Selected Stories (22 page)

The ages came and went, and chemical action and reaction did their mysterious work, and once again there was life and evolution. And a tribe found the mass of neutronium, which is not a substance but a static force, and were awed by its aura of indescribable chill, and they worshipped it and built a temple around it and made sacrifices to it. And ice and fire and the seas came and went, and the land rose and fell as the years went by, until the ruined temple was on a knoll, and the knoll was an island. Islanders came and went, lived and built and died, and races forgot. So now, somewhere in the Pacific to the west of the archipelago called Islas Revillagigeda, there was an uninhabited island. And one day
—

Chub Horton and Tom Jaeger stood watching the
Sprite
and her squat tow of three cargo lighters dwindle over the glassy sea. The big ocean-going towboat and her charges seemed to be moving out of focus rather than traveling away. Chub spat cleanly around the cigar that grew out of the corner of his mouth.

“That’s that for three weeks. How’s it feel to be a guinea pig?”

“We’ll get it done.” Tom had little crinkles all around the outer ends of his eyes. He was a head taller than Chub and rangy, and not so tough, and he was a real operator. Choosing him as a foreman for the experiment had been wise, for he was competent and he commanded respect. The theory of airfield construction that they were testing appealed vastly to him, for here were no officers-in-charge, no government inspectors, no time-keeping or reports. The government had allowed the company a temporary land grant, and the idea was to put production-line techniques into the layout and grading of the project. There were six operators and two mechanics and more than a million dollars’ worth of the best equipment that money could buy. Government acceptance was to be on a partially completed basis, and contingent on government standards. The theory obviated both goldbricking and graft, and neatly sidestepped the man-power problem. “When that black-topping crew gets here, I reckon we’ll be ready for ’em,” said Tom.

He turned and scanned the island with an operator’s vision and saw it as it was, and in all the stages it would pass through, and as it would look when they had finished, with five thousand feet of clean-draining runway, hard-packed shoulders, four acres of plane-park, the access road and the short taxiway. He saw the lay of each lift that the power shovel would cut as it brought down the marl bluff, and the ruins on top of it that would give them stone to haul down the salt-flat to the little swamp at the other end, there to be walked in by the dozers.

“We got time to run the shovel up there to the bluff before dark.”

They walked down the beach toward the outcropping where the equipment stood surrounded by crates and drums of supplies. The three tractors were ticking over quietly, the two-cycle Diesels chuckling through their mufflers and the big D-7 whacking away its metronomic compression knock on every easy revolution. The Dumptors were lined up and silent, for they would not be ready to work until the shovel was ready to load them. They looked like a mechanical interpretation of Dr. Dolittle’s “Pushme-pullyou,” the fantastic animal with two front ends. They had two large driving wheels and two small steerable wheels. The motor and the driver’s seat were side by side over the front—or smaller—wheels; but the driver faced the dump body between the big rear wheels, exactly the opposite of the way he would sit in a dump truck. Hence, in traveling from shovel to dumping-ground, the operator drove backwards, looking over his shoulder, and in dumping he backed the machine up but he himself traveled forward—quite a trick for fourteen hours a day! The shovel squatted in the midst of all the others, its great hulk looming over them, humped there with its boom low and its iron chin on the ground, like some great tired dinosaur.

Rivera, the Puerto Rican mechanic, looked up grinning as Tom and Chub approached, and stuck a bleeder wrench into the top pocket of his coveralls.

“She says ‘Sígalo,’” he said, his white teeth flashlighting out of the smear of grease across his mouth. “She says she wan’ to get dirt on dis paint.” He kicked the blade of the Seven with his heel.

Tom sent the grin back—always a surprising thing in his grave face.

“That Seven’ll do that, and she’ll take a good deal off her bitin’ edge along with the paint before we’re through. Get in the saddle, Goony. Build a ramp off the rocks down to the flat there, and blade us off some humps from here to the bluff yonder. We’re walking the dipper up there.”

The Puerto Rican was in the seat before Tom had finished, and with a roar the Seven spun in its length and moved back along the outcropping to the inland edge. Rivera dropped his blade and the sandy marl curled and piled up in front of the dozer, loading the blade and running off in two even rolls at the ends. He shoved the load toward the rocky edge, the Seven revving down as it took the load,
blat blat blatting
and pulling like a supercharged ox as it fired slowly enough for them to count the revolutions.

