_by James Causey_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1
number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _PEOPLE OR TERMITES, IT'S ALL THE SAME._
_THERE'S A LIMIT TO HOW FAR YOU CAN DRIVE THEM!_]
[Illustration]
We time-studied the Term. It moved with a pliant, liquid grace, its four
arms flickering over the instrument panel, installing studs, tightening
screws, its antennae glowing with the lambent yellow that denoted an
agony of effort.
"See?" Harvey's freckled face was smug. "He rates an easy hundred and
ten. Whoever took that first study--"
"I took it," I said, squinting at the stop watch.
You could hear him bite his lip. After only two weeks on the job, on a
strange planet ninety light-years from home, you don't tell your boss
he's cockeyed.
The Term hurried. Its faceted termite eyes were expressionless diamonds,
but the antennae gleamed a desperate saffron. _If bugs could sweat_, I
thought wryly. Now the quartz panel installation. Those four arms moved
in a blinding frenzy.
But the stop watch was faster. The second hand caught up with the Term.
It passed him. Rating: Seventy-four per cent.
I tucked the clipboard under my arm, squeezed through the airlock, and
down the ramp. Harvey followed sullenly. The conveyor groaned on,
bringing up the next unit, a sleek little cruiser. The Term seized a
fifty-pound air wrench, fled up the ramp to the airlock.
"A dozen feet back to the operation," I pointed out. "After the next job
he'll have to return forty feet. Then sixty. He's in the hole."
Harvey looked at his shoes. John Barry, the trim superintendent, came
puffing down the line, his jowled face anxious about direct labor cost,
the way every good super should be. "Anything wrong, Jake?"
"He can't cut it," I said.
Barry frowned up through the airlock at the Term. Those antennae now
shone the soft sad purple of despair.
We walked past the body jigs. The air was a haze of blue smoke,
punctuated with yellow splashes of flame from the electronic welding
guns. Terms scuttled like gigantic spiders over the great silver hulls,
their antennae glowing in a pattern of swift bright harmony, right on
standard, good cost. Harvey's face was rapt as he watched them. I said
harshly:
"Give me your third Production Axiom."
Harvey's shoulders squared. He said stiffly: "Beauty is functional. The
quintessence of grace is the clean, soaring beauty of a spaceship's
hull--"
"Extrapolate, Harvey."
His lips were tight. "What I see is ugly. Terms must be taught
individuality. What I see is a fascinating, deadly beauty--deadly
because it's useless. We must sublimate it, grind it down, hammer it out
into a useful pattern. Waste motion is a sin...."
"Excellent."
We turned into the administration lift, leaving the iron roar behind us,
and on the way up Harvey didn't say a word. I listened for the tinkle of
shattering ideals, and said patiently, "You're here to build spaceships.
To build them better and cheaper than Consolidated or Solar. Hell, we've
even set up a village for the Terms! Electricity, plumbing, luxuries
they wouldn't normally enjoy for the next million years--"
"Will they fire him?" Harvey's voice was flat.
My temper was shredding. "Four-day layoff. His third this month. Terms
kick in most of their salary for village maintenance. They can't afford
a part-time producer."
I could see that Term read out of the gang, leaving the company village,
stoically, while his fellows played a wailing dirge of color on their
antennae. The farewell song. I could see him trudging over the windswept
peak of Cobalt Mountain, staring down at his native village, and shaking
with the impact of the _Stammverstand_, the tribe-mind, the ache and the
longing. A wheel, shaken out of orbit. The lonely cog, searching for its
lost slot. I could see that Term returning to his tribe. And how they'd
tear him to pieces because he was a thing apart, now, an alien.
We walked down the gray corridor, past Psych, past the conference hall,
to the silver door marked _Methods and Standards_. Harvey's blue eyes
were remote, stubborn. I clapped him paternally on the shoulder. "Anyone
can call one wrong, lad. Forget it."
Harvey slumped down at a computor, and I walked into my private office
and shut the door. Harvey's personnel dossier was in my desk. I.Q. 178,
fair. Stability quotient two point eight, very bad. Adaptability rating
point seven, borderline. Those idiots in Psych! Couldn't they
indoctrinate a new man properly?