Jack of No Trades Read online

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Amazing Stories August 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Jack Of No Trades

  By CHARLES COTTRELL

  _First we discovered the Willy Maloon category. Then we discovered Willy himself. Then we data-researched, and postulated a theory. Everything was easy, until it came to the question of proof._

 

  * * * * *

  This thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon underobservation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speedin order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At timeslike that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreetdistance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find outwhat he was up to.

  Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unitout of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words tothe effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. AndArchie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellowhe is.

  Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothingmore than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on thehigh side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This wasso no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and getcurious. Tuning any of the vehicle receivers to that particulartransmitter frequency was a simple matter. Then he had taken thetransmitter out among the asteroids and hunted around until he hadfound one about two miles or thereabouts in diameter, only it couldn'tbe said to have a diameter because it was quite irregular in shape.But to Willy it must have been as fascinating as a jewel. So heplanted the homer on it so that he could find it again when he wantedto. Of course, he hadn't yet thought of a reason for wanting anasteroid, but he would. He usually found reasons for the strangethings he did.

  And he did. It must have been just after Ollie Hadaway lost control ofhis tug. It had been headed in the direction of a rather largeasteroid. Ollie had tried to unjumble the steering jets, but hecouldn't, so he bailed out and was picked up a little later. The tugwent on and shattered on the surface of the asteroid. Then later,Willy, at my directions, investigated the accident, examined the tug,and wrote up an accident report on it. And the inspection part of itmust have gone something like this:

  When Willy arrived to examine the shattered tug on the surface of theasteroid, he must have been pleasantly surprised to note that the hullwas a battered mess, but miraculously some of the innards were intact.He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escapeddestruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorseof a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or neededin a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, thiswas a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use needplenty of power.

  And that must have been when Willy decided on a reason for having hisown private asteroid. He would add the drive unit to it and make itmobile. He must have sparkled with the idea for the rest of the day. Irecall his accident report saying the tug was a total loss. Of course,no one checked Willy's decision on that.

  * * * * *

  I also had Willy under observation the time he retrieved the driveunit and took it to his newly acquired privately owned (now) asteroid.The peculiar shape of the asteroid would lend itself to adaptation tomobility. So Willy blasted off the tip of the elongated end with someexplosives he had diverted from some other project, drilled it outwith some small charges, and fitted the drive unit in it, and anchoredit down. It had taken quite a while to do all that, but Willy hadinterminable patience once he started a project. The entire procedurewould seem impossible for one man, but bulk and weight were noproblems in space. And Willy constantly worked miracles.

  The question of what value a mobile asteroid would be among swarms ofnon-mobile asteroids way out in space where there was no place to gonever seemed to have entered Willy's mind.

  (Now when I speak of "night" and "day," I speak of those periods ofthe twenty-four hour clock set forth as working and non-workingperiods. The working part was the "day" part of the twenty-four hours,during which we all engaged in our contracted occupations. The rest ofthe time until the twenty-four hour period ended was considered"night." Naturally, among the asteroids there was no rising andsetting of the sun to help designate the passage of time. Thereference to night and day is a habit which persists with space men nomatter which part of the system they happen to be in.)

  A few days after Willy had finished installing the drive unit in hisasteroid, a small company speedster came to a near-halt at the outerfringes of our section of the asteroid belt. For the next eighty hoursit felt its way by radar through the belt, dodging and going aroundthe larger bodies, and slowing its speed whenever it became necessaryto shoulder its way through masses of smaller debris and dust.

  Finally it had our station in sight visually, and in a matter of hourslater, it was edging its sleek sixty feet of length into a side gantryattached to the station.

  Mr. Garfield Goil disembarked from the speedster with a smallretinue. He was greeted on the inside of the lock by Mr. Orrin, ourstation manager. As operations engineer-foreman, I was there withOrrin to greet Mr. Goil.

  Mr. Goil's presence had been expected for the past several days, butnot especially looked forward to. His status and stature with theExtraterrestrial Mining Company was well known to all of us, andcertainly respected. His volatile temperament was well known also; itcommanded our concern. And if ever Mr. Goil's temperament was to beput to a test, it was during one of his inspection visits. And thatwas what he had come for--his first to this station.

  As I remember, there had always been conjecture on whether Mr. Goil'stemperament was the result of his physical topography, or whether hisphysical topography had been altered by his temperament. In eithercase, Mr. Garfield Goil was representative of that only appellationinevitable to him because of his facial features and his name. And Mr.Goil was perpetually bitter and approached the world--any world--witha chip welded to his shoulder.

  * * * * *

  I tagged along as Orrin escorted Goil to his quarters and broke theseal on a bottle of bourbon he had been saving for this particularoccasion.

  It had been the wrong thing to do. Goil promptly informed Orrin thatnot only was he (Goil) a teetotaler, but also that he was opposed todrinking by anyone else, especially by company employees during dutyhours, and in a place other than an authorized area such as therecreation room or the station bar. He told him further that he wouldnot condone such practices while he was around; his immediate job wasto inspect operations personally. His accompanying teams would digdeeply into other matters such as personnel, supplies, overalloperations efficiency, and so on. Work would begin as soon aspossible.

  Goil then excused himself coldly and left for the VIP quarters.

  Point number one for the opposition, I thought. Why hadn't someonewarned us about the peculiarities of the man?

  I hoped nothing would go wrong with the inspection. If things wentwell, Goil and his cohorts could get their business over with and getaway from here that much faster. I was more than a little concernedabout Willy and what he was doing.

  Willy had spent two days, mostly off-duty time, visiting and workingon the asteroid he had adopted, his two miles of irregularmonstrosity. In his spurt of activity to install the drive unit, hehad over-calculat
ed a charge of explosives and blown out too much ofthe end section of the asteroid. That caused him some concern for alittle while. In a flash of what he probably considered to be puregenius, he solved that minor problem by deciding to fill in the holeby installing a sub-space energizer. This first flash of genius wasapparently followed by another inspirational flash. He could, withboth installations, and some additional work, send the thing back toEarth. He must have been proud of the thought, for private satellitesaround Earth were all the rage now; no one who was Anyone was withoutone. Besides that, it would make a wonderful birthday present for hiswife. Her birthday was only a matter of days away.

  * * * * *

  Goil's first request was to observe a day's operation. I had made whatfew arrangements were necessary, and Goil and I started out early sowe could get into position and see the operations from the start.

  We had one of the observation flitters. I took it about twentythousand miles out from the area of