Chapter 7

PROJECT ENGINEER BYRD

Miss Champion was as efficient as she was ornamental, and all of GalMet's top people

were on call every minute of every day on the calendar. Therefore she and Executive

Vice-President Eldon Smith and Project Engineers Quisenberry and Felton got to

GalMet's main office almost as soon as Maynard himself did. When the two engineers

came in Maynard looked at them with the well-known expression of the canary-containing

cat.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, with a wide and cryptic grin. "I trust that your hearts

are in good shape? And your nerves? That you are both sufficiently well integrated to

withstand the shock of your trouble-making young lives?"

"Try us," Quisenberry said. He was a black-haired, black-eyed, deeply-tanned man, a

little past thirty, who had worked himself up the hard way; clear up from the lowest low

of a copper mine. He looked-if not exactly sullen, at least as though he was very sure

that what he had been doing on his own was vastly more important than any piffling,

niggling conference with THE BIG BOSS. "I'll live through it, I'm sure."

"Okay. Each of you take a table; you'll need lots of room. Quisenberry, here's everything

you'll need on a deposit of copper. Felton, ditto, uranium. I want preliminary roughouts of

those projects as fast as you can get them. Very rough: plus-or-minus twenty five

percent will be close enough. Now, Don and Miss Champion, what well have to do tonight

is rough out a -full operational on copper in the light of information that has just come to

hand."

After what may have been an hour Mrs. Maynard came in and Quisenberry came up for

air. His table was littered with hand-books, machine-tapes of various kinds, graphs,

charts, and wadded-up scratch-paper; much of which had overflowed onto the floor.

"But this is incredible, sir." It was the first time either engineer had called Maynard "sir"

in over a year. "Of course I can't say that it's absolutely impossible for any such deposit

as this to occur, but . . ." Quisenberry paused.

Maynard grinned again, but pleasantly, this time. "Do you think I'd have all that stuff

faked up and then come down here and work all night myself just to put you two through

the wringer?"

"Put that way, of course not ... but . . ." Quisenberry paused again and Felton, who had

stopped work and was listening with both ears, came in with:

"Quizz said it, Mr. Maynard, and mine's ten to the fourth as hard to swallow as his. I

can't make myself believe that there's that much uranium in one place anywhere in the

universe."

"I know exactly how you feel," Maynard assured them. "I was flabbergasted myself. You

may take it as a fact, however, that all that data is accurate to within the appropriate

limits of error. I myself am so convinced of its reliability that I am going to give you two

men all the authorization you'll need and full authority to build and to operate

fully-automated plants. Satisfactory? That's what you've been getting ready for all this

time, isn't it?" "Yes, sir!" Quisenberry said, and:

You said it, sir!" Felton agreed.

At seven fifty five Maynard asked the group at large, "Everybody ready to eat? I'll call

Beardsley's."

Neither engineer would leave his job; so, after Miss Champion had ordered up two

one-gallon hot-pots of coffee and a good spread of smorgasbord, the two couples went

to Beardsley's for dinner-a dinner that lasted for an- hour and a half and cost Maynard

exactly forty dollars (including tip). Then a GalMet aircar took Mrs.

Maynard home and another one took the other three back to the office.

Along toward morning Quisenberry stood up, stretched, looked with distaste at his

umpteenth cup of coffee, and said, "I've made some assumptions, boss, that I'd better

check with you before I give you the bad news. Okay?" "Okay."

"Rush all possible. That means twenty fours hours a day, Saturdays, Sundays, and

holidays. All the personnel that can work efficiently, all the time. Crash priorities on

material, which means no time for competitive bidding, so we'll have to pay top prices

and bonuses. Check to here?"

"Check and okay."

"Plant capacity. Assuming that you want to cut the price down to somewhere between

eleven and twelve cents. . . ."

"You're right on the beam, Quizz. Nearer eleven, I think."

"Extrapolating on that basis, my guessometer says that we'll have to be producing at the

rate of fifteen million tons by the end of the first year. That's a mighty big plant, boss.

That's one supreme hell of a big plant." "I know. I like those figures very much."

"You won't like these next ones, I'm afraid. On this rush-and-bonus basis it'll take pretty

close to twenty five megabucks in the first couple of months, and the total-well, it's a very

rough guess at this point. All I'm sure of is the order of magnitude, but the total to first

pour will probably run somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy five megabucks."

"Thanks. That's close enough for now. just so we don't get caught short of cash in the

till."

"But listen-sir-Phelps will have a litter of lizards!" "He'll be amenable to reason when he

finds out that we are entering a completely new era in metals. Felton, how about you?"

