Part 9 (2/2)

Surprisingly, it was Mike the midget who said warmly, ”You got it! Yes, sir, you got it!”

The Chief took a deep breath. ”Yeah! And d'you know how I know? The Plant built a high-speed centrifuge once. Remember?” He grinned with the triumph Joe concealed. ”It was just a plate with a shaft in the middle.

There were vanes on the plate. It fitted in a shaft hole that was much too big. They blew compressed air up the shaft hole. It floated the plate up, the air hit the vanes and spun the plate--and it ran as sweet as honey! Balanced itself and didn't wobble a bit! We'll do something like that! Sure!”

”Will you work on it with me?” asked Joe. ”We'll need a sort of crew--three or four altogether. Have to figure out the stuff we need. I can ask for anybody I want. I'm asking for you. You pick the others.”

The Chief grinned broadly. ”Any objections, Haney? You and Mike and me and Joe here? Look!”

He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. He started to draw on the plastic table top, and then took a paper napkin instead.

”Something like this----”

The steaks came, sizzling on the platters they'd been cooked in. The outside was seared, and the inside was hot and deliciously rare.

Intellectual exercises like the designing of a machine-tool operation could not compete with such aromas and sights and sounds. The four of them fell to.

But they talked as they ate. Absorbed and often with their mouths full, frequently with imperfect articulation, but with deepening satisfaction as the steaks vanished and the method they'd use took form in their minds. It wouldn't be wholly simple, of course. When the rotors were spinning about their centers of gravity, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g off the shaft would change the center of gravity. But the change would be infinitely less than tr.i.m.m.i.n.g off the rotors' rims. If they spun the rotors and used an abrasive on the high side of the shaft as it turned....

”Going to have precession!” warned Mike. ”Have to have a polis.h.i.+ng surface. Quarter turn behind the cutter. That'll hold it.”

Joe only remembered afterward to be astonished that Mike would know gyro theory. At the moment he merely swallowed quickly to get the words out.

”Right! And if we cut too far down we can plate the bearing up to thickness and cut it down again----”

”Plate it up with iridium,” said the Chief. He waved a steak knife.

”Man! This is gonna be fun! No tolerance you say, Joe?”

”No tolerance,” agreed Joe. ”Accurate within the limits of measurement.”

The Chief beamed. The Platform was a challenge to all of humanity. The pilot gyro was essential to the functioning of the Platform. To provide that necessity against impossible obstacles was a challenge to the four who were undertaking it.

”Some fun!” repeated the Chief, blissfully.

They ate their steaks, talking. They consumed huge slabs of apple pie with preposterous mounds of ice cream on top, still talking urgently.

They drank coffee, interrupting each other to draw diagrams. They used up all the paper napkins, and were still at it when someone came heavily toward the table. It was the stocky man who had fought with Haney on the Platform that day. Braun.

He tapped Haney on the shoulder. The four at the table looked up.

”We hadda fight today,” said Braun in a queer voice. He was oddly pale.

”We didn't finish. You wanna finish?”

Haney growled.

”That was a fool business,” he said angrily. ”That ain't any place to fight, up on the job! You know it!”

”Yeah,” said Braun in the same odd voice. ”You wanna finish it now?”

<script>