Sixth Column (10 page)

"Transmutations from the top or the bottom of the periodic scale toward the

middle give off power; contrariwise, they absorb energy. Way back in the

middle of the last century they found out how to do the first sort; that's what

atom bombs are based on. But to handle transmutations for building

materials, you don't want to give off energy like an atom bomb or a power

pile. It would be embarrassing."

"I should think Sol"

"So I'll use the second sort, the energy-absorbing sort. As a matter of

fact I'll balance them. Take magnesium for instance. It lies between silicon

and oxygen. The binding energies involved-"

"Wilkie!"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Just assume that I never got through third grade. Now can you make

the materials you need, or can't you?"

"Oh, yes, sir, I can make them."

"Then how can I be of help to you?"

"Well, sir, it's the matter of putting the roof on and the size. You say a

thirty-foot over-all dimension is no good-"

"No good at all. Did you see the North American Exposition? Remember

the General Atomics Exhibit?"

"I've seen pictures of it."

"I want something as gaudy and impressive as that, only bigger. Now

why are you limited to thirty feet?"

"Well, sir, a panel six by thirty is the biggest I can squeeze out through

the door, allowing for the turn in the passage."

"Take 'em up through the scout-car lift."

"I thought of that. It will take a panel thirteen feet wide, which is good, but

the maximum length is then only twenty-seven feet. There's a corner to turn

between the hangar and the lift."

"Hmm-Look, can you weld with that magic gimmick? I thought you could

build the temple in sections, down below here, then assemble it above

ground?"

"That was the idea. Yes, I suppose we could weld walls as big as you

want. But look, major, how big a building do you want?"

"As big as you can manage."

"But how big do you want?"

Ardmore told him. Wilkie whistled. "I suppose it's possible to give you

walls that big, but I don't see any way to roof it over."

"Seems to me I've seen buildings with that much clear span."

"Yes, of course. You give me the services of construction engineers and

architects and heavy industry to build the trusses needed to take that span

and I'll build you as big a temple as you want. But Scheer and I can't do it

alone, even with pressors and tractors to do all the heavy work. I'm sorry, sir,

but I don't see an answer."

Ardmore stood up and put a hand on Wilkie's arm. "You mean you don't

see an answer yet. Don't get upset, Bob. I'll take whatever you build. But just

remember-This is going to be our first public display. A lot depends on it. We

can't expect to make much impression on our overlords with a hotdog stand.

Make it as big as you can. I'd like something about as impressive as the

Great Pyramid-but don't take that long to build it."

Wilkie looked worried. "I'll try, sir. I'll go back and think about it."

"Fine!"

When Wilkie had gone Ardmore turned to Thomas. "What do you think

about it, Jeff? Am I asking too much?"

"I was just wondering," Thomas said slowly, "why. you set so much store

by this temple?"

"Well, in the first place it gives a perfect cover up for the Citadel. If we

are going to do anything more than sit here and die of old age, the time will

come when a lot of people will have to be going in and out of here. We can't

keep the location secret under those circumstances so we will have to have a

reason, a cover up. People are always going in and out of a church buildingworship and so forth. I want to cover up the ànd so forth.' "

"I understand that. But a building with thirty-foot maximum dimensions

can cover up a secret stairway quite as well as the sort of convention-hall job

you are asking young Wilkie to throw up."

Ardmore squirmed. Damn it-couldn't anyone but himself see the value of

advertising? "Look, Jeff, this whole deal depends on making the right

impression at the start. If Columbus had come in asking for a dime, he would

have been thrown out of the palace on his ear. As it was, he got the crown

jewels. We've got to have an impressive front."

"I suppose so," Thomas answered without conviction.

Several days later Wilkie asked permission for Scheer and himself to go

outside. Finding that they did not intend to go far, Ardmore gave permission,

after impressing on them the need for extreme caution.

He encountered them some time later proceeding down the main

passage toward the laboratories. They had an enormous granite boulder.

Scheer was supporting it clear of walls and floor by means of tractors and

pressors generated by a portable Ledbetter projector strapped as a pack on

his shoulders. Wilkie had tied a line around the great chunk of rock and was

leading it as if it were a cow. "Great Scott!" said Ardmore. "What y' got

there?"

"Uh, a piece of mountain, sir."

"So I see. But why?"

Wilkie looked mysterious. "Major, could you spare some time later in the

day? We might have something to show you."

"If you won't talk, you won't talk. Very well."

Wilkie phoned him later, much later, asked him to come and suggested

that Thomas come, too. When they arrived in the designated shop room

everyone was present except Calhoun. Wilkie greeted them and said, "With

your permission, we'll start, Major."

"Don't be so formal. Aren't you going to wait for Colonel Calhoun?"

"I invited him, but he declined."

"Go ahead then."

"Yes, sir." Wilkie turned to the rest. "This piece of granite represents the

mountain top above us. Go ahead, Scheer. "

Wilkie took position at a Ledbetter projector. Scheer was already at one;

it had been specially fitted with sights and some other gadgetry that Ardmore

could not identify. Scheer pressed a couple of studs; a pencil beam of light

sprang out.

Using it as if it were a saw he sliced the top off the boulder. Wilkie caught

the separated portion with a tractor-pressor combination and moved it aside.

He set his controls and it hung in air; where it had been the stone was flat

and of mirror polish. "That's the temple's base," said Wilkie.

Scheer continued carving with his pencil beam, trucking his projector

around as necessary. The flat top had now been squared off; the square was

the summit of a four-sided truncated pyramid. That done, he started carving

steps down one side of the figure. "That's enough, Scheer," Wilkie

commanded. "Let's make a wall. Prepare the surface."