Felton-a brawny youth with butch-cut straw-colored hair and blue eyes-could not answer

immediately because his mouth was full of shrimp a la Creole. He swallowed hastily, then

said:

"Since this will have to be a crash-pri job, too, everything Quizz said will apply. Add high

radiation to all that, and a hostile dead planet clear out to hellangone beyond anywhere,

and the tab gets no smaller fast. My best guesstimate as of now is that the total will

crowd a hundred megabucks."

"Fair enough. Thanks a. . ."

 "One thing first," Felton interrupted. "Are you sure enough of this-this super-bonanza-for

me to roust Bassler out right now? Tell him to cut out all this ten-cent petty-larceny

rock-scratching we're doing now, break out all the armor we've got and order more, and

start-but quick-jassacking some of that high-grade out of there and hauling it-to

Galmetia?"

"An excellent idea. Splendid! If I'd thought of it I would have suggested it hours ago. Go

ahead."

Felton did so and Maynard went on, "Since you fellows made these estimates in hours

instead of weeks I'll give you plenty of leeway. Miss Champion, please issue two

preliminary authorizations: Quisenberry, seventy five megabucks; Felton, a hundred."

Preliminaries! Not maxes! Staring at each other as though they could not believe their

ears, the two engineers shook hands solemnly with each other, and then with all three of

the others. Then they poured themselves two more cups of strong black coffee and went

back to work.

Work went on until half past five. Then, since each would have to be on the job by nine

o'clock, Maynard broke it up so that each could get three hours' sleep. All top-echelon

private offices were equipped for that. Night work was an essential part of such

man-killing jobs as theirs; a part that envious underlings knew nothing about. It had

happened before and it would happen again. And again and again.

This entire episode was just another one of those things.

A couple of months later, Miss Champion showed Deston into Maynard's office. The

tycoon, although showing the effects of too little sleep, was in very fine fettle indeed.

"Good morning, chief," Deston said. "We're about ready to cut gravs. How are the

projects corning along?" "Fine! Quizz is really rolling it, and no leaks. And we cut the

price of uranium another half a buck yesterday." "Nice going. Are you sure we can stay

out a few months? I'll locate enough copper while we're gone, of course, to last you for a

thousand years."

"Positive. We'll drop the price of copper to where Hoadman will think he's been hit by a

pile-driver."

"So solly . . . and the effect on all industry of cheap and plentiful copper-added to your

widely-advertised fact that in a few months everybody can buy all the uranium they want

for less than thirty cents per pound -will take the curse off of the public image GalMet will

get when you smash UCM flat?"

"Not quite all of it, perhaps, but it will certainly help." "That's for sure. Okay; what do you

want firstest and mostest of, now that copper and uranium are out of the way?"

"I wish I could tell you." Maynard's fingers drummed quietly on his desk. "You thought it

would be simple? It isn't. It's all fouled up in the personnel situation I told you I'd tell you

about. We have six good people-damned good people-each of whom wants a planetary

project so passionately that if I stack the deck in favor of any one of them, all the others

will blast me to a cinder and run, not walk, to the nearest exit."

Deston did not say anything and after a moment the older man went on, "Platinum and

iridium, of course. Osmium, tungsten . . ."

"Tungsten isn't too scarce, is it?"

"For the possible demand, very much so. I'd like to sell it for fifteen cents a pound.

Beryllium, tantalum, titanium, thorium, cerium-and, for the grand climax to end all

climaxes-rhenium."

"Huh? I don't think I've ever heard rhenium even mentioned since my freshman

chemistry."

"Not too many people have, but right now I'm as full of information as the dog that sniffed

at the third rail. It's so rare that no mineral of it is known; it exists only as a trace of

impurity in a very few minerals. Strangely enough, practically only in molybdenite."

"Just a minute. Deston went to a book-case, took out a hand-book, and flipped pages.

"Um . . . um . . . mm. Dwimanganese. Not usually associated with manganese. Maybe it

occurs in molybdenite as the sulphide-ReS2and/or Re2S7-commercial source, flue dust

from the roasting of Arizona molybdenite. . . ."

"Right. We own the outfit. That's why we own it. It produces a few tons a year of Cottrell

dust, which yields just about enough rhenium to irritate one eyeball. Production cost, five

dollars and seventeen cents per gram."

"But what's it good for? Contact points . . . cat mass . . . heavy duty igniters, it says

here. Deston tapped the page with his forefinger. "No tonnage outlet there.

"What would you think of an alloy that had a yield point-not ultimate tensile, mind you, but

yield-of well over a million pounds, and yet an elongation of better than five percent?"

Deston whistled. "I would have said it was a pure pipe dream. What else is in it?"

