
commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very
fine target. He moved.
"Yeah!" said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. "I could show
you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We've got as much
brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small
guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an'
it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it.
Guys my size could man the ferry rockets bringin' up fuel for storage,
and four of us could take a six-hundred-ton rocket an' slide out to Mars
an' be back by springtime--next springtime!--with all the facts and the
photographs to prove 'em! By golly----"
Then he made a raging, helpless gesture.
"But that's just the big picture," he said bitterly. "Right now, right
at this minute, we could make it easy to finish the Platform the way
it's building in the Shed! There are ferry rockets building somewhere
else. You know about them?"
Sally said apologetically: "Yes. I know there'll be smaller rocket ships
going up to the Platform. They'll carry fuel and stores and exchanges
for the crew. Yes, I know there are ferry rockets building."
"Those ferry rockets," said Mike sardonically, "carry four men, plus two
replacements for the crew. They'll carry air for ten days. But put four
of us small guys in a ferry rocket! _We'd_ have air and grub for two
months, almost! Pull out the pay load and put in a hydroponic garden and
communicators and we'd _be_ a Platform, right then! Send up another
ferry rocket to join us, and it could bring guided missiles! The ferry
rockets could be finished quicker than the Platform! Send up three ferry
rockets with midgets as crews, an' we could weld 'em together and have a
Space Platform in orbit and working--and what'd be the use of sabotaging
the big Platform then? The job would be done! There'd be no sense
sabotaging the big Platform because the little one could do anything the
big one could! It'd be up there and working! But," he demanded bitterly,
"do you think anybody'll do anything as sensible as that?"
His small features were twisted in angry rebellion. And he was quite
right in all his reasoning. Mankind could have made the journey to the
planets in a hurry, and it could have had its Space Platform in the sky
much more quickly, if only it could have consented to be represented by
people like Mike--who would have represented mankind very valiantly.