He checked the spelling of every doubtful word, worried about what he might have missed, and handed his efforts over to Barney French. She looked at him skeptically when he said he thought he had the answer, but she offered no comment. Even after he had handed in his solution he could not stop thinking about the problem. His obsession ended only when the time came to leave the main body of the station to work on the cleanup of the SM.
The smelter had been filled with air, and after the apprentices had stripped off their suits each one of them was assigned a section of the inner wall to scrape clean.
“Good enough to see your face in every bit,” Barney French announced. “Until it’s like that, you’re not finished. It’s possible, because it’s been done before. The last group of apprentices managed the whole thing in two days.”
She might have meant to encourage, but after four hours of unpleasant work her words had the opposite effect. Every apprentice was filthy, covered by a layer of metallic ash and gritty powder. It was in their eyes, ears, and hair, and when they paused for a meal break they could feel it grinding between their teeth. Rick, looking at the section assigned to him, realized that he had done no more than five percent of the work. At this rate he would be at it for weeks.
When the work first started the apprentices had been cheerful and talkative. During the second four-hour stint they were all looking at their neighbors, wondering if someone else had been given an easier or a smaller section to work on. Not one of them could see any hope of finishing the job in two days.
Finally Barney told them it was time to quit. She was still cheerful—and clean. She had kept her suit on, and ash and grit did not stick to it. Exposed skin was another matter. The grime that went on so easily was the very devil to get off. Rick, after half an hour of effort, still went to bed with matted hair and the taste of metallic oxides in his mouth.
The next morning he returned to the main hall, reluctantly ready to go back to work. He was a little surprised to see Polly Quint already there and standing next to Barney French. Polly was a notorious sluggard, usually the last to arrive at any event beginning before noon. She was grinning all over her face.
That should have been enough to make Rick suspicious. Polly should be anything but pleased with the labor ahead—labor enough to bring a swarm of civil liberties’ lawyers if you forced convicted murderers to do it back on Earth.
Barney waited until everyone was there, then took Polly’s hand and raised it above her head.
“The winner—and the only one. You ought to give her three cheers.”
And, when that was greeted with baffled silence, “The only one to win what and do what, you ask? The only person to use her brains. Did you enjoy yesterday’s work? No, I’ll bet you didn’t, not unless there’s something wrong with you. But it wasn’t enough to make you think. What’s the most important quality in this phase of your training?”
“Initiative.” The muttered word came from everyone in the group.
“Exactly. Initiative. I’ll let you get away with a lot of other things if you show enough of that. Polly, tell them what you did last night.”
Polly gave Barney French an imploring “Do I have to?” look, but was offered no way out. She shrugged.
“Like everybody else, I spent two hours trying to remove grit from my hair. After that I went to the data banks, and I made an inquiry. We know that the interior of the SM can be heated, because it is able to smelt ore bodies. We also know that it can be filled with air, because we were there all day yesterday. I asked for the maximum temperature that the inside of the SM can be taken to when it’s filled with air—or oxygen—without damaging any part of the structure or the instruments. The answer is, over four thousand degrees. That would be enough to oxidize all the junk on the inside walls, and turn it to gas. Then if you opened up the end of the SM, which we know you can, all the cruddy gas would blow out into space. You’d have a perfectly clean interior. And one person could do the whole job—without even breaking a nail. That’s when I went and asked Barney French if what I was thinking of was forbidden, for some reason I did not understand. And it isn’t.”
It had been dawning on the rest of them, sentence by sentence, that they had been granted a reprieve. Weeks of horrible grimy labor was about to vanish, puffed into space in a cloud of metallic and silicon oxides. What Polly received was not exactly three cheers, but it was lots of whistles, waving arms, and “Yay, Polly.”
“Thanks, you beauty,” Chick Teazle shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’ll love you forever.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she called back. “They say you can’t last thirty seconds.”
His reply was lost in jeers and catcalls.
“All right.” Barney clapped her hands. “Anybody have a question for Polly?”
“How did you come up with the idea so quick?” called Goggles Landau.
“You ought to ask, what took me so long?” Polly grimaced in self-disgust. “As soon as I could walk and talk, my stepmother had me helping her in the shelter kitchen. I’ve known how to use a self-cleaning oven since I was six. It didn’t take much brains to apply the same idea to the smelter.”
“But you were the only one who did it,” Barney said. “Take credit from me when you can get it—I’m not that way inclined. For the rest of you. since there’s no more scraping to be done you are all dismissed for the rest of the morning. Polly will direct the superheated cleanout of the smelter later today, and you will all help. Meet at the main lock at two, in your suits. Until then your time is your own.”
The apprentices dispersed in a good humor. Thanks to Polly they were off the hook from days or weeks of pointless labor. In Rick’s case the satisfaction lasted only a few minutes. The true situation hit him when he reached his cabin, and found waiting there his solution of the spinning hoop problem along with Barney French’s comments.
This is really rather good, she had written on his answer—extravagant praise by Barney’s standards. No one else in the group has managed a solution, and from what I have seen so far I suspect that no one else will. Yon are still hindered by your lack of mathematics, but that will come with perseverance. You are not a born mathematician, like Henrik Voelker, but I’m rather glad you’re not—if you were you’ll have been grabbed by the central office—
Henrik? The Carolina Kid. The central office? It occurred to Rick for the first time that there might be other paths to success in Vanguard Mining. Henrik had flunked the training course, back on CM-2. Rick had felt sorry for him, because he was an OK type but such a goofball. Apparently he was still with the company, performing a different job. The East Coasters who said that Henrik was a mad genius must have been right after all.
—but there are more important things than mathematical talent if you want to be a good mining engineer. Remember, the purpose of mathematical calculation in the physical sciences is not numbers, it is insight. Your discussion of this question displays both insight and ingenuity.
If Rick had received that note earlier in the day, he would have been ecstatic. Now, though, he had to compare what he had done with Polly’s achievement.
It was no contest. His problem had been explicitly stated and identified. Its solution had to be in a hundred data banks and a thousand textbooks. But Polly had taken a real-world situation, identified it as a problem without being told it was a problem, and produced a real-world solution.
No wonder that she had received applause and praise.
And if achievement counted for anything, she was now far ahead of the rest—including Rick—as a candidate for the fabulous expedition to the Jovian moons.