“She’s a hunk of machine,” said Tom.

“A hunk of operator, too,” gruffed Chub, and added, “for a mechanic.”

“The boy’s all right,” said Kelly. He was standing there with them, watching the Puerto Rican operate the dozer, as if he had been there all along, which was the way Kelly always arrived places. He was tall, slim, with green eyes too long and an easy stretch to the way he moved, like an attenuated cat. He said, “Never thought I’d see the day when equipment was shipped set up ready to run like this. Guess no one ever thought of it before.”

“There’s times when heavy equipment has to be unloaded in a hurry these days,” Tom said. “If they can do it with tanks, they can do it with construction equipment. We’re doin’ it to build something instead, is all. Kelly, crank up the shovel. It’s oiled. We’re walking it over to the bluff.”

Kelly swung up into the cab of the big dipper-stick and, diddling the governor control, pulled up the starting handle. The Murphy Diesel snorted and settled down into a thudding idle. Kelly got into the saddle, set up the throttle a little, and began to boom up.

“I still can’t get over it,” said Chub. “Not more’n a year ago we’d a had two hundred men on a job like this.”

Tom smiled. “Yeah, and the first thing we’d have done would be to build an office building, and then quarters. Me, I’ll take this way. No timekeepers, no equipment-use reports, no progress and yardage summaries, no nothin’ but eight men, a million bucks worth of equipment, an’ three weeks. A shovel an’ a mess of tool crates’ll keep the rain off us, an’ army field rations’ll keep our bellies full. We’ll get it done, we’ll get out and we’ll get paid.”

Rivera finished the ramp, turned the Seven around and climbed it, walking the new fill down. At the top he dropped his blade, floated it, and backed down the ramp, smoothing out the rolls. At a wave from Tom he started out across the shore, angling up toward the bluff, beating out the humps and carrying fill into the hollows. As he worked, he sang, feeling the beat of the mighty motor, the micrometric obedience of that vast implacable machine.

“Why doesn’t that monkey stick to his grease guns?”

Tom turned and took the chewed end of a match stick out of his mouth. He said nothing, because he had for some time been trying to make a habit of saying nothing to Joe Dennis. Dennis was an ex-accountant, drafted out of an office at the last gasp of a defunct project in the West Indies. He had become an operator because they needed operators badly. He had been released with alacrity from the office because of his propensity for small office politics. It was a game he still played, and completely aside from his boiled-looking red face and his slightly womanish walk, he was out of place in the field; for boot-licking and back-stabbing accomplish even less out on the field than they do in an office. Tom, trying so hard to keep his mind on his work, had to admit to himself that of all Dennis’ annoying traits the worst was that he was as good a pan operator as could be found anywhere, and no one could deny it.

Dennis certainly didn’t.

“I’ve seen the day when anyone catching one of those goonies so much as sitting on a machine during lunch would kick his fanny,” Dennis groused. “Now they give ’em a man’s work and a man’s pay.”

“
Doin’
a man’s work, ain’t he?” Tom said.

“He’s a damn Puerto Rican!”

Tom turned and looked at him levelly. “Where was it you said you come from,” he mused. “Oh yeah. Georgia.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Tom was already striding away. “Tell you as soon as I have to,” he flung back over his shoulder. Dennis went back to watching the Seven.

Tom glanced at the ramp and then waved Kelly on. Kelly set his housebrake so the shovel could not swing, put her into travel gear, and shoved the swing lever forward. With a crackling of drive chains and a massive scrunching of compacting coral sand, the shovel’s great flat pads carried her over and down the ramp. As she tipped over the peak of the ramp the heavy manganese steel bucket-door gaped open and closed, like a hungry mouth, slamming up against the bucket until suddenly it latched shut and was quiet. The big Murphy Diesel crooned hollowly under compression as the machine ran downgrade and then the sensitive governor took hold and it took up its belly-beating thud.

Peebles was standing by one of the dozer-pan combines, sucking on his pipe and looking out to sea. He was grizzled and heavy, and from under the bushiest gray brows looked the calmest gray eyes Tom had ever seen. Peebles had never gotten angry at a machine—a rare trait in a born mechanic—and in fifty-odd years he had learned it was even less use getting angry at a man. Because no matter what, you could always fix what was wrong with a machine. He said around his pipestem:

“Hope you’ll give me back my boy, there.”

