Chapter II

Gimp Hines put the finishing touches on the first full-scale ionic during that next week. The others of the Bunch, each working when he could, completed cementing the segments of the first bubb together.

On a Sunday morning they carried the bubb out into the yard behind the store and test inflated the thirty-foot ring by means of a line of hose from the compressor in the shop. Soapsuds dabbed along the seams revealed a few leaks by its bubbling. These were fixed up.

By late afternoon the Bunch had folded up the bubb again, and were simulating its practice launching from a ground-to-orbit rocket--as well as can be done on the ground with a device intended only for use in a state of weightlessness, when the operators are supposed to be weightless, too. The impossibility of establishing such conditions produced some ludicrous results:

The two Kuzaks diving with a vigor, as if from a rocket airlock, hitting the dirt with a thud, scrambling up, opening and spreading the great bundle, attaching the air hose. Little Lester hopping in to help fit wire rigging, most of it still imaginary. A friendly dog coming over to sniff, with a look of mild wonder in his eyes.

“Laugh, you leather-heads!” Art Kuzak roared at the others. He grinned, wiping his muddy face. “We’ve got to learn, don’t we? Only, it’s like make-believe. Hell, I haven’t played make-believe since I was four! But if we keep doing it here, all the kids and townspeople will be peeking over the fence to see how nuts we’ve gone.”

This was soon literally true. In some embarrassment, the Bunch rolled up their bubb and lugged it into the shop.

“I can borrow a construction compressor unit on a truck,” Two-and-Two offered. “And there’s a farm I know...”

A great roll of stellene tubing, to have a six-feet six-inch inside diameter when inflated, was delivered on Monday. Enough for three bubbs. The Archer Fives were expected to be somewhat delayed, due to massive ordering. But small boxes of parts and raw stock for the ionics had begun to arrive, too. Capacitors, resistors, thermocouple units. Magnesium rods for Storey or Ramos or the Kuzaks to shape in a lathe. Sheet aluminum to be spun and curved and polished. With Eileen Sands helping, Gimp Hines would do most of that.

So the real work began. Nobody in the Bunch denied that it was a grind. For most, there were those tough courses at Tech. And a job, for money, for sustenance. And the time that must be spent working for--Destiny. Sleep was least important--a few hours, long after midnight, usually.

Frank Nelsen figured that he had it relatively easy--almost as easy as the Kuzak twins, who, during football season, were under strict orders to get their proper sack time. He worked at Hendricks’--old Paul didn’t mind his combining the job with his labors of aspiration. Ramos, the night-mechanic, Tiflin, the car-washer, and Two-and-Two Baines, the part-time bricklayer, didn’t have it so easy. Eileen, a first-rate legal typist employed for several hours a day by a partnership of lawyers, could usually work from notes, at the place where she lived.

Two-and-Two would lift a big hand facetiously, when he came into the shop. Blinking and squinting, he would wiggle his fingers. “I can still see ‘em--to count!” he would moan. “Thanks, all you good people, for coaching me in my math.”

“Think nothing of it,” Charlie Reynolds or David Lester, or most any of the others, would tell him. Two-and-Two hadn’t come near Frank Nelsen very much, during the last few days, though Frank had tried to be friendly.

Lester was the only one without an activity to support himself. But he was at the shop every weekday, six to ten p.m., cementing stellene with meticulous care, while he muttered and dreamed.

The Bunch griped about courses, jobs, and the stubbornness of materials, but they made progress. They had built their first bubb and ionic. The others would be easier.

Early in November, Nelsen collected all available fresh capital, including a second thousand from Paul Hendricks and five hundred from Charlie Reynolds, and sent it in with new orders.

That about exhausted their own finances for a long time to come. Seven bubbs, minus most of even their simpler fittings, and five ionics, seemed as much as they could pay for, themselves. Charlie Reynolds hadn’t yet lined up a backer.

“We should have planned to outfit one guy completely,” Jig Hollins grumbled on a Sunday afternoon at the shop. “Then we could have drawn lots about who gets a chance to use the gear. That we goofed there is your fault, Reynolds. Or--your Grandpappy didn’t come through, huh?”

