"What I do not understand is why you must have the other slave?"
Narsisi whined. "To have the woman of course is natural, as well as to
have quarters of your own, my father has given his permission. But he
also said that I and my brothers are to help you, that the secrets of
the engine are to be revealed to no one else."
"Then trot right over to him and get permission for the slave Mikah to
join me in the work. You can explain that he comes from the same land
that I do, and that your secrets are mere children's toys to him. And
if dad wants any other reasons tell him that I need skilled aid,
someone who knows how to handle tools and who can be trusted to follow
directions exactly as given. You and your brothers have entirely too
many ideas of your own about how things should be done, and a tendency
to leave details up to the gods and have a good bash with the hammer
if things don't work the way they should."
Narsisi retired, seething and mumbling to himself while Jason huddled
over the oil stove planning the next step. It had taken most of the
day to lay down logs for rollers and to push the sealed engine out
into the sandy valley, far from the well site; open space was needed
for any experiments where a mistake could release a cloud of war gas.
Even Edipon had finally seen the sense of this, though all of his
tendencies were to conduct the experiments with great secretiveness
behind locked doors. He had granted permission only after skin walls
had been erected to form an enclosure that could be guarded; it was
only incidental that they acted as a much-appreciated windbreak.
And after much argument the dangling chains and shackles had been
removed from Jason's arms and light-weight leg-irons substituted. He
had to shuffle when he walked but his arms were completely free, a
great improvement over the chains, even though one of the brothers
kept watch with a cocked crossbow as long as Jason wasn't fastened
down. Now he had to get some tools and some idea of the technical
knowledge of these people before he could proceed, which would
necessarily entail one more battle over their precious secrets.
"Come on," he called to his guard, "let's find Edipon and give his
ulcers another twinge."
After his first enthusiasm the leader of the D'zertanoj was getting
very little pleasure out of his new project.
"You have quarters of your own," he grumbled, "and the slave woman to
cook for you, and I have just given permission for the other slave to
help you. Now more requests--do you want to drain all the blood from
my body?"
"Let's not dramatize too much. I simply want some tools to get on with
my work, and a peek at your machine shop or wherever it is you do your
mechanical work. I have to have some idea of the way you people solve
mechanical problems before I can go to work on that box of tricks out
there in the desert."
"Entrance is forbidden--"
"Regulations are snapping like straws today, so we might as well go on
and finish off a few more. Will you lead the way?"
The guards were reluctant to open the refinery building gates to
Jason, and there was much rattling of keys and worried looks. A brace
of elderly D'zertanoj, stinking of oil fumes, emerged from the
interior and joined in a shouted argument with Edipon whose will
finally prevailed. Chained again, and guarded like a murderer, Jason
was begrudgingly led into the dark interior, the contents of which was
depressingly anticlimactic.
"Really from rubeville," Jason sneered and kicked at the boxful of
hand-forged and clumsy tools. The work was of the crudest, the product
of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been
laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It
leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe.
Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers for heating and
beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened
Jason's heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off
the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was
clamped a chip of some hard mineral that did a good enough job of
cutting the forged iron and low-carbon steel. Even more cheering was
the screw-thread advance on the cutting head that was used to produce
the massive nuts and bolts that secured the _caroj_ wheels to their
shafts. It could have been worse. Jason sorted out the smallest and
handiest tools and put them aside for his own use in the morning. The
light was almost gone and there would be no more work this day.
* * * * *
They left, in armed procession, as they came, and a brace of brothers
showed him to the kennellike room that was to be his private quarters.
The heavy bolt thudded shut in the door behind him and he winced at
the thick fumes of half-burnt kerosene through which the light of the
single-wick lamp barely penetrated. Ijale crouched over the small oil
stove cooking something in a pottery bowl. She looked up and smiled
hesitatingly at Jason, then turned back to the stove. Jason walked
over, sniffed and shuddered.
"What a feast! _Krenoj_ soup, and I suppose followed by fresh _krenoj_
and _krenoj_ salad. Tomorrow I see about getting a little variety into
the diet."
"Ch'aka is great," she whispered without looking up. "Ch'aka is
powerful...."
"Jason is the name, I lost the Ch'aka job when they took the uniform
away."
"... Jason is powerful to work charms on the D'zertanoj and makes them
do what he will. His slave thanks you."
He lifted her chin and the dumb obedience in her eyes made him wince.
"Can't we forget about the slavery bit? We are in this thing together
and we'll get out of it together."