Scheer did something with his projector. No beam could be seen, but the

flat upper surface turned black. "Carbon," announced Wilkie. "Industrial

diamonds probably. That's our work bench. O. K., Scheer. " Wilkie moved the

detached chunk back over the "bench"; Scheer carved off apiece; it turned

molten, dripped down on the flat surface, spread to the edges and stopped. It

now had a white metallic sheen. As it doled Scheer nipped each corner, then,

using one pressor as a vise to hold it firmly to the boulder and another as a

moving wedge, he turned each corner up. It was now a shallow, open box,

two feet square and an inch deep. Wilkie whisked it aside and hung it in air.

The process was repeated, but this time a single sheet rather than a box

was formed. Wilkie put it out of the way and put the box back on the

pedestal. "Let's stuff the turkey," announced Wilkie.

He transferred the chopped-off chunk back to a position over the open

box. Scheer carved off a piece and lowered it into the box, then played a

beam on it. It melted down and spread over the bottom. "Granite is practically

glass," lectured Wilkie, "and what we want is foamed glass, so we use no

transmutation in this step-except the least, little bit to make the gases to foam

it. Let's have a shot of nitrogen, Scheer." The master sergeant nodded and

irradiated the mess for a split second; it foamed up like boiling fudge, filling

the shallow box to the rim, and froze.

Wilkie snagged the simple sheet out of the air and caused it to hover

over the filled box, then to settle so that it lay, somewhat unevenly, as a

cover. "Iron it down, Scheer."

The sheet glowed red and settled in place, pressed flat by an invisible

hand. Scheer walked his projector around, welding the cover of the box to the

box proper. When he had finished Wilkie set the filled box up on edge at one

edge of the pedestal. Leaving the controls of his projector set to hold it there,

he walked over to the far side of the room where a tarpaulin covered a pile of

something on a benc h.

"To save your time and for practice we made four others earlier," he

explained and whipped off the tarpaulin. Disclosed were a stack of sandwich

panels exactly like that one just created. He did not touch them; instead

Scheer lifted them off by projector one at a time and built a cube, using the

newly made panel as the first face and the pedestal as the bottom of the

cube. Wilkie returned to his projector and held the structure rigid while

Scheer welded each seam. "Scheer is much more accurate than I am," he

explained. "I give him all the tough parts. O. K., Scheer-how about a door?"

"How big?" grunted the sergeant, speaking for the first time.

"Use your judgment. Eight inches high would be all right."

Scheer grunted again and carved a rectangular opening in the side

facing the slope on which he had begun earlier to carve steps. When he

finished Wilkie announced, "There's your temple, boss."

No human hand had touched the boulder nor anything made from it, from

start to finish.

The applause sounded like considerably more than five people. Wilkie

turned pink; Scheer worked his jaw muscles: They crowded around it. "Is it

`hot'?" inquired Brooks.

"No," answered Mitsui, "I touched it."

"I didn't mean that."

"No, it's not `hot'," Wilkie reassured him, "not with the Ledbetter process.

Stable isotopes, all of them."

Ardmore straightened up from a close inspection. "I take it you intend to

do the whole thing outdoors?"

"Is that all right, Major? Of course we could work down below and

assemble it up above, from small panels-but I'm sure that would take just as

long as to work from scratch with big panels. And I'm not sure about

assembling the roof from small units. Sandwich panels like these are the

lightest, strongest, stiffest structure we can use. It was the problem of that big

roof span you want that caused us to work out this system."

"Do it your way. I'm sure you know what you're doing. "

"Of course," admitted Wilkie, "we can't finish it in this short a time. This is

just the shell. I don't know how long it will take to dress it up."

"Dress it up?" inquired Graham. "When you've got a fine, great simple

shape why belittle it with decoration? The cube is one of the purest and most

beautiful shapes possible. "

"I agree with Graham," Ardmore commented. "That's your temple, right

there. Nothing makes a more effective display than great, unbroken masses.

When you've got something simple and effective, don't louse it up."

Wilkie shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I thought you wanted something

fancy."

"This is fancy. But see here, Bob, one thing puzzles me. Mind you, I'm

not criticizing-I'd as soon think of criticizing the Days of Creation-but tell me

this: why did you take a chance on going outside? Why didn't you just go into

one of the unoccupied rooms, peel off the wall coating and use that magic

knife to carve a chunk of granite right out of the heart of the mountain?"

Wilkie looked thunderstruck. "I never thought of that. "

CHAPTER FIVE

A patrol helicopter cruised slowly south from Denver. The PanAsian

lieutenant commanding it consulted a recently constructed aerial mosaic map

and indicated to the pilot that he was to hover. Yes, there it was, a great

cubical building rising from the shoulder of a mountain. It had been picked up

by the cartographical survey of the Heavenly Emperor's new Western Realm

and he had been sent to investigate.

The lieutenant regarded the job as a simple routine matter. Although the

building did not appear in the records of the administrative district in which it

was located there was nothing surprising in that. The newly conquered

territory was enormous in extent, the aborigines, with their loose

undisciplined ways-so characteristic of all the inferior races-kept no proper

records of anything. It might be years before everything in this wild new

country was properly indexed and cross-filed, particularly as this pale anemic

people was almost childishly resistant to the benefits of civilization.

Yes, it would be a long job, perhaps longer than the Amalgamation of

India. He sighed to himself. He had received a letter that morning from his

principal wife informing him that his second wife had presented him with a

man-child. Should he request that he be reclassified as a permanent colonist

in order that his family might join him here, or should he pray for leave, long

overdue?

Those were no thoughts for a man on the Heavenly Emperor's duty! He