Wrightwood sighed. "What's done is done," he said softly. "But take
a look at the present and the future instead of the past; view this,
honestly if you can, in the eye of an outsider."
"Can you?"
"I can and I have; I've also the opinion of outsiders."
"Do tell."
"I will. You are in what might be called an unpleasant situation. You
are the legal heir to the Interstellar holdings whether or not you deny
it. You were rechristened Wrightwood whether you try to deny it or not.
In the eyes of the world you are my son, brought up by my money and
educated by my background. You--"
"Thanks--"
Wrightwood held up a hand to still Steve's sour voice. "Hear me out.
Instead of acting as heir to my fortune and crown prince to my
business, you engage and embark upon a career which is in diametric
opposition to my interest. In shorter words, you have left my company
in anger and signed up with the opposition."
"Correct."
"So now, possibly to salve your own qualms, you are leaning so far over
backwards that you are about to fall on the back of your head."
Steve snorted.
"Deny it," smiled Wrightwood in a superior manner. "Just to prove to
yourself and to your superiors, you've been cracking down hard on me."
* * * * *
Steve eyed Wrightwood sharply. "Seems to me that your underlings might
be more considerate of your holdings," he snapped.
"What do you mean?"
"It doesn't take a lot to keep things ship-shape. Faulty wiring, frayed
connections, generators with rattles, loose bearings, electron tubes
working past their safety-period. I found three hydrogen thyatrons
running at one-and-one-half times their rating because they were so old
that they were beginning to get sluggish. Just last week in one of your
ships.
"Sure," sneered Steve, "you can get another couple of hundred operating
hours out of a tube by running the filament hotter than normal when it
starts to get weak. But you're running a spaceline, not a spot-welder;
when one of them blows, it's a job for the mop-up squad. Someone's
cutting corners, saving a hundred bucks worth of tubes for a couple of
weeks doesn't pay for lost lives and--"
"I'm aware of the safety factors," said Wrightwood angrily. "The
trouble with these safety factors is that they've been set up because
someone in your outfit took the figures presented by the tube
manufacturers and divided them by two. Instead of running on a hundred
percent safety factor, you've forced us to run on five or six hundred
percent. And do you know why?"
Steve did not reply.
"Because one of the guys who makes standards for the Guardians holds
some stock in a tube company."
"That's a lie!" roared Steve, slamming his fist on the table.
"It's no lie; it's just a fine way to raise the sale of tubes. And
tubes are only one part of the whole. Now--"
Steve roared again. "When the lives of a couple of hundred people
depend upon a chunk of wire the size of a piece of string, heated to
incandescence by electric current, any safety factor can damn well
afford to be trebled and trebled again!"
Wrightwood shook his head solemnly. "This isn't all," he said; "this is
only the beginning. The whole adds up to a staggering sum. But I didn't
bring you in here to hurl accusations at you. I merely want to ask you
to use a bit of tolerant common sense."
"Now I'm lacking in com--"
"Now, now, let's stop roaring like a ruffled lion. The only common
sense you lack, Steve, is the sense that should tell you that running
Interstellar is more self-satisfying than being commissioner of the
Guardians. But look. Let's for the moment admit that a ship--called
X--comes into Tandrel and as it arrives the time-meters on the
thyratrons say that their safe life is up. What then?"
"Replace 'em."
Wrightwood nodded.
* * * * *
Steve looked at the man quizzically. If one of the first tenets of
argument is never to admit for a moment that you are wrong, then why
was William Wrightwood doing it?
Wrightwood shrugged. "Replace them," he agreed. "However, remember the
following items:
"One: Thyratrons such as we use are manufactured on Earth; that's a
long way from here.
"Two: If we replace the thyratrons on Tandrel, the replacements must be
shipped out from Earth as unpaid cargo, and entry-duty, taxes, shipping
charges, and the rest of the hidden costs cause an increase in their
price.
"Three: Since the 'Life-Service' of the tube contains a couple of
hundred percent of safety factor, why shouldn't some of that safety
factor be employed to get the ship back home--maybe ten hours at the
most--thus saving a lot of money?"
Steve began to see the beginnings of an attack on the Theory of Limits,
against which there is only a dogmatic defence, ending in the reduction
to an absurdity, and culminating in the posing of an unanswerable
decision. It is sort of like the age-old argument as to where space
begins and where being a planet ends.
Being a-space does not begin when one leaves the planet; men flew
through the air for centuries before they crossed the void to the other
planets. Yet somewhere in the trip across interplanetary space, the
first travellers must have traversed first the limit of Earth, passed
into Space, and then entered the boundary of Venus.
Where Earth ends and space begins is the Limit; and the easiest thing
to attack is this Theory of Limits.