"We will escape, I knew it. You will kill all the D'zertanoj and
release your slaves and lead us home again where we can march and find
_krenoj_ far from this terrible place."
"Some girls are sure easy to please. That is roughly what I had in
mind, except when we get out of here we are going in the other
direction, as far away from your _krenoj_ crowd as I can get."
Ijale listened attentively, stirring the soup with one hand and
scratching inside her leather wrappings with the other. Jason found
himself scratching as well, and realized from sore spots on his hide
that he had been doing an awful lot of this since he had been dragged
out of the ocean of this inhospitable planet.
"Enough is enough!" he exploded and went over and hammered on the
door. "This place is a far cry from civilization as I know it, but
that is no reason why we can't be as comfortable as possible." Chains
and bolts rattled outside the door and Narsisi pushed his gloom-ridden
face in.
"Why do you cry out? What is wrong?"
"I need some water, lots of it."
"But you have water," Narsisi said, puzzled, and pointed to a stone
crock in the corner. "There is water there enough for days."
"By your standards, Nars old boy, not mine. I want at least ten times
as much as that and I want it now. And some soap, if there is such
stuff in this barbaric place."
There was a good deal of argument involved, but Jason finally got his
way with the water by explaining it was needed for religious rites to
make sure that he would not fail in the work tomorrow. It came in a
varied collection of containers along with a shallow bowl full of
powerful soft soap.
"We're in business," he chortled. "Take your clothes off, I have a
surprise for you."
"Yes, Jason," Ijale said, smiling happily.
"You're going to get a bath. Do you know what a bath is?"
"No," she said, and shuddered. "It sounds evil."
"Over here and off with the clothes," he ordered, poking at a hole in
the floor. "This should serve as a drain, at least the water went away
when I poured some into it."
The water was warm from the stove, yet Ijale still crouched against
the wall and shuddered when he poured it over her. She screamed when
he rubbed the slippery soap into her hair, and he continued with his
hand over her mouth so that she wouldn't bring in the guards. He
rubbed the soap into his own head, too, and it tingled delightfully as
it soaked through to his scalp. Some of it was in his ears, muffling
them, so the first intimation he had that the door was opened was the
sound of Mikah's hoarse shout. He was standing in the doorway, finger
pointed and shaking with wrath. Narsisi was standing behind him,
peering over his shoulder with fascination at this weird religious
rite.
"Degradation!" Mikah thundered. "You force this poor creature to bend
to your will, humiliate her, strip her clothes from her and gaze upon
her though you are not united in lawful wedlock." He shielded his eyes
from sight with a raised arm. "You are evil, Jason, a demon of evil
and must be brought to justice--"
"_Out!_" Jason roared, and spun Mikah about and started him through
the door with one of his practiced Ch'aka kicks. "The only evil here
is in your mind, you snooping scut. I'm giving the girl the first
scrubbing of her life and you should be giving me a medal for bringing
sanitation to the natives instead of howling like that." He pushed
them both out the door and shouted at Narsisi. "I wanted this slave,
but not _now_! Lock him up until morning then bring him back." He
slammed the door and made a mental note to get hold of a bolt to be
placed on this side as well.
* * * * *
There were more _krenoj_ for breakfast but Jason was feeling too good
physically to mind. He was scrubbed raw and clean and the itching was
gone even from his sprouting beard. The metalcloth of his Pyrran
coverall had dried almost as soon as it had been washed so he was
wearing clean clothes as well. Ijale was still recovering from the
traumatic effects of her bath, but she looked positively attractive
with her skin cleaned and her hair washed and combed a bit. He would
have to find some of the local cloth for her since it would be a shame
to ruin the good work by letting her get back into the badly cured
skins she was used to wearing. It was with a sensation of positive
good feeling that he bellowed for the door to be opened and stamped
through the cool morning to his place of labor. Mikah was already
there, looking scruffy and angry as he rattled his chains; Jason gave
him the friendliest of smiles that only rubbed salt into the other's
moral wounds.
"Leg-irons for him, too," Jason ordered, "And do it fast. We have a
big job to do today." He turned back to the sealed engine, rubbing his
hands together with anticipation.
