The Ethical Engineer (12 page)

"I do not want to, Jason. I am afraid that you will soil me with your
touch, as you have others."

"Well you're not so clean now—"

"I do not mean physically."

"Well I do. You could certainly do with a bath and a deep shampoo. I'm
not worried about the state of your soul, you can battle that out on
your own time. But if you work with me I'll find a way to get us out
of this place and to the city that made this engine, because if there
is a way off this planet we'll find it only in the city."

"I know that, yet I still hesitate—"

"Small sacrifices now for the greater good later. Isn't the entire
purpose of this trip to get me back to justice? You're not going to
accomplish that by rotting out the rest of your life as a slave."

"You are the devil's advocate the way you twist my conscience—yet
what you say is true. I will help you here so that we can escape."

"Fine. Now get to work. Take Narsisi and have him round up at least
three good-sized poles, the kind we were chained to in the pumping
gang. Bring them back here along with a couple of shovels."

Slaves carried the poles only as far as the outside of the skin walls,
since Edipon would not admit them inside, and it was up to Jason and
Mikah to drag them laboriously to the site. The D'zertanoj, who never
did physical labor, thought it was very funny when Jason suggested
that they help. Once in position by the engine, Jason dug channels
beneath it and forced the bars under. When this was done he took turns
with Mikah in digging out the sand beneath until the engine stood over
a pit supported only by the bars. Jason let himself down and examined
the bottom of the machine. It was smooth and featureless.

Once more he scratched away the paint with careful precision, until it
was cleared around the edges. Here the solid metal gave way to solder
and he picked at this until he discovered that a piece of sheet metal
had been soldered at the edges and fastened to the bedplate. "Very
tricky, these Appsalanoj," he chortled and attacked the solder with a
knife blade. When one end was loose he slowly pulled the sheet of
metal away, making positive that there was nothing attached to it, nor
that it had been booby-trapped in any way. It came off easily enough
and clanged down into the pit. The revealed surface was smooth metal,
featureless and hard.

"Enough for one day," Jason said, climbing out of the pit and brushing
off his hands. It was almost dark. "We've accomplished enough for now
and I want to think a bit before I go ahead. So far luck has been on
our side, but I don't think it should be this easy. I hope you brought
your suitcase with you, Mikah, because you're moving in with me."

"Never! A sink of sin, depravity—"

Jason looked him coldly in the eye and with each word he spoke he
stabbed him in the chest with his finger to drive home the point. "You
are moving in with me because that is essential to our plans. And if
you stop referring to my moral weaknesses I'll stop talking about
yours. Now come on."

Living with Mikah Samon was trying, but barely possible. He made Ijale
and Jason go to the far wall and turn their backs and promise not to
look while he bathed behind a screen of skins. Jason did this but
exacted a small revenge by telling Ijale jokes so that they tittered
together and Mikah would be sure they were laughing at him. The screen
of skins remained after the bath, and was reinforced, and Mikah
retired behind it to sleep. Their food still consisted only of
krenoj
and Jason shuddered while he admitted that he was actually
growing used to them.

The following morning, under the frightened gaze of his guards, Jason
tackled the underside of the baseplate. He had been thinking about it
a good part of the night and he put his theories to the test at once.
By pressing hard on a knife he could make a good groove in the metal.
It was not as soft as the solder, but seemed to be some simple alloy
containing a good percentage of lead. What could it be concealing?
Probing carefully with the point of the knife he covered the bottom in
a regular pattern. The depth of the metal was uniformly deep except in
two spots where he found irregularities, they were on the midline of
the rectangular base, and equidistant from the ends and sides. Picking
and scraping he uncovered two familiar looking shapes each as big as
his head.

"Mikah. Get down in this hole and look at these things. Tell me what
you think they are."

Mikah scratched his beard. "They're still covered with this metal, I
can't be sure—"

"I'm not asking you to be sure of anything—just tell me what they
make you think of."