Charlie met Hollins’ sneering gaze for a moment. “Never mind the ‘Grandpappy’, Jig,” he said softly. “I knew that chances weren’t good, there. However, there are other prospects which I’m working on. I remember mentioning that it might take time. As for your other remarks, what good is equipping just one person? I thought that this was a project for all of us.”

“I’m with Charlie,” Joe Kuzak commented.

“Don’t fight, guys--we’ve got to figure on training, too,” Ramos laughed. “I’ve got the problem of an expensive training centrifuge about beat. Out at my old motor scooter club. Come on, Charlie--you, too, Jig--get your cars and let’s go! It’s only seven miles, and we all need a break.”

Paul Hendricks had gone for a walk. So Nelsen locked the shop, and they all tore off, out to the place, Ramos leading the way in his scooter. At the scooter club they found an ancient carnival device which used to be called a motordrome. It was a vertical wooden cylinder, like a huge, ironbound, straight sided cask, thirty feet high and wide, standing on its bottom.

Ramos let himself and the scooter through a massive, curved door--conforming to the curvature of the walls--at the base of the ‘drome.

“Secure the latch bar of this door from the outside, fellas,” he said. “Then go to the gallery around the top to watch.”

Ramos started riding his scooter in a tight circle around the bottom of the ‘drome. Increasing speed, he swung outward to the ramped juncture between floor and smooth, circular walls. Then, moving still faster, he was riding around the vertical walls, themselves, held there by centrifugal force. He climbed his vehicle to the very rim of the great cask, body out sideways, grinning and balancing, hands free, the squirrel tails flapping from his gaudily repainted old scooter.

“Come on, you characters!” he shouted through the noise and smoke. “You should try this, too! It’s good practice for the rough stuff to come, when we blast out! ... Hey, Eileen--you try it first--ride with me--then alone--when you get the hang of it!...”

This time she accepted. Soon she was riding by herself, smiling recklessly. Reynolds rode after that, then the Kuzaks. Like most of them, Frank Nelsen took the scooter up alone, from the start. He was a bit scared at first, but if you couldn’t do a relatively simple stunt like this, how could you get along in space? He became surer, then gleeful, even when the centrifugal force made his head giddy, pushed his buttocks hard against the scooter’s seat, and his insides down against his pelvis.

Storey, Hollins and Tiflin all accomplished it. Even Gimp Hines rode behind Ramos in some very wild gyrations, though he didn’t attempt to guide the scooter, himself.

Then it was David Lester’s turn. It was a foregone conclusion that he couldn’t take the scooter up, alone. Palefaced, he rode double. Ramos was careful this time. But on the downward curve before coming to rest, the change of direction made Lester grab Ramos’ arm at a critical instant. The scooter wavered, and they landed hard, even at reduced speed. Agile Ramos skipped clear, landing on his feet. Lester flopped heavily, and skidded across the bottom of the ‘drome.

When the guys got to him, he was covered with friction burns, and with blood from a scalp gash. Ramos, Storey and Frank worked on him to get him cleaned up and patched up. Part of the time he was sobbing bitterly, more from failure, it seemed, than from his physical hurt. By luck there didn’t seem to be any bones broken.

“Darn!” he choked in some infinite protest, beating the ground with his fists. “Damn--that’s the end of it for me... ! So soon ... Pop...”

“I’ll drive you to Doc Miller’s, Les,” Charlie Reynolds said briskly. “Then home. You other people better stay here...”

Charlie had a baffled, subdued look, when he returned an hour later. “I thought his mother would chew my ear, sure,” he said. “She didn’t. She was just polite. That was worse. She’s small--not much color. Of course she was scared, and mad clean through. Know her?”

“I guess we’ve all seen her around,” Nelsen answered. “Widow. Les was in one of my classes during my first high school year. He was a senior, then. They haven’t been in Jarviston more than a few years. I never heard where they came from...”

Warily, back at the shop, the Bunch told Paul what had happened.

For once his pale eyes flashed. “You Bright Boys,” he said. “Especially you, Ramos... ! Well, I’m most to blame. I let him hang around, because he was so doggone interested. And driven--somehow. Lucky nothing too bad happened. Last August, when you romantics got serious about space, I made him prove he was over twenty-one...”