The concealing hood was made of thin metal that could not hide many
secrets. He carefully scratched away some of the paint and discovered
a crimped and soldered joint where the sides met, but no other
revealing marks. After an hour spent tapping all over with his ear
pressed to the metal he was sure that the hood was just what he had
thought it was when he first examined the thing--a double-walled metal
container filled with liquid. Puncture it and you were dead. It was
there merely to hide the secrets of the engine, and served no other
function. Yet it had to be passed to service the steam engine--or did
it? The construction was roughly cubical, and the hood covered only
five sides. What about the sixth, the base?
"Now you're thinking, Jason," he chortled to himself, and knelt down
to examine it. A wide flange, apparently of cast iron, projected all
around, and was penetrated by four large bolt holes. The protective
casing seemed to be soldered to the base, but there must be stronger
concealed attachments because it would not move even after he
carefully scratched away some of the solder at the base. Therefore the
answer simply had to be on the sixth side.
"Over here, Mikah," he called, and the man detached himself
reluctantly from the warmth of the stove and shuffled up. "Come close
and look at this medieval motive-power while we talk, as if we are
discussing business. Are you going to co-operate with me?"
"I do not want to, Jason. I am afraid that you will soil me with your
touch, as you have others."
"Well you're not so clean now--"
"I do not mean physically."
"Well I do. You could certainly do with a bath and a deep shampoo. I'm
not worried about the state of your soul, you can battle that out on
your own time. But if you work with me I'll find a way to get us out
of this place and to the city that made this engine, because if there
is a way off this planet we'll find it only in the city."
"I know that, yet I still hesitate--"
"Small sacrifices now for the greater good later. Isn't the entire
purpose of this trip to get me back to justice? You're not going to
accomplish that by rotting out the rest of your life as a slave."
"You are the devil's advocate the way you twist my conscience--yet
what you say is true. I will help you here so that we can escape."
"Fine. Now get to work. Take Narsisi and have him round up at least
three good-sized poles, the kind we were chained to in the pumping
gang. Bring them back here along with a couple of shovels."
* * * * *
Slaves carried the poles only as far as the outside of the skin walls,
since Edipon would not admit them inside, and it was up to Jason and
Mikah to drag them laboriously to the site. The D'zertanoj, who never
did physical labor, thought it was very funny when Jason suggested
that they help. Once in position by the engine, Jason dug channels
beneath it and forced the bars under. When this was done he took turns
with Mikah in digging out the sand beneath until the engine stood over
a pit supported only by the bars. Jason let himself down and examined
the bottom of the machine. It was smooth and featureless.
Once more he scratched away the paint with careful precision, until it
was cleared around the edges. Here the solid metal gave way to solder
and he picked at this until he discovered that a piece of sheet metal
had been soldered at the edges and fastened to the bedplate. "Very
tricky, these Appsalanoj," he chortled and attacked the solder with a
knife blade. When one end was loose he slowly pulled the sheet of
metal away, making positive that there was nothing attached to it, nor
that it had been booby-trapped in any way. It came off easily enough
and clanged down into the pit. The revealed surface was smooth metal,
featureless and hard.
"Enough for one day," Jason said, climbing out of the pit and brushing
off his hands. It was almost dark. "We've accomplished enough for now
and I want to think a bit before I go ahead. So far luck has been on
our side, but I don't think it should be this easy. I hope you brought
your suitcase with you, Mikah, because you're moving in with me."
"Never! A sink of sin, depravity--"
Jason looked him coldly in the eye and with each word he spoke he
stabbed him in the chest with his finger to drive home the point. "You
are moving in with me because that is essential to our plans. And if
you stop referring to my moral weaknesses I'll stop talking about
yours. Now come on."
Living with Mikah Samon was trying, but barely possible. He made Ijale
and Jason go to the far wall and turn their backs and promise not to
look while he bathed behind a screen of skins. Jason did this but
exacted a small revenge by telling Ijale jokes so that they tittered
together and Mikah would be sure they were laughing at him. The screen
of skins remained after the bath, and was reinforced, and Mikah
retired behind it to sleep. Their food still consisted only of
_krenoj_ and Jason shuddered while he admitted that he was actually
growing used to them.
The following morning, under the frightened gaze of his guards, Jason
tackled the underside of the baseplate. He had been thinking about it
a good part of the night and he put his theories to the test at once.
By pressing hard on a knife he could make a good groove in the metal.
It was not as soft as the solder, but seemed to be some simple alloy
containing a good percentage of lead. What could it be concealing?
Probing carefully with the point of the knife he covered the bottom in
a regular pattern. The depth of the metal was uniformly deep except in
two spots where he found irregularities, they were on the midline of
the rectangular base, and equidistant from the ends and sides. Picking
and scraping he uncovered two familiar looking shapes each as big as
his head.
