out upon green lawn and many trees. Now sheets of rain beat down
outside. Wind whipped at the trees. There was tumult and roaring and
the vibration of gusts of hurricane force. Even the building in which
the Sector Chief's office was vibrated slightly in the wind.
The Sector Chief beamed. The brown dog came in, looked around the room,
and walked in leisurely fashion toward Bordman. He settled with a sigh
beside Bordman's chair.
"What I want to know," said Werner, "is, won't this rain put back all
the water the ship-fuel boiled away?"
Bordman said:
"Two inches of rain would be a heavy fall, Sandringham tells me. It's
the lack of heavy rains that made the civilians start irrigating. When
you figure the energy-content of ship-fuel, Werner, an appreciable
fraction of the energy in atomic explosive, it's sort of deceptive.
Turn it into thermal units and it gets to be enlightening. We turned
loose, underground, enough heat to boil away two feet of soil-water
under the island's whole surface."
Werner said sharply:
"What'll happen when the heat passes up through the soil? It'll kill
the vegetation, won't it?"
"No," said Bordman mildly. "Because there was two feet of water to
be turned to steam. The bottom layer of the soil was raised to the
temperature of steam at a few pounds pressure. No more. The heat's
already escaped. In the steam."
The phone-plate lighted. Sandringham snapped it on. A voice made a
report in a highly official voice.
"Right!" said Sandringham. The highly official voice spoke again.
"Right!" said Sandringham again. "You may tell the ships in orbit that
they can come down now, if they don't mind getting wet." He turned.
"Did you hear that, Bordman? They've bored new cores. There are a few
soggy spots, but the ground's as firm, all over the island, as it was
when the Survey first came here. A very good job, Bordman! A very good
job!"
Bordman flushed. He reached down and patted the head of the brown dog.
"Look!" said the Sector Chief. "My dog, there, has taken a liking to
you. Will you accept him as a present, Bordman?"
Bordman grinned.
* * * * *
Young Barnes made ready to rejoin his ship. He was very strictly
Service, very stiffly at attention. Bordman shook hands with him.
"Nice to have had you around, Lieutenant," he said warmly. "You're a
very promising young officer. Sandringham knows it and has made a note
of the fact. Which I suspect is going to put you to a lot of trouble.
There's a devilish shortage of promising young officers. He'll give you
hellish jobs to do, because he has an idea you'll do them."
"I'll try, sir," said young Barnes formally. Then he said, "May I say
something, sir? I'm very proud to have worked with you. But dammit,
sir, it seems to me that something more than just saying thank you was
due you! The Service ought to--"
Bordman regarded the young man approvingly.
"When I was your age," he said, "I'd the very same attitude. But I had
the only reward the Service or anything else could give me. The job
got done. It's the only reward you can expect in the Service, Barnes.
You'll never get any other."
Young Barnes looked rebellious. He shook hands again.
"Besides," said Bordman, "there is no better."
Young Barnes marched back toward his ship in the great metal
criss-cross of girders which was the landing-grid.
Bordman absently patted his dog as he headed back toward Sandringham's
office for his orders to return to his own work.
* * * * *
So Bordman went back to his wife Riki and the job he'd been working on.
After that there was another job, and another. He received the high
honor of being given the most impossible of the tasks the Survey was
forced to do. Which was deeply satisfying. He regretted that he had to
become relatively inactive when he became Sector Chief.
But his wife liked it very much. There was assurance, then, that they
would be together for always, and Bordman still had his work and she
could make--again--a home. When one of his daughters was widowed and
came to live with them with her children, Bordman was beautifully
contented. Then he had absolutely everything he wanted. As reward for
a life-time of work and separation, he had the satisfactions--in his
family--that other men enjoyed as a matter of course.
But sometimes he was embarrassed when his juniors were too respectful.
He didn't think he rated it.
* * * * *
You Are There--
Centuries, eons from now the peculiar, fantastic, astounding MIND OF
MAN will conquer strange, new worlds, presently beyond the reaches of
imagination--and probe the meaning of the central core of Infinity with
instruments of incredible scientific precision!
You Are There! in the far-off era when man will defy gravity, space,
time--to explore the UNIVERSE and make immensity HIS OWN!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Murray Leinster is widely acknowledged by fans as the
"Dean of Science Fiction" and even as "Mr. Science Fiction." LIFE has
reported that he reads more technical literature than most research
scientists. He is also a successful inventor in his own right.
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