Part 2 (1/2)

Gene got up. He was too sick to argue. Ann looked at him sympathetically, noting his split lips. He managed a grin at her, ”If I never see you again, Ann, it's been nice knowing you, very nice.”

”I'll see you, Gene. They'll find us tougher than they bargained for.”

The engine room looked like some of the atomic power stations he'd seen.

Only smaller. There was no heavy concrete s.h.i.+elding, no lead walls.

There was s.h.i.+elding around the central pile, and Gene knew that inside it was the h.e.l.l of atomic chain reaction under the control of the big levers that moved the cadmium bars. There was a steam turbine at one end, and a huge boiler at the other. Gene didn't even try to guess how the pile activated the jets that drove the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p. Somehow it ”burned” the water.

This pile had been illegal from the first. Obviously some official had been bribed to permit the first use of it on a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Certainly no one who knew anything about the subject would have allowed human beings to work around a thing like this.

Gene's skin crawled and p.r.i.c.kled with the energies that saturated the room. Little sparks leaped here and there, off his fingertips, off his nose.

The Chief Engineer was on a metal platform above the machinery level.

The face had hair all over it, even on the eyelids. The eyes, popping weirdly, were double. They looked as if second eyes had started growing inside the original ones. They weren't reasonable; they weren't even sane. The look of them made Gene sick.

The Engineer shook his head back and forth to focus the awful, mutilated eyes. His voice was infinitely weary, strangely m.u.f.fled. ”Another sacrifice to Moloch, an's the pity! So they put you down here, as if there was anything to be done? Well, it'll be nice to work with someone who still has his b.u.t.tons--as long as they last. Sit down.”

Gene sat down and the metal chair gave him a shock that made him jump.

”I don't know anything about this kind of work.”

The man shrugged, ”Who does? The pile runs itself. Ain't enough of it moves to need much greasing. You ought to be able to find the grease cups--they're painted red. Fill them, wipe off the dust, and wait. Then do it over again.”

”What's the score on this bucket?”

”We're all signed on with a billy to the k.n.o.b. And _kept_ aboard by a guard system that's pretty near perfect. After awhile the emanations get to our brains and we don't care anymore. Then we're trusted employees.

Only reason I don't blow her loose, it wouldn't do any good.”

He got up, a fragile old body clad in dirty overalls. He beckoned Gene to follow him. He led the way to a periscope arrangement over the s.h.i.+elded pile. Gene peered in. It was like a look into boiling h.e.l.l. As Gene stared, the old man talked in his ear.

”Supposed to be perfectly s.h.i.+elded, and maybe they are. But _something_ gets out. I think it happens in the jet a.s.sembly. A tiny trickle of high pressure steam crosses the atomic beam just above a pinhole that leads into the jet tube. It's exploded by the beam, exploded into G.o.d knows what, and the result is your jet. It's a wonderful drive, with plenty of power for the purpose. But I think it forms a strong field of static over the whole sh.e.l.l of the s.h.i.+p, a kind of sphere of reflection that throws the emanations back into the s.h.i.+p from every point. Just my theory, but it explains why you get these physical changes, because that process of reflection gives a different ray than was observed in the ordinary s.h.i.+elded jet.”

Gene nodded, asked: ”Can I look at the jet a.s.sembly?”

”Ain't no way to look at it! It's sealed up to hold in the expanding gases from that exploded steam. Looking in this periscope is what changed my eyes. Only other place the uns.h.i.+elded emanations could escape is from the jet chamber. Only way they can get back into the s.h.i.+p is by reflection from some ionized layer around the s.h.i.+p. If I could talk to some of those big-brained birds that developed this drive, I'd sure have things to say.”

Gene was convinced the old man knew what he was talking about. ”Why don't you try to put your information where it'll do some good? How about the Captain?”

”He's coocoo.” The old man slapped the cover back on the periscope, tottered back to his perch on the platform. ”He sure has changed the last two years. Won't listen to reason.”

Gene squatted on the steps, just beneath the old engineer's chair. The old man seemed glad to have someone to talk to.

”It's got us trapped. And it's so well covered up from the people. Old s.p.a.cers are changed physically, changed mentally. They know they can't go back to normal life, because it's gone too far. They'd be freaks. No woman would want a monstrosity around. Besides, it don't stop, even after you leave the s.h.i.+ps. G.o.d knows what we'll look like in the end.”

Gene s.h.i.+vered. ”But you're all grown men! A fight with no chance of winning is better than this! Why do you take it?”

”Because the mind changes along with the body. It goes dead in some ways, gets more active in others. The personality s.h.i.+fts inside, until you're not sure of yourself, and can't make decisions any more. That's why n.o.body does anything. Something about those rays destroys the will.