Question of Comfort - Les Collins (great book club books .TXT) 📗

nominally anyway—"

"Uh huh, nominally."

"Bosses should not make passes
At gals who work as lower classes."

"Uh, huh, familiar."

"But you are, and getting more so daily—"

"Uh hu—are what?" I asked in surprise.

"Thin, tired: the GG has decided you're working too hard."

"Because I don't use Vano." I grinned, having waited long to put that one across.

"Be serious and listen—"

"You listen: if I'm working too hard, it's to finish. I must, and soon."

"This compulsion," she paced her words, "will kill you if you let it."

"It'll kill me if I don't let it—"

"Here comes Harry."

It was time. Blearily, I fumbled with the pills, spilled the bottle. Frank helped me gather them up, as Harry arrived.

He said, a look of worry on his gaunt, gray features, "The rest of us are waiting."

Concerned, Frank asked, "Think you're able?"

"Anytime you say," I answered, in a cold-sober monotone.

She flushed, knowing I was sober, not knowing certainly if I were serious.

When we were seated, I said enthusiastically, "Chateaubriand tonight, gangsters."

The GG did not react as expected.

Dex, the electronics engineer, said quietly, "If it's steak when the ground is broken, what'll it be when the thing is finished?"

"A feast, for all the animals in the world—just like Suleiman-bin-Daoud." This, from the GG writer, Mel.

Their faces showed the same thing that bothered Frank.

Harry said, "We have something to do."

"Well, do it!" I tried weak joviality: "It can't be anything of earth-shaking gravity."

Hazel, long since accepted as a GG member, replied, "It's just that we're ... resigned."

"What?"

"We've produced nothing in months of sustained effort. That's why we're resigning," Dex replied disgustedly.

Frank touched my arm, said softly, "We've examined every angle. With the money available, it's just impossible to give a sensation of changed weight. And we know they've been pressuring you about us being on the payroll."

"Wait"—desperately—"if you pull out, everything will go. The opposition needs only something like this. Besides, the GG is the one bit of insanity I can depend on in a practical world, the prop for my judgment—"

Harry: "Clouded judgment."

Mel: "Expensive prop."

Having grown used to their friendly insults, I sensed their resolution weakening, felt the pendulum swinging back.

The waitress interrupted with news of an urgent phone call. It was the worst possible time for me to leave. And the news I got threw me. Feeling the weight of the world, I returned.

"Can't be in two places at once," I said bitterly. "Go ahead without me; I'm leaving."

"Wait a few minutes," Mel said, between bites of steak, "we want to resign. Sit down."

"Damn it, I can't! I spoke to The Boss. I've pulled a boo-boo, but big."

"What happened?"

"Bonestell will do the backgrounds, but he has to know what rocks we're putting in the rooms. What rocks are we? Anybody have an idea what the surface of Mars looks like? God, how could I have missed that?"

"Sit down," Dex said casually, "we want to resign."

Hazel added, "You can have your rocks in 24 hours. We worked it out weeks ago. I did read Van Es, and Harry has prospected, and Dex knows minerals, and Mel pushed his way through Tyrrell's 'Principles of Petrology'—"

"The science of rocks," Mel interrupted, between bites of steak.

"We got interested one day." Frank's pretty, dark eyes danced.

"We want to resign," Dex repeated casually, "so sit down."

I sat.

They began throwing the ball faster than I could catch: "No atmosphere on Mercury, then no oxidation; I insist there'd be no straight metals.... The asteroids? Ferromagnesian blocks of some kind—any basalts around here?... For Venus, grab a truckload of granodiorite—the spotted stuff—from the Sierra-Nevadas and tint it pink.... Lateritic soils for Mars? You crazy? Must have water and a subtropical climate...."

It hit me: a valid use for the GG, one that already saved money. Make them a brain team, trouble-shooters, or problem-solvers on questions that could not be solved.

I said, "Fine, go ahead. About your resignations—"

Mel said something indistinguishable—I'd caught him on a bite of steak.

Hazel, belligerent, demanded: "Are you asking us to resign?"

Apparently I wasn't. So they stuck, and another crisis was met. Unfortunately, by then, I'd forgotten the shock and warning I got from the cat.

Things moved swiftly, more easily. The GG took over, becoming, in effect, my staff. They'd become more: five different extensions of me, each capable of acting correctly. As a team, they meshed beautifully.

Too beautifully, at one point. Dex and Hazel were seeing eye-to-eye, even in the dark, and I worried about the effect on the others. I might as well have worried about the effect of a light bulb on the sun. They married or some such, refused time off, and the GG functioned, if anything, better. It was almost indecent the way the five got along together.

A new problem arose: temperature. We weren't reproducing actual temperatures, but the rooms needed a marked change, for reality's sake. I'd insisted on that, and having won the point, was stuck with it. It was after 2 A.M.; I was alone in the office.

The sound of the outer door closing startled me. Footsteps approached; I hurried to clean my desk, sweeping the bottle into the drawer.

"You're up too late. Go home." Frank had a nonarguable look in her eye. "You're supposed to be getting sleep."

"I am, far more than before you guys began helping, but—"

"But with all that extra sleep, you're looking worse."

"I don't need any more sleep!" I said angrily, then tried diversion, "Been on a date?"

"Yes, but I thought I'd better check on you." She moved close to the desk, and I remembered the last time we'd been alone, in the bar. Now I was glad I wasn't drunk.

"What the devil are you up to?"

She pawed through the desk drawers. "Finding what you tried to hide—"

"Wait, Frank!" I yelled, too late.

She looked at the bottle, then me, with a strange expression: a little pity—not patronizing—but mostly feminine understanding. "Soda pop? Of course. You don't like alcohol, do you?"

