Part 17 (1/2)
Joe went cold. Not for himself. For Sally.
”There's n.o.body else around,” said the Chief. ”Who'd they be waiting for but you two? Suppose they got a chance to kill you. They'd take the car keys. They'd drop your two bodies somewheres Gawdknowswhere. There'd be considerable of a hunt for you two. Major Holt would be upset plenty.
Security might get loosened up. There might be breaks for guys who wanted to do a little extra sabotage--besides maybe hamperin' the repairin' of the pilot gyros. Then they could try for Haney and Mike and me.”
Joe said coldly: ”I've got a pistol and so has Sally. Shall we take those pistols and go ask those three if they want to start something?”
The Chief snorted.
”Use sense! It's good you got the pistols, though. I snagged a twenty-two rifle from a shooting gallery. It was all I could get in a hurry. But go huntin' trouble? Fella, I want to see that Platform go up!
I'll take care of things now. Good layout here. They got to come across the open to get near. Don't say anything to Sally. But we'll keep our eyes open.”
Joe nodded. He carried the chilled, dripping bottles back to where Haney solemnly ate a sandwich, sitting crosslegged with his back to the lake and regarding the sh.o.r.e. The Chief dragged a .22 repeating rifle from inside his belt, where it had hung alongside his thigh. He casually strolled over to Mike and dropped the rifle.
”You said you felt like target practice,” he remarked blandly. ”Here's your armament. Any more sandwiches, ma'am?”
Sally smilingly pa.s.sed him the last. She left the top of the basket open. The pistol that had been there was gone. Then Sally's eyes met Joe's and she was aware that his three friends had not come here merely to crash a picnic. But she took it in stride. It was an additional reason for Joe to approve of Sally.
”Me,” said the Chief largely, ”I'm goin' to swim. I haven't had any more water around me than a shower bath for so long that I crave to soak and splash. I'll go yonder and dunk myself.”
He wandered off, taking bites from the sandwich as he went. He vanished.
Haney leaned back against a sapling, his eyes roving about the sh.o.r.eline and the rocks and brush behind it.
Mike was talking in his crackling, high-pitched voice.
”But just the same it's crazy! Fighting sabotage when we little guys could take over in a week and make sabotage just plain foolis.h.!.+ We could do the whole job while the saboteurs weren't looking!”
Sally said with interest: ”Have you got the figures? Were they ever pa.s.sed on?”
”I spent a month's pay once,” said Mike sardonically, ”hiring a math shark to go over them. He found one mistake. It raised the margin of what we could do!”
Sally answered: ”Joe! Listen to this! Mike says he has the real answer to sabotage, and, in a way, to s.p.a.ce travel! Listen!”
Joe dropped to the ground.
”Shoot it,” he said.
He was grimly alert, just the same. There were men waiting for them to start back to the car. These saboteurs were armed, and they intended to murder Sally and himself. Joe's jaws clamped tautly shut at the grim ideas that came into his mind.
But Mike was beginning to speak.
”Forget about the Platform a minute,” he said, standing up to gesticulate, because he was only three and a half feet high. ”Just figure on a rocket straight to the moon. With old-style rockets they'd a' had to have a ma.s.s ratio of a hundred and twenty to one. You'd have to burn a hundred and twenty tons of old-style fuel to land one ton on the moon. Now it could be done with sixty, and when the Platform's up, that figure'll drop again! Okay! You're gonna land a man on the moon. He weighs two hundred pounds. He uses up twenty pounds of food and drink and oxygen a day. Give him grub and air for two months--twelve hundred pounds. A cabin seven feet high and ten feet across. Sixteen hundred pounds, counting insulation an' braces for strength. That makes a pay load of a ton an' a half, and you'd have to burn a hundred an' eighty tons of fuel--old-style--to take it to the moon, and another hundred an'
twenty for every ton the rocket s.h.i.+p weighed. You might get a man to the moon with a twelve-hundred-ton rocket--maybe. That's with the old fuels.
He'd get there, an' he'd live two months, an' then he'd die for lack of air. With the new fuels you'd need ninety tons of fuel to carry the guy there, and sixty more for every ton the s.h.i.+p weighed itself. Call it six hundred tons for the rocket to carry one man to the moon.”
Sally nodded absorbedly.
”I've seen figures like that,” she agreed.
”But take a guy like me!” said Mike the midget bitterly. ”I weigh forty-five pounds, not two hundred! I use four pounds of food and air a day. A cabin for me to live in would be four feet high an' five across.