Mostly tungsten. A lot of tantalum. Rhenium around ten percent. The research isn't done

yet, but they're far enough along to know that they'll have something utterly fantastic. The

problem, Byrd tells me, is to determine the optimum formula and environment for the

growth and matting of single crystals of metal-tungsten 'whiskers', you know-you know

about them."

"A little, of course, but not too much. I'm a 'troncist ."

"I know. Well, they're playing around now with soakpit times and temperatures and

fractional percentages of this and that. The curve is still rising."

"So you'll need tungsten and tantalum, too, by the gigaton, since that's a thing that the

Law of Diminishing Returns would apply to exactly."

"I didn't think I'd have to plot you a graph. So now, apart from the personnel problem,

what do you think?" Before replying, Deston studied the handbook for minutes. Then:

"The three atomic numbers are in order; seventy three, four, and five. But in the Earth's

crust rhenium runs less than one part in billions. So if there is any big mass of it

anywhere the others are apt to be there too, and a hell of a lot more of 'em."

"All the better, even from a project standpoint. Two prime sources of anything are a lot

better than one."

"I didn't mean that. All that stuff is terrifically heavy, and it's got to be close enough to the

surface to get at. I simply can't visualize what kind of a planet could possibly have what

we want. It won't be Tellus-Type, that's for damn certain sure."

"I couldn't care less about that. We can set up automation on anything that isn't hotter

than dull red." "Okay. That brings us back, then, to personnel. This Byrd-has he got what

it takes to run such a weirdie as this rhenium thing will almost have to be?"

"Definitely, but Doctor Ceeily Byrd isn't a man. Very much the opposite, which is exactly

what is thickening the soup. If we could get hold of as little as one megaton of rhenium,

so as to add this new alloy leybyrdite to cheap uranium and copper, it would make

MetEnge such a public benefactor that it'd be a case of 'the King can do no wrong'. But if

I deal one card from the bottom of the deck to 'Curly' Byrd all hell will be out for noon."

"That sounds like something more than ordinary sex antagonism."

"It is. Much more. She not only uses weapons men don't have-and she's got 'em, believe

me-but she brags about it. She's a carrot-topped, freckle-faced, shanty irish wick, with

the shape men drool about and itching to use it-with a megavac for a brain and an

ice-cube for a heart. She's half cobra, half black widow, half bitch, and one hundred

percent hell-cat on wheels."

"She must be quite a gal, to add up to two hundred and fifty percent."

"She adds up to all that. So do the others. I would have fired her a year ago-she hadn't

been on the job three weeks before she started making passes at me-but I haven't been

able to find anyone else nearly as good as she is."

"That's a mighty tough signal to read."

"It's a unique situation. I've been gathering those people for over two years, getting

ready to expand, and we haven't found anything big enough to expand into. I had eight of

them. They were hard enough to handle before I gave Felton and Quisenberry their

projects, but ever since then the other six have been damn near impossible. Each has

tremendous ability and drive; each is as good as either Felton or Quisenberry and knows

it. All working at about ten percent load; with nowhere in the galaxy to go to do any

better. Frustrated-tense-sore as boils and touchy as fulminate-knives out, not only for

each other, but also for Smith and me. Four men and two women. Purdom hasn't got any

sex-appeal at all; Byrd oozes it at every pore. So I tell you rhenium first and the sex-pot

is first out. So the other five know she got it by sleeping with me, and she-the God

damned bitch!-grins like the Chesire cat and rubs it in that she has got what it takes to

land the big ones."

"That's a hell of a picture, chief. I simply can't visualize top-bracket executives acting that

way."

"You haven't handled enough people for years enough. They can't act any other way.

What I've been wanting to do, every time she sticks her damned sexy neck out, is wring

it ... wait a minute; that gives me an idea . . . yes, that'll work. The minute they find out

for sure they must all suspect it already-that you're an honest-to-God metal-wizard I can

kick their teeth right down their throats. They'll all tear into their jobs like that many

hundred-ton cat tractors."

"But listen! You can't tell 'em-we've got to keep it dark, the way we find the stuff."

From most people, yes; but from anybody with a brain? One, of course, could be luck.

Two might-just barely-be coincidence. But the next one? I won't have to tell them, even

now. I'll make the method certain the same way you did-by denying its possibility."

"Could be, at that ... so maybe we'd better make it a straight tri-di survey for everything

you're interested in. That would save time, in fact, over all. What kind of a list would that

be?"

"Here." Maynard reached into a drawer and sailed a sheet of paper across his desk.

"The full want list, which we boiled down to the must-haves."

