'That was certainly a timid individual in it,' Stanley said.
'How do you think a jet-hopper would look to the innocent eye ?' Woodbine said severely. 'Pretty horrible. But he had the courage to follow us for a time.' He had climbed up on the vehicle and was peering inside. 'It's laminated wood,' he said suddenly. 'Very thin layers. Looks to be extremely strong.' He banged on the hull with his fist.
Stanley, examining the rear of the craft, straightened up and said, 'It has a power supply. Looks like a turbine of some kind. Or possibly a compressor. Take a look at it.'
Together, as Leon Turpin watched, Frank Woodbine and Stanley studied the machinery which propelled the craft.
'What is it ?' Turpin yelled. His voice, in the open like this, sounded feeble.
Neither man paid any attention to him. He felt agitated and peeved, and he shifted about irritably, wishing they'd come back.
'Apparently,' Woodbine said, 'the turbine or whatever it is gives it an initial thrust which launches it. Then it glides for a while. Then the operator starts up the turbine once more and it receives an additional thrust. Thrust, coast, thrust, coast and so on. Odd damn way to get from, one place to another. My god, it may have to land at the end of each glide. Could that be ? It doesn't seem likely.'
Stanley said, 'Like a flying squirrel.' He turned to Woodbine. 'You know what ?' he said. 'The turbine is made out of wood, too.'
'It can't be,' Woodbine said. 'It’ll incinerate.'
'You can scrape the paint off,' Stanley said. He had a pocket knife open and was working with it.
'I'd guess this is asbestos paint; anyhow it's heat resistant. And underneath it, more laminated wood. I wonder what the fuel is.' He left the turbine, began walking all around the craft. 'I smell oil,' he said. 'I guess it could burn oil. The late twentieth century turbines and diesel engines all burned low-grade oil, so that's not too impossible.'
'Did you notice anything peculiar about the man piloting this ship ?' Woodbine said.
'No,' Stanley said. 'We were too far off. I could just barely make him out.'
Woodbine said, thoughtfully, 'He was hunched. I noticed it when he ran. He loped along decidedly bent over.'
9
Late at night, Tito Cravelli sat in his conapt, before a genuine fire, sipping Scotch and milk and reading over the written report which his contact at Terran Development had a little earlier in the evening submitted to him.
Softly, his tape deck played one of the cloud chamber pieces by the great mid-twentieth century composer, Harry Parch. The instrument, called by Parch 'the spoils of war', consisted of cloud chambers, a rasper, a modernized musical saw, and artillery shell casings suspended so as to resonate, each at a different frequency. And, as a ground bass accompanying the spoils of war instrument, one of Parch's hollow bamboo marimba-like inventions tapped out an intricate rhythm. It was a piece very popular these days with the public.
But Cravelli was not listening. His attention was fixed on the report of TD's activities.
The old man, Leon Turpin himself, had crossed over via the defective Jiffi-scuttler, along with various company personnel and media people. Turpin had managed to shake the reporters off and had made a sortie by jet-hopper. Something had been found on that sortie and had been carefully brought back to TD; it was now in their labs being examined. Cravelli's contact did not know precisely what it was.
However, one fact was clear. The object brought, back was an artifact. It was manmade.
Apparently Jim Briskin went off half-cocked, Cravelli said to himself. We're going to emigrate -
compel the bibs to emigrate - into a region already occupied. Too bad Jim didn't think of that.
Too bad I didn't think of it, for that matter.
We were fooled, it appeared, by the initial visual impression of the place. It seemed deserted, seemed susceptible to immigration.
Well, it can't be helped now, he realized. Jim made his speech; we're committed. We'll have to go on, hoping that we can still pull it off anyhow. But damn it, he thought. If only we had waited one more day!
Maybe we can kill them off, he thought. Maybe they'll catch some plague from us, die like flies.
He hated himself for having such thoughts. But there it was, clear in his mind. We need the room so badly, he realized. We've got to have it, no matter what. No matter how we have to go about it.
But will Jim agree ? He's so damn soft-hearted.
He's got to agree, Cravelli said to himself. Or it's the end -politically, for us, and in every way for the bibs.
While he was rereading the rather meager report, his door number was all at once tapped out; someone stood at the entrance to the conapt building, wanting permission to enter and visit him.
Cravelli put the report away and crossed the room to the audio-video circuit which connected his apt with the front door.
'Who is it ?' he said, guardedly. As always, he was somewhat wary of nocturnal visitors.
'It's me... Earl,' the speaker informed him. There was no video image, however; the man was standing deliberately out of range. 'Are you alone ?'
Instantly Cravelli said, 'Entirely.' He pressed the release button; fifteen stories below him the door automatically opened to admit Earl Bohegian, his contact at TD. 'You'll have to get by the doorman,' Cravelli told him. 'The key word for the building today is "potato." '
Several minutes later Bohegian, a dark, somber-looking man in his late fifties, entered the apartment. With a sigh, he seated himself facing Tito Cravelli. 'How about a beer ?' Cravelli asked him. 'You look tired.'
'Fine.' Bohegian nodded. 'I am tired. I just left TD; I came directly here. We're all on emergency double-shift. Frankly, I was lucky to get away at all; I told them I had a migraine headache and had to leave. So the company guards finally let me out.'
'What's up ?' Cravelli said, getting the beer from the refrigerator in the kitchen.
"The thing they hauled back here,' Earl Bohegian said. 'What I mentioned in my written report.
The artifact they've been going over it, and it's apparently the damnedest junk you ever heard of.
It's a vehicle of some kind; I finally managed to find that out by hanging around in the executives' washroom, drinking "Coke", and listening to stray colloquies. It's made out of wood, but it's not primitive. It's the turbine, though, that's really throwing the engineers on Level One.'
Gratefully, he accepted the beer and gulped at it. "It works by compressing gases. I'm not an engineer - you know that - so I can't help you out on technical details. But anyhow, by compressing gases it manages to freeze a trapped chamber of water. So help me, Cravelli, the rumor going around TD is that the damn thing is run by ...' He laughed. 'Excuse-me, but it's funny. It runs by expansion of the ice. The water freezes, expands as ice, and drives a piston upward with enormous force, then the ice is melted - all this happens extremely fast - and the gases expand again, which gives another thrust to the piston, driving it back down in the cylinder again. Ice! Did you ever hear of such a sources of power ?
'It's funnier than steam, is it ?' Cravelli said.
Laughing until tears filled his eyes, Bohegian nodded. 'Yes, a lot funnier than steam. Because it's so darn cumbersome. And so utterly ineffective. You should see it. It's incredibly complicated, especially in view of the meager thrust it ultimately manages to deliver. The vehicle coasts forward on runners, not wheels, and finally gets tip into the air, but just for a very few moments.
Then it glides back down. It's a kind of wooden rocketship with a sail. That's what they're building on the other side of the defective 'scuttler. That's their technology. What kind of a civilization is that ?' He finished his beer, set the glass down. "The story going around TD is that one of the better engineers got into it, cranked it up, literally, and manage to fly around the lab for fifteen or sixteen seconds, at a height of about four feet, approximately waist level.'