They sweated it out, expecting ear-burning phone calls, maybe legal suits. Nothing happened. Nelsen felt relieved that Lester was gone. One dangerous link in a chain was removed. Contempt boosted his own arrogant pride of accomplishment. Then pity came, and anger for the sneers of Jig Hollins. Then regret for a fallen associate.

The dozen Archers were delivered--there would be a spare, now. The Bunch continued building equipment, they worked out in the motordrome, they drilled at donning their armor and at inflating and rigging a bubb. Gimp Hines exercised with fierce, perspiring doggedness on a horizontal bar he had rigged in the back of the shop. He meant to compensate for his bad leg by improving his shoulder muscles.

Most of the guys still figured that Charlie Reynolds would solve their money problem. But in late November he had a bad moment. Out in front of Hendricks’, he looked at his trim automobile. “It’s a cinch I can’t use it Out There,” he chuckled ruefully and unprompted. Then he brightened. “Nope--selling it wouldn’t bring one tenth enough, anyhow. I’ll get what we need--just got to keep trying ... I don’t know why, but some so-called experts are saying that off-the-Earth enterprises have been overextended. That makes finding a backer a bit tougher than I thought.”

“You ought to just take off on your own, Reynolds,” Jig Hollins suggested airily. “I’ll bet it’s in your mind. The car would pay for that. Or since you’re a full-fledged nuclear engineer, some company on the Moon might give you a three year contract and send you out free in a comfortable vehicle. Or wouldn’t you like to be tied that long? I wouldn’t. Maybe I could afford to be an independent, too. Tough on these shoestring boys, here, but is it our fault?”

Hollins was trying to taunt Reynolds. “You’re tiresome, Jig,” Reynolds said without heat. “Somebody’s going to poke you sometime...”

Next morning, before going to classes at Tech, Frank Nelsen, with the possibility of bitter disappointment looming in his own mind, spotted Glen Tiflin, the switch blade tosser, standing on the corner, not quite opposite the First National Bank. Tiflin’s mouth was tight and his eyes were narrowed.

Nelsen felt a tingle in his nerves--very cold.

“Hi--what cooks, Tif?” he said mildly.

“To you it’s which?” Tiflin snapped.

Nelson led him on. “Sometimes I think of all the dough in that bank,” he said.

“Yeah,” Tiflin snarled softly. “That old coot, Charlie Reynolds’ grandpa, sitting by his vault door. Too obvious, though--here. Maybe in another bank--in another town. We could get the cash we need. Hell, though--be cavalier--it’s just a thought.”

“You damned fool!” Nelsen hissed slowly.

It was harder than ever to like Tiflin for anything at all. But he did have that terrible, star-reaching desperation. Nelsen had quite a bit of it, himself. He knew, now.

“Get up to Tech, Tif,” he said like an order. “If you have a chance, tell my math prof I might be a little late...”

That was how Frank Nelsen happened to face J. John Reynolds, who, in a question of progress, would still approve of galley slaves. Nelsen had heard jokes like that laughed about, around Jarviston. J. John, by reputation, was all hard business.

Nelsen got past his secretary.

“Young man--I hope you have something very special to say.”

There was a cold, amused challenge in the old man’s tone, and an implication of a moment of casual audience granted generously, amid mountains of more important affairs.

Nelsen didn’t waver. The impulse to do what he was doing had come too suddenly for nervousness to build up. He hadn’t planned what to say, but his arguments were part of himself.

“Mr. Reynolds--I’m Frank Nelsen, born here in Jarviston. Perhaps you know me on sight. I believe you are acquainted with Paul Hendricks, and you must have heard about our group, which is aiming at space, as people like ourselves are apt to be doing, these days. We’ve made fair progress, which proves we’re at least earnest, if not dedicated. But unless we wait and save for years, we’ve come about as far as we can, without a loan. Judging from the success of previous earnest groups, and the development of resources and industries beyond the Earth, we are sure that we could soon pay you back, with considerable interest.”

J. John Reynolds seemed to doze, hardly listening. But at the end his eyes opened, and sparks of anger--or acid humor--seemed to dance in them.