"No." Gruffly.

Her eyes blinked rapidly, as though holding back tears. "I know what's the matter with you; I really know."

"There's nothing the matter with me that—"

"That beating this mess won't solve." We hadn't heard Mel enter. He leaned casually against the door. "Terrific idea for a story."

I shrugged. "Seems to be homecoming night."

"Not quite," he glanced at his watch, "but wait another few minutes."

He was right: Harry, out of breath, was the last of the GG to arrive.

"Now what?" I asked. "Surely this meeting isn't an accident?"

Dex said thoughtfully, "No, not really, but it is in the sense you mean. We didn't agree to appear tonight. Yet logically, it's time for the temperature problem—well, I guess each of us came down to help."

What could I do? That was the GG, characteristically, so we talked temperatures.

"What I was thinking," Harry began slowly, "was a sort of superthermostat." Harry, as usual, came to the right starting point.

Frank smiled, "That's right, especially considering layout. Venus and Mercury are hot; the others, cold. What about a control console that'll light when the rooms get outside normal temperature range? Then the operator—"

"Hey! Why an operator?" Mel questioned. "We ought to make this automatic." He grinned. "Giant computer ... can see it now: the brain comes alive, tries to destroy anyone turning it off—"

I asked: "Have you been reading the stuff you write?" Funny enough for 3 A.M.

Dex said calmly, "We can work this—in fact, we can tie it in pink ribbons and forget it. An electronics outfit in Pasadena makes an automatic scanning and logging system. Works off punched-paper tape. We'll code the right poop, and the system will compare it with the actual raw data. Feedback will be to a master control servo that'll activate the heater or cooler. Now, we need the right pickup—"

I snapped my fingers. "Variable resistor bridge. Couple of resistors equal at the right temperature. There'll be a frequency change with changing temperature—better than a thermocouple, I think."

They looked at me as though I were butting in.

"You've been reading, too," Dex accused. "Ok, we'll use a temperature bulb. Trouble is, with this system, we'd better let it run continuously. That'll drive costs up."

Hazel asked, "Can't we use the heat, maybe to drive a compressor? The sudden expansion of air could cool the rest. Harry?"

Harry hadn't time to answer.

"What'll this cost?" I snapped.

"Roughly, 15 to 18 thousand," Dex replied.

"What?"

With fine impartiality, they ignored me completely. Harry continued, as though without interruption, "Ye-es, I guess a compressor-and-coolant system could be arranged ..."

We broke up at 6 A.M. I took one of my pills, frowning at the bottle. Seemed to be emptying fast. Sleepily, I shook the thought off and faced the new day—little knowing the opposition had managed to skizzle us again.

The last displays were moons of Jupiter and Saturn; it was impossible to recreate tortured conditions of the planets themselves. Saturn's closest moon, Mimas, was picked.

Our grand finale: landing on Mimas with Saturn rising spectacularly out of the east. Mimas is in the plane of the rings, so they couldn't be obvious. We'd show enough, however, to make it damned impressive, and explain it by libration of the satellite.

The mechanics of realistically moving Saturn was rougher than a cob. And that's where the opposition fixed us. They claimed there wasn't enough drama in the tour. Let it end with a flash of light, a roar, and a meteor striking nearby.

The roar came from us. Mimas had no atmosphere—how could the meteor sound off or burn up? We finally compromised, permitting the meteor to hit.

We'd decided early the customers couldn't walk through. Mel first, Harry, then Dex, together produced an electric-powered, open runabout. The cart ran on treads in contact with skillfully hidden tracks, for the current channel. A futuristic touch, that—we'd say the cart ran on broadcast power.

The power source provided cart headlights, and made batteries unnecessary for the guide's walkie-talkie and the customers' helmet receivers.

Mimas' last section of track was on a vibrating platform. The cart tripped a switch; when the meteor supposedly hit, the platform would drop and rise three inches, fast, twisting while it did—"enough," Mel said grimly, "to shake the damned kishkas out of 'em!"

We cracked that one, just in time for another. It began with Venus, as most of my problems had. We planned constant dust storms for Venus. Real quick, there'd be nothing left of the Bonestell's backgrounds but a blank wall, from mechanical erosion.

And how did we intend—?

Glass—

Too easily scratched. Lord, another one: how will the half-a-buck customers be able to see inside?

Glass and one of those silicon plastics?

Better, but—

Harry beat it: glass, plastic, and a boundary layer of cold air, jetted down from the ceiling, in front of the background painting and back of the look-in window. I was glad, for lately, Harry had begun to age. Thin and gray, he showed the strain—as did all of us.

We were sitting in an administration office at the park. I now recognized the symptoms; when the GG had no real problems, its collective mind usually turned to my health. I wouldn't admit it, but I felt a little peaked. Little? Hell, bone-tired, dog-weary pooped. Seemed every motion was effort, but soon it would end.

The phone rang. With the message, it was ended.

"Let's go, grouseketeers."

There was almost a pregnant pause. Six months: conception of the idea to delivery of finished product; six months, working together, fighting men, nature, and the perversity of inanimate objects—all of this now was done.

No one moved; Frank verbalized it: "I'm scared." She sounded scared.

"Better than being petrified, which I am," I answered. "But we might as well face it."

We dragged over to the TS building, an impressive structure.

The guide played it straight, told us exactly how to suit up. Then, in the cart, we edged into the tunnel that was the first lock, and—warned to set our filters—emerged onto the blinding surface of Mercury.

We felt the heat momentarily—Mercury and Venus were kept at a constant 140 F, the others at 0 F—but it was a deliberate thrill. Then cool air from the cart suit-connections began circulating.

Bonestell was magnificent, as always. Yellow landscape, spatter cones,