"Why ... big nuts of course. Threaded on the ends of bolts. But they
are so big—"

"They would have to be if they hold the entire metal case on. I think
we are getting very close now to the mystery of how to open the
engine—and this is the time to be careful. I still can't believe it
is as easy as this to crack the secret. I'm going to whittle a wooden
template of the nut, then have a wrench made. While I'm gone you stay
down here and pick all the metal off the bolt and out of the screw
threads. I can put off doing it while we think this thing through, but
sooner or later I'm going to have to take a stab at turning one of
those nuts. And I find it very hard to forget about that mustard gas."

Making the wrench put a small strain on the local technology and all
of the old men who enjoyed the title of Masters of the Still went into
consultation over it. One of them was a fair blacksmith and after a
ritual sacrifice and a round of prayers he shoved a bar of iron into
the charcoal and Jason pumped the bellows until it glowed white hot.
With much hammering and cursing it was laboriously formed into a
sturdy open-end wrench with an offset head to get at the countersunk
nuts. Jason made sure that the opening was slightly undersized, then
took the untempered wrench to the work site and filed the jaws to an
exact fit. After being reheated and quenched in oil he had the tool
that he hoped would do the job.

Edipon must have been keeping track of the work progress because he
was waiting near the engine when Jason returned with the completed
wrench.

"I have been under," he announced, "and have seen the nuts that the
devilish Appsalanoj have concealed within solid metal. Who would have
suspected! It still seems to me impossible that one metal could be
hidden within another, how could that be done?"

"Easy enough. The base of the assembled engine was put into a form and
the molten covering metal poured into it. It must have a much lower
melting point than the steel of the engine so there would be no
damage. They just have a better knowledge of metal technology in the
city and counted on your ignorance."

"Ignorance! You insult—"

"I take it back. I just meant they thought they could get away with
the trick, and since they didn't they are the stupid ones. Does that
satisfy you?"

"What do you do next?"

"I take off the nuts and when I do there is a good chance that the
poison-hood will be released and can simply be lifted off."

"It is too dangerous for you to do, the fiends may still have other
traps ready when the nut is turned. I will send a strong slave to turn
them while we watch from a distance, his death will not matter."

"I'm touched by your concern for my health, but as much as I would
like to take advantage of the offer, I cannot. I've been over the same
ground and reached the reluctant conclusion that this is one job of
work that I have to do myself. Taking off those nuts looks entirely
too easy, and that's what makes me suspicious. I'm going to do it and
look out for any more trickery at the same time—and that is something
that only I can do. Now I suggest you withdraw with the troops to a
safer spot."

There was no hesitation about leaving, footsteps rustled quickly on
the sand and Jason was alone. The leather walls flapped slackly in the
wind and there was no other sound. Jason spat on his palms, controlled
a slight shiver and slid into the pit. The wrench fitted neatly over
the nut, he wrapped both hands around it and, bracing his leg against
the pit wall, began to pull.

And stopped. Three turns of thread on the bolt projected below the
nut, scraped clean of metal by the industrious Mikah. Something about
them looked very wrong but he didn't know quite what.

"Mikah," he shouted, and had to call loudly two more times before his
assistant poked his head tentatively around the screen. "Nip over to
the petroleum works and get me one of their bolts threaded with a nut,
any size, it doesn't matter."

Jason warmed his hands by the stove until Mikah returned with the oily
bolt, then waved him out to rejoin the others. Back in the pit he held
it up next to the protruding section of Appsalan bolt and chortled
with joy. The threads on the angle bolt were canted at a slightly
different angle: where one ran up, the other ran down. The Appsalan
threads had been cut in reverse, with a lefthand thread.