Earth claims legally that the boundary of Her Domain begins at a height
of five hundred miles above the surface. This is a dogmatic decision,
adhered to because it has been agreed upon by all. So, legally, an
orbiting Station at 499 miles is not in space; while legally the sister
Station operating at 501 miles _is_ in Deep Space. Factually, each of
these stations lie within two-tenths of one percent of being in, or
out, of space; and since the surface of the Earth is far from being
as smooth as a sheet of plate glass, the Limit is based upon Earth's
somewhat arbitrary Sea Level.
Similarly, if a tube's life is rated at ten thousand operating hours,
and a safety factor is accepted at five hundred, can the tube be deemed
inoperative at five hundred and ten hours? Especially when these
'over-age' tubes are returned to Earth or to whatever planet can use
them and resold as 'Used' tubes to factories and installations where
their failure will not cause a call-out of the Guardians. Many such
'Used' tubes, Steve knew, gave a total of twenty thousand hours of
service.
But Steve had his answer ready and waiting. "A few hours more or less
isn't of vital importance," he said; "but what about the really weak
jobs?"
Wrightwood nodded. "That particular gentleman has been reprimanded. But
since then you've grounded three of my ships with less than a total of
twenty hours overtime."
Steve shrugged. "Just so they wouldn't end up with five or six thousand
hours on them--waiting for a lazy day on Earth to change them at
leisure. Especially when the ship has been Earthing every week or so."
"But why be more than normally hard? Why attack Interstellar harder
than the rest?"
"I don't; I have my orders and I'll see that they're carried out."
"You can't think for yourself?" sneered Wrightwood.
"I can and I do--and I think we're right."
"You'll change--when you learn what they're doing to you," said
Wrightwood.
"What do you mean?"
Wrightwood leaned back calmly. "I'm big enough of a man," he said
slowly, "to let you go ahead and join the Guardians. But the Guardians
are afraid of you."
"Bah!"
"Look here," snapped Wrightwood, sitting forward abruptly. "You raised
hell with me because you thought I was meddling in your life. I wasn't;
the only reason they got you entered at Base One is because you're too
bright to drop without an explanation, and the Guardians were afraid to
let Steve Hagen go to some remote base because Hagen is none other than
William Wrightwood, Junior! They want to keep a sharp, official eye on
you, and hand you stale jobs until you get tired and quit. Because they
haven't got a plausible excuse for tossing you out. So I--"
"That's a lie!" roared Steve.
"Okay," chuckled Wrightwood. "Just watch what happens when you make a
fumble. Or," he said slowly after a pause, "do you know that already?
Is that why you're leaning so damned far backwards?"
"Is that all you've got to say?"
"Isn't it sufficient?"
"It's too much."
"Call it that, then," grunted Wrightwood. "I'll wait, Steve."
"I'll see you when hell freezes over--"
"Or when it blows up in your face," warned Wrightwood. He said it to
Hagen's retreating back. Steve had had enough and he was leaving as
quickly as he could.
* * * * *
Steve fumed inwardly. It was sheer frustration; nothing would have
satisfied Steve so much as to step forward and send a hard fist into
Wrightwood's face just to feel the skin crush and the bone beneath it
grate against his knuckle. But against that desire was too many years
of viewing William Wrightwood with the awe and fear that a youth holds
for an adult who has authority and power over him. As a youth, Steve
had neither the physical ability nor the mental agility to cope with
his foster father. Now that the tables had been turned by the years and
Steve could handle William Wrightwood physically, Hagen understood that
physical supremacy would hurt Wrightwood, but would bring only contempt
from the man instead of surrender. And the years had given Wrightwood
their wealth of experience and mental advance as the years had also
aided Steve. Hagen was mentally on the same par with Wrightwood,
while the physical parity had reversed but become banal. So it was
frustration to Steve knowing that he could smash Wrightwood's face but
to no end effect upon the older man.
Somewhere, somehow, to bring Wrightwood to his knees, Hagen had to do
something on his own, of his own, for his own, that would command the
respect and envy of his foster father; preferably something that would
advance Steve while clipping Wrightwood where it hurt the most: his
business and his empire.
* * * * *
Steve was still fuming about his foster father's suggestion when he
returned to Base One. He sat over his desk, writing the reports of his
inspections, and constantly repeated the original question: _Was he
being overly hard on Wrightwood because he disliked him?_
Once or twice the urge to lighten a report came, then once or twice the
desire to make one more damning came; and the result of this was to
leave Steve in a quandary.
He wanted to be fair.
But no man can be honestly fair when his emotions are involved; he
gave up, filled in the report statements in a mechanical manner,
transcribing them from his notes as though he had no opinion other than
the notes, and when he finished that, he felt at least that he had not
been inclined to color the data.
Finishing the paper work, Steve headed for the mess hall and met Lois
on the way. "Coffee?" he asked.