"Mikah. Get down in this hole and look at these things. Tell me what
you think they are."
Mikah scratched his beard. "They're still covered with this metal, I
can't be sure--"
"I'm not asking you to be sure of anything--just tell me what they
make you think of."
"Why ... big nuts of course. Threaded on the ends of bolts. But they
are so big--"
"They would have to be if they hold the entire metal case on. I think
we are getting very close now to the mystery of how to open the
engine--and this is the time to be careful. I still can't believe it
is as easy as this to crack the secret. I'm going to whittle a wooden
template of the nut, then have a wrench made. While I'm gone you stay
down here and pick all the metal off the bolt and out of the screw
threads. I can put off doing it while we think this thing through, but
sooner or later I'm going to have to take a stab at turning one of
those nuts. And I find it very hard to forget about that mustard gas."
Making the wrench put a small strain on the local technology and all
of the old men who enjoyed the title of Masters of the Still went into
consultation over it. One of them was a fair blacksmith and after a
ritual sacrifice and a round of prayers he shoved a bar of iron into
the charcoal and Jason pumped the bellows until it glowed white hot.
With much hammering and cursing it was laboriously formed into a
sturdy open-end wrench with an offset head to get at the countersunk
nuts. Jason made sure that the opening was slightly undersized, then
took the untempered wrench to the work site and filed the jaws to an
exact fit. After being reheated and quenched in oil he had the tool
that he hoped would do the job.
* * * * *
Edipon must have been keeping track of the work progress because he
was waiting near the engine when Jason returned with the completed
wrench.
"I have been under," he announced, "and have seen the nuts that the
devilish Appsalanoj have concealed within solid metal. Who would have
suspected! It still seems to me impossible that one metal could be
hidden within another, how could that be done?"
[Illustration]
"Easy enough. The base of the assembled engine was put into a form and
the molten covering metal poured into it. It must have a much lower
melting point than the steel of the engine so there would be no
damage. They just have a better knowledge of metal technology in the
city and counted on your ignorance."
"Ignorance! You insult--"
"I take it back. I just meant they thought they could get away with
the trick, and since they didn't they are the stupid ones. Does that
satisfy you?"
"What do you do next?"
"I take off the nuts and when I do there is a good chance that the
poison-hood will be released and can simply be lifted off."
"It is too dangerous for you to do, the fiends may still have other
traps ready when the nut is turned. I will send a strong slave to turn
them while we watch from a distance, his death will not matter."
"I'm touched by your concern for my health, but as much as I would
like to take advantage of the offer, I cannot. I've been over the same
ground and reached the reluctant conclusion that this is one job of
work that I have to do myself. Taking off those nuts looks entirely
too easy, and that's what makes me suspicious. I'm going to do it and
look out for any more trickery at the same time--and that is something
that only I can do. Now I suggest you withdraw with the troops to a
safer spot."
There was no hesitation about leaving, footsteps rustled quickly on
the sand and Jason was alone. The leather walls flapped slackly in the
wind and there was no other sound. Jason spat on his palms, controlled
a slight shiver and slid into the pit. The wrench fitted neatly over
the nut, he wrapped both hands around it and, bracing his leg against
the pit wall, began to pull.
And stopped. Three turns of thread on the bolt projected below the
nut, scraped clean of metal by the industrious Mikah. Something about
them looked very wrong but he didn't know quite what.
[Illustration]
"Mikah," he shouted, and had to call loudly two more times before his
assistant poked his head tentatively around the screen. "Nip over to
the petroleum works and get me one of their bolts threaded with a nut,
any size, it doesn't matter."
Jason warmed his hands by the stove until Mikah returned with the oily
bolt, then waved him out to rejoin the others. Back in the pit he held
it up next to the protruding section of Appsalan bolt and chortled
with joy. The threads on the angle bolt were canted at a slightly
different angle: where one ran up, the other ran down. The Appsalan
threads had been cut in reverse, with a lefthand thread.
Throughout the galaxy there existed as many technical and cultural
differences as there were planets, yet one of the few things they all
had in common, inherited from their terrestrial ancestors, was a
uniformity of thread. Jason had never thought about it before, but
when he mentally ran through his experiences on different planets he
realized that they were all the same. Screws went into wood, bolts
went into threaded holes and nuts all went onto bolts when you turned
them with a clockwise motion. Counterclockwise removed them. In his
hand was the crude D'zertano nut and bolt, and when he tried it it
moved in the same manner. But the engine bolt did not work that
way--it had to be turned clockwise to _remove_ it.