Throughout the galaxy there existed as many technical and cultural
differences as there were planets, yet one of the few things they all
had in common, inherited from their terrestrial ancestors, was a
uniformity of thread. Jason had never thought about it before, but
when he mentally ran through his experiences on different planets he
realized that they were all the same. Screws went into wood, bolts
went into threaded holes and nuts all went onto bolts when you turned
them with a clockwise motion. Counterclockwise removed them. In his
hand was the crude D'zertano nut and bolt, and when he tried it it
moved in the same manner. But the engine bolt did not work that
way—it had to be turned clockwise to
remove
it.

Dropping the nut and bolt he placed the wrench on the massive engine
bolt and slowly applied pressure in what felt like the completely
wrong direction, as if he were tightening not loosening. It gave
slowly, first a quarter then a half turn. And bit by bit the
projection threads vanished until they were level with the surface of
the nut. It turned easily now and within a minute it fell into the
pit—he threw the wrench after it and scrambled out. Standing at the
edge he carefully sniffed the air, ready to run at the slightest smell
of gas. There was nothing.

The second nut came off as easily as the first and with no ill
effects. Jason pushed a sharp chisel between the upper case and the
baseplate where he had removed the solder, and when he leaned on it
the case shifted slightly, held down only by its own weight.

From the entrance to the enclosure he shouted to the group huddled in
the distance. "Come on back—this job is almost finished."

They all took turns at sliding into the pit and looking at the
projecting bolts and made appreciative sounds when Jason leaned on the
chisel and showed how the case was free.

"There is still the little matter of taking it off," he told them,
"and I'm sure that grabbing and heaving is the wrong way. That was my
first idea too, but the people who assembled that thing had some bad
trouble in store for anyone who tightened those nuts instead of
loosening them. Until we find out what that is we are going to tread
very lightly. Do you have any big blocks of ice around here, Edipon?
It is winter now, isn't it?"

"Ice? Winter?" Edipon mumbled, caught off guard by the change of
direction, rubbing abstractedly at the reddened tip of his prominent
nose. "Of course it is winter. Ice, there must be ice at the higher
lakes in the mountain, they are always frozen at this time of the
year. But what do you want ice for?"

"You get it and I'll show you. Have it cut in nice flat blocks that I
can stack. I'm not going to lift the hood—I'm going to drop the
engine out from underneath it!"

By the time the slaves had brought the ice down from the distant lakes
Jason had rigged a strong wooden frame flat on the ground around the
engine and pushed sharpened metal wedges under the hood, then had
secured the wedges to the frame. Now, if the engine was lowered into
the pit, the hood would stay above supported by the wedges. The ice
would take care of this. Jason built a foundation of ice under the
engine then slipped out the supporting bars. Now as the ice slowly
melted the engine would be gently lowered into the pit.

The weather remained cold and the ice refused to melt until Jason had
the pit ringed with smoking oil stoves. Water began to run down into
the pit and Mikah went to work bailing it out, while the gap between
the hood and the baseplate widened. The melting continued for the rest
of the day and almost all of the night. Red-eyed and exhausted Jason
and Mikah supervised the soggy sinking and when the D'zertanoj
returned at dawn the engine rested safely in a pool of mud on the
bottom of the pit: the hood was off.

"They're tricky devils over there in Appsala, but Jason dinAlt wasn't
born yesterday," he exulted. "Do you see that crock sitting there on
top of the engine," he pointed to a sealed container of thick glass
the size of a small barrel, filled with an oily greenish liquid; it
was clamped down tightly with padded supports. "That's the booby trap.
The nuts I took off were on the threaded ends of two bars that held
the hood on, but instead of being fastened directly to the hood they
were connected by a crossbar that rested on top of that jug. If either
nut was tightened instead of being loosened, the bar would have bent
and broken the glass. I'll give you exactly one guess as to what would
have happened then."

"The poison liquid!"

"None other. And the double-walled hood is filled with it, too. I
suggest that as soon as we have dug a deep hole in the desert the hood
and container be buried and forgotten about. I doubt if the engine has
many other surprises in store, but I'll be careful as I work on it."