“I know very well what sort of poetic tomfoolery you are talking about, Nelsen,” he said. “I wondered how long it would be before one of you--other than my grandson with his undiluted brass, and knowing me far too well in one sense, anyway--would have the gall to come here and talk to me like this. You’d probably be considered a minor, too, in some states. Dealing with you, I could even get into trouble.”

Nelsen’s mouth tightened. “I came to make a proposition and get an answer,” he responded. “Thank you for your no. It helps clear the view.”

“Hold on, Nelsen,” J. John growled. “I don’t remember saying no. I said ‘gall,’ intending it to mean guts. That’s what young spacemen need, isn’t it? They’ve almost got to be young, so legal viewpoints about the age at which competence is reached are changing. Oh, there is plenty of brass among your generation. But it fails in peculiar places. I was waiting for one place where it didn’t fail. Charlie, my grandson, doesn’t count. It has never taken him any courage to talk to me any way he wants.”

This whole encounter was still dreamlike to Frank Nelsen.

“Then you are saying yes?”

“I might. Do you foolishly imagine that my soul is so completely sour milk that in youth I couldn’t feel the same drives that you feel, now, for the limited opportunity there was, then? But under some damnable pressure toward conformity, I took a desk job in a bank. I am now eighty-one years old ... How much does your ‘Bunch’ need--at minimum, mind you--for the opportunity to ride in space-armor till the rank smell of their bodies almost chokes them, for developing weird allergies or going murdering mad, but, in the main, doing their best, anyway, pathfinding and building, if they’ve got the guts? Come on, Nelsen--you must know.”

“Fifty thousand,” Frank answered quickly. “There are still eleven in our group.”

“Yes ... More may quit along the way ... Here is my proposition: I would make funds available for your expenses up to that amount--from my personal holdings, separate from this bank. The amount due from each individual shall be ten percent of whatever his gains or earnings are, off the Earth, over a period of ten years, but he will not be required to pay back any part of the original loan. This is a high-risk, high-potential profit arrangement for me--with an experimental element. I will ask for no written contract--only a verbal promise. I have found that people are fairly honest, and I know that, far in space, circumstances become too complicated to make legal collections very practical, anyway, even if I ever felt inclined to try them ... Now, if--after I see your friends, whom you will send to me for an interview and to give me their individual word, also, I decide to make my proposition effective--will you, yourself, promise to abide by these terms?”

Nelsen was wary for a second. “Yes--I promise,” he said.

“Good. I am glad you paused to think, Nelsen. I am not fabulously rich. But having more or less money hardly matters to me at this late date, so I am not likely to try to trap you. Yet there is still a game to play, and an outcome to watch--the future. Now get out of here before you become ridiculous by saying more than a casual thanks.”

“All right--thanks. Thank you, sir...”

Nelsen felt somewhat numb. But a faint, golden glow was increasing inside his mind.

Tiflin hadn’t gone up to Tech. He was still waiting on the street corner. “What the hell, Frank?” he said.

“I think we’ve got the loan, Tif. But he wants to see all of us. Can you go in there, be polite, say you’re a Bunch member, make a promise, and--above all--avoid blowing your top? Boy--if you queer this... !”

Tiflin’s mouth was open. “You kidding?”

“No!”

Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. “Okay, Frank. Be cavalier. Hell, I’d croak before I’d mess this up... !”

By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including Charlie Reynolds and Jig Hollins. Nelsen got the backslapping treatment.

Charlie sighed, rubbed his head, then grinned with immense relief. “That’s a load off,” he said. “Glad to have somebody else fix it. Congrats, Frank. I wonder if Otto has got any champagne to go with the hotdogs... ?”

Otto had a bottle--enough for a taste, all around. Eileen kissed Frank impulsively. “You ought to get real smart,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he answered. “Now let’s get some beer--more our speed.”

But none of them overdid the beer either...

Just after New Year’s they had eight bubbs completed, tested, folded carefully according to government manuals, and stowed in an attic they had rented over Otto’s place. They had seven ionics finished and stored. More parts and materials were arriving. The air-restorers were going to be the toughest and most expensive to make. They were the really vital things to a spaceman. Every detail had to be carefully fitted and assembled. The chlorophane contained costly catalytic agents.