Deston caught the paper and read it. "Is that all?" "Isn't that enough? You're a brute for

punishment." "I'm surprised, is all, that gold isn't on it."

"Gold/" Maynard snorted. "Besides currency base, jewelry, and show, what's it good

for? We've never touched it and never intend to-produce a few tons too much and you

upset the economy instead of benefitting it."

"I never thought of it that way, but that's right. Okay, chief, we'll flit. I'll keep you posted.

'Bye."

Deston strode out and Maynard flipped a switch. "Please get Wharton, Bender, Camp,

Byrd, Train, and Purdom and bring 'em into the conference room. No note-pads and no

recorder."

"Very well, sir," Miss Champion said; and in a few minutes four men and three women

were walking toward the long table at the head of which Maynard sat.

"I for one was busy, Mister Maynard!" Cecily Byrd snapped. She was something under

thirty, five feet ten in her nylons, and beautifully built. She moved with the lithe grace of a

trained dancer. Her thick, brick-red, medium-bobbed hair was naturally and stubbornly

curly; with a curliness no hair-dresser had ever been able to subdue. Her untannable skin

was heavily freckled and, except for a touch of lipstick, she wore no make-up. Her

features, while regular enough, were too bold and too strong by far for prettiness. Her

mien was sullen and defiant; her eyes-smoldering green fires-swept the bare expanse of

table. "What? No pads and pencils? No mikes? Isn't this conference going to be of such

gravid and world-shaking import that its every word and nuance should be preserved for

the edification of all ages to come?"

"Shut up, Byrd, and all of you sit down."

The red-head gasped and all the others stared; for this was something new. President

Maynard had never before spoken to any one of them except in formal terms. Wondering

and silent, they all sat down and Maynard smiled at them wolfishly one by one. After a

long half minute of this he spoke.

"I've been looking forward to this moment for a long long time" he gloated. "But first, I

wonder if any one of you has any idea of why I put up with all eight of you so long? Such

intractable, intransigent hellions; such knuckle-dusting, back stabbing, rampaging jerks as

you all have been?"

"That's easy!" the red-head snapped, before any one of the eager others could say a

word. "Hog-the-talent. Dog-in-the-manager. Standard Operating Procedure."

"Wrong. You're also wrong in claiming to be busy. Not one of you has even the remotest

inkling of what the word means. But you are all going to find out. How you'll find out! As

soon as this meeting is over each of you will be handed a planetary-project authorization

and will . . ."

"What?" "Huh?" "Where?" 'How come?" Six voices shouted or shrieked almost as one.

"Whereupon each of you will proceed to design and staff a full-scale, optimum-tonnage

plant, exactly as you want it. Each of you will have full authority and full responsibility. . .

."

"Full authority. Yeah," Percival Train broke in, bitingly. He was a big, handsome,

hard-bodied young man, with bushy, crew-cut brown hair and highly cynical-at the

moment-gray eyes. "Except that I'll be told exactly what to do and exactly how to do it

and then it'll be my fault when the whole damned operation goes stinko. Full authority,

hell! I've heard that song, words and music, before."

From me?" Maynard asked quietly. "Well . . . no."

"Nor will you. You'll be on your own; subject to Top Management only in matters of

policy-such as no pirating of personnel from each other, for instance. That's so none of

you can come around later, bitching and bellyaching that your flop was clue to the way

we cramped your style. If each of you does a job, and I hope you will; fine. Anybody who

doesn't will get fired. I would enjoy firing you, Train, and Byrd. Any questions?"

The six looked at each other, almost in consternation. Even "Curly" Byrd was mute.

Finally Train spoke. "Maybe ... to be tossing out that kind of money ... this, on top of

Barbizon and Belmark, really blows the plug. But I still don't think that Mrs. Deston is a

metalwitch. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course she isn't," Rose Purdom, a plumpish, fortyish blonde put in. "Or she'd have

done it before. It's a new talent. Mister Deston. Those huge finds were just to prove to a

certain hard-nosed tycoon that he could do it. That's what's really back of this gigantic

super-merger."

"If any or all of you want to believe in that supernatural twaddle it's all right with me,"

Maynard said, dryly. "What I am authorized to say is that the firm of Deston and Deston

Incorporated has, by marked improvements in instrumentation and techniques, been able

to take noteworthy strides in the science or art of locating large deposits of certain

metals."

"Comet-gas!" Train rasped. "You're right, Rose, it's Deston. Es macht mir garnichts aus

who finds the stuff, or how; but just one question, Mr. Maynard. Are you going to play

this straight, on a first-found-first-out basis?"

"Absolutely. Thus, either Wharton or Camp will probably be first, the lady Byrd here last.