Tom’s lips quirked in a little grin. There had been an understanding between old Peebles and himself ever since they had met. It was one of those things which exists unspoken—they knew little about each other because they had never found it necessary to make small talk to keep their friendship extant. It was enough to know that each could expect the best from the other, without persuasion.

“Rivera?” Tom asked. “I’ll chase him back as soon as he finishes that service road for the dipper-stick. Why—got anything on?”

“Not much. Want to get that arc welder drained and flushed and set up a grounded table in case you guys tear anything up.” He paused. “Besides, the kid’s filling his head up with too many things at once. Mechanicking is one thing; operating is something else.”

“Hasn’t got in his way much so far, has it?”

“Nope. Don’t aim t’ let it, either. ’Less you need him.”

Tom swung up on the pan tractor. “I don’t need him that bad, Peeby. If you want some help in the meantime, get Dennis.”

Peebles said nothing. He spat. He didn’t say anything at all.

“What’s the matter with Dennis?” Tom wanted to know.

“Look yonder,” said Peebles, waving his pipestem. Out on the beach Dennis was talking to Chub, in Dennis’ indefatigable style, standing beside Chub, one hand on Chub’s shoulder. As they watched they saw Dennis call his side-kick, Al Knowles.

“Dennis talks too much,” said Peebles. “That most generally don’t amount to much, but that Dennis, he sometimes says too much. Ain’t got what it takes to run a show, and knows it. Makes up for it by messin’ in between folks.”

“He’s harmless,” said Tom.

Still looking up the beach, Peebles said slowly:

“Is, so far.”

Tom started to say something, then shrugged. “I’ll send you Rivera,” he said, and opened the throttle. Like a huge electric dynamo, the two-cycle motor whined to a crescendo. Tom lifted the dozer with a small lever by his right thigh and raised the pan with the long control sprouting out from behind his shoulder. He moved off, setting the rear gate of the scraper so that anything the blade bit would run off to the side instead of loading into the pan. He slapped the tractor into sixth gear and whined up to and around the crawling shovel, cutting neatly in under the boom and running on ahead with his scraper blade just touching the ground, dragging to a fine grade the service road Rivera had cut.

Dennis was saying, “It’s that little Hitler stuff. Why should I take that kind of talk? ‘You come from Georgia,’ he says. What is he—a Yankee or something?”

“A crackah f’m Macon,” chortled Al Knowles, who came from Georgia, too. He was tall and stringy and round-shouldered. All of his skill was in his hands and feet, brains being a commodity he had lived without all his life until he had met Dennis and used him as a reasonable facsimile thereof.

“Tom didn’t mean nothing by it,” said Chub.

“No, he didn’t mean nothin’. Only that we do what he says the way he says it, specially if he finds a way we don’t like it.
You
wouldn’t do like that, Chub. Al, think Chub would carry on that-away?”

“Sure wouldn’t,” said Al, feeling it expected of him.

“Nuts,” said Chub, pleased and uncomfortable, and thinking, what have I got against Tom?—not knowing, not liking Tom as well as he had. “Tom’s the man here, Dennis. We got a job to do—let’s skit and git. Man can take anything for a lousy six weeks.”

“Oh, sho’,” said Al.

“Man can take just so much,” Dennis said. “What they put a man like that on top for, Chub? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know grading and drainage as good as Tom? Can Tom stake out a side hill like you can?”

“Sure, sure, but what’s the difference, long as we get a field built? An’ anyhow, hell with bein’ the boss-man. Who gets the blame if things don’t run right, anyway?”

Dennis stepped back, taking his hand off Chub’s shoulder, and stuck an elbow in Al’s ribs.

“You see that, Al? Now there’s a smart man. That’s the thing Uncle Tom didn’t bargain for. Chub, you can count on Al and me to do just that little thing.”

“Do just what little thing?” asked Chub, genuinely puzzled.

“Like you said. If the job goes wrong, the boss gets blamed. So, if the boss don’t behave, the job goes wrong.”

“Uh-huh,” agreed Al with the conviction of mental simplicity.