* * * * *
Dropping the nut and bolt he placed the wrench on the massive engine
bolt and slowly applied pressure in what felt like the completely
wrong direction, as if he were tightening not loosening. It gave
slowly, first a quarter then a half turn. And bit by bit the
projection threads vanished until they were level with the surface of
the nut. It turned easily now and within a minute it fell into the
pit--he threw the wrench after it and scrambled out. Standing at the
edge he carefully sniffed the air, ready to run at the slightest smell
of gas. There was nothing.
The second nut came off as easily as the first and with no ill
effects. Jason pushed a sharp chisel between the upper case and the
baseplate where he had removed the solder, and when he leaned on it
the case shifted slightly, held down only by its own weight.
From the entrance to the enclosure he shouted to the group huddled in
the distance. "Come on back--this job is almost finished."
They all took turns at sliding into the pit and looking at the
projecting bolts and made appreciative sounds when Jason leaned on the
chisel and showed how the case was free.
"There is still the little matter of taking it off," he told them,
"and I'm sure that grabbing and heaving is the wrong way. That was my
first idea too, but the people who assembled that thing had some bad
trouble in store for anyone who tightened those nuts instead of
loosening them. Until we find out what that is we are going to tread
very lightly. Do you have any big blocks of ice around here, Edipon?
It is winter now, isn't it?"
"Ice? Winter?" Edipon mumbled, caught off guard by the change of
direction, rubbing abstractedly at the reddened tip of his prominent
nose. "Of course it is winter. Ice, there must be ice at the higher
lakes in the mountain, they are always frozen at this time of the
year. But what do you want ice for?"
"You get it and I'll show you. Have it cut in nice flat blocks that I
can stack. I'm not going to lift the hood--I'm going to drop the
engine out from underneath it!"
By the time the slaves had brought the ice down from the distant lakes
Jason had rigged a strong wooden frame flat on the ground around the
engine and pushed sharpened metal wedges under the hood, then had
secured the wedges to the frame. Now, if the engine was lowered into
the pit, the hood would stay above supported by the wedges. The ice
would take care of this. Jason built a foundation of ice under the
engine then slipped out the supporting bars. Now as the ice slowly
melted the engine would be gently lowered into the pit.
The weather remained cold and the ice refused to melt until Jason had
the pit ringed with smoking oil stoves. Water began to run down into
the pit and Mikah went to work bailing it out, while the gap between
the hood and the baseplate widened. The melting continued for the rest
of the day and almost all of the night. Red-eyed and exhausted Jason
and Mikah supervised the soggy sinking and when the D'zertanoj
returned at dawn the engine rested safely in a pool of mud on the
bottom of the pit: the hood was off.
"They're tricky devils over there in Appsala, but Jason dinAlt wasn't
born yesterday," he exulted. "Do you see that crock sitting there on
top of the engine," he pointed to a sealed container of thick glass
the size of a small barrel, filled with an oily greenish liquid; it
was clamped down tightly with padded supports. "That's the booby trap.
The nuts I took off were on the threaded ends of two bars that held
the hood on, but instead of being fastened directly to the hood they
were connected by a crossbar that rested on top of that jug. If either
nut was tightened instead of being loosened, the bar would have bent
and broken the glass. I'll give you exactly one guess as to what would
have happened then."
"The poison liquid!"
"None other. And the double-walled hood is filled with it, too. I
suggest that as soon as we have dug a deep hole in the desert the hood
and container be buried and forgotten about. I doubt if the engine has
many other surprises in store, but I'll be careful as I work on it."
"You can fix it? You know what is wrong with it?" Edipon was vibrating
with joy.
"Not yet, I have barely looked at the thing. In fact one look was
enough to convince that the job will be as easy as stealing _krenoj_
from a blind man. The engine is as inefficient and clumsy in
construction as your petroleum still. If you people put one tenth of
the energy into research and improving your product as you do into
hiding it from the competition, you would all be flying jets."
"I forgive your insult because you have done us a service. You will
now fix this engine and the other engines. A new day is breaking for
us!"
"Right now it is a new night that is breaking for me," Jason yawned.
"I have two days sleep to make up. See if you can talk your sons into
wiping the water off that engine before it rusts away, and when I get
back I'll see what I can do about getting it into running condition."