Probably all of you, however, except Byrd, will have your locations before you're ready

for them."

"But if probability governs, I might come in first," Cecily Byrd said, looking pointedly at

Maynard.

"The possibility, although vanishingly small, does exist," Maynard admitted. "Therefore, if

that event occurs, I want you all to know now as a fact that it will be because rhenium is

discovered first in a non-selective survey, and not because. . . ." He paused and his icy

gray eyes scanned as much of a highly-sculptured green garment as was visible above

the table's top, "I repeat, not because of our Doctor Byrd's generosity with her charms;

which, by the exercise of super-human self-control, I have managed so far to resist. Now

go back to your offices, all of you, and start earning part of your pay."

The red-head flushed hotly-it was the first time anyone there had seen her blush-but not

even that blast could dampen the enthusiasm of the melee that followed. They shook

hands all around; they whacked each other-including Maynard and Miss Champion-on the

back; the men kissed the women-including Miss Champion-vigorously; and they all

babbled excitedly. In fact, it took fifteen minutes for Maynard to get them out of the

conference room.

And the six engineer-scientist-executives who finally left that room w ere very different

from the six who had entered it such a short time before.

The Destons and MetEnge, on a fifty-fifty basis, had bought from InStell the Procyon's

hulk, as is, at its appraised value for machinery and scrap. InStell had been glad to sell

her on that basis; for in the still-somewhatsuperstitious public mind she was, and under

any possible disguise would remain, an irreparably jinxed and hoodooed death-ship.

She was now completely reconditioned; not as a passenger liner, but as an armed and

armored, completely self-contained, subspace-going independent worldlet with a

population of just under a thousand people. There were no unmarried men or women

aboard, and most of the couples had children. Every man and every woman had passed

a series of physical, mental, and psychological examinations.

With this special ship, then, and with this super-special crew, the Destons set out.

In the con-room there was now a forty-foot tri-di of the galaxy, with an eight-inch, roughly

globular cluster of red dots in a spiral arm, much nearer to one edge than to the center of

the huge lens. The Destons sat at two bewildering-instrumented desks. Behind them

stood big, hard, tough Captain Theodore Jones, with his platinum-blonde wife Bernice.

Her left hand rested upon his right shoulder; her spectacular head rested thoughtfully

upon her hand.

At Jones' left, toward the massed control-boards of the ship, his fifteen top officers

stood at ease; at his right was a group of twenty-odd scientists.

"So that's what all explored space amounts to." Jones pointed at the tiny globe in the

enormous, discus-shaped, light-point-filled volume which represented the galaxy. "I

simply would not have believed it. Damn it, Babe, are you sure that thing is to scale?"

"To within one percent, yes. That's why Bobby and I are going to work fourteen hours a

day instead of six. I'm not going to try to tell any of you what to do"-Deston's eyes swept

both groups= because each of you knows more about his own job than I do. So let's get

at it.

The Procyon flashed to the nearest one of the ninety five colonized planets and Carlyle

and Barbara Deston taped their three-dimensional surveys; the man on metals, the

woman on oil, coal, water and natural gas. Nor was her part :my less important than his.

The use of fuels as such, while large, was insignificant in comparison with their use in

petrochemistry. Led by Plastics, that industry had grown so fast that not even WarnOil's

fantastic expansion had been able to keep up with it.

Day after day, planet after planet, they surveyed the ninety five colonized and all the

virgin planets they had scanned so sketchily on their first trip. Deston found immense

deposits of several of the "wanted" metals, including copper, and Barbara found plenty of

water and fuels. Tungsten and tantalum, however, were no more abundant on any of

those planets than they were on Earth; and rhenium existed only in almost imperceptible

traces. Therefore the Procyon set out, on an immensely helical course, toward the

center of the galaxy.

On their first expedition the Destons had learned so much that they could work any

planet whose sun they could see. Now, as their psionic powers kept on increasing, their

astronomers had to push the Procyon's telescopes farther and farther out into the

immensity of space to keep them busy.

Days lengthened into weeks, and life aboard the immense sky-rover settled down into a

routine. Adults worked, read, studied, loafed, and tuned in programs of entertainment

and of instruction. Children went to school and/or played just as though they were at

home. In fact, they were at home. Except that physical travel outside the hall was

forbidden, life aboard the starship was very similar to, and in many ways more

rewarding_ than, life in any village of civilization.

Deston and Barbara, however, worked and slept and ate-and that was all. Fourteen

hours per day every day of every week is a brutal shift to work, especially at such

grueling tasks as theirs; but the entire expedition had been built around those two and

they wanted to get the job done.