The Repairman Read online

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  The Repairman

  By HARRY HARRISON

  Illustrated by KRAMER

  Being an interstellar trouble shooter wouldn't be so bad ... if I could shoot the trouble!

  The Old Man had that look of intense glee on his face that meant someonewas in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great featof intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attackbeing the best defense and so forth.

  "I quit. Don't bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up,because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal companysecrets to me."

  The grin was even wider now and he actually chortled as he thumbed abutton on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the deliveryslot onto his desk.

  "This is your contract," he said. "It tells how and when you will work.A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn't crack with amolecular disruptor."

  I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a singlemotion. Before it could fall, I had my Solar out and, with a wide-angleshot, burned the contract to ashes.

  The Old Man pressed the button again and another contract slid out onhis desk. If possible, the smile was still wider now.

  "I should have said a _duplicate_ of your contract--like this one here."He made a quick note on his secretary plate. "I have deducted 13 creditsfrom your salary for the cost of the duplicate--as well as a 100-creditfine for firing a Solar inside a building."

  I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondledmy contract.

  "According to this document, you can't quit. Ever. Therefore I have alittle job I know you'll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauri beacon has shutdown. It's a Mark III beacon...."

  "_What_ kind of beacon?" I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beaconsfrom one arm of the Galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked onevery type or model made. But I had never heard of this kind.

  "Mark III," the Old Man repeated, practically chortling. "I never heardof it either until Records dug up the specs. They found them buried inthe back of their oldest warehouse. This was the earliest type of beaconever built--by Earth, no less. Considering its location on one of theProxima Centauri planets, it might very well be the first beacon."

  * * * * *

  I looked at the blueprints he handed me and felt my eyes glaze withhorror. "It's a monstrosity! It looks more like a distillery than abeacon--must be at least a few hundred meters high. I'm a repairman, notan archeologist. This pile of junk is over 2000 years old. Just forgetabout it and build a new one."

  The Old Man leaned over his desk, breathing into my face. "It would takea year to install a new beacon--besides being too expensive--and thisrelic is on one of the main routes. We have ships makingfifteen-light-year detours now."

  He leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and gave me LectureForty-four on Company Duty and My Troubles.

  "This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, when itreally should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are made tolast forever--or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down, it is_never_ an accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter of justplugging in a new part."

  He was telling _me_--the guy who did the job while he sat back on hisfat paycheck in an air-conditioned office.

  He rambled on. "How I wish that were all it took! I would have a fleetof parts ships and junior mechanics to install them. But its not likethat at all. I have a fleet of expensive ships that are equipped to doalmost anything--manned by a bunch of irresponsibles like _you_."

  I nodded moodily at his pointing finger.

  "How I wish I could fire you all! Combination space-jockeys, mechanics,engineers, soldiers, con-men and anything else it takes to do therepairs. I have to browbeat, bribe, blackmail and bulldoze you thugsinto doing a simple job. If you think you're fed up, just think how Ifeel. But the ships must go through! The beacons must operate!"

  I recognized this deathless line as the curtain speech and crawled to myfeet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching inhis papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled me onhis finger again.

  "And don't get any fancy ideas about jumping your contract. We canattach that bank account of yours on Algol II long before you could drawthe money out."

  I smiled, a little weakly, I'm afraid, as if I had never meant to keepthat account a secret. His spies were getting more efficient every day.Walking down the hall, I tried to figure a way to transfer the moneywithout his catching on--and knew at the same time he was figuring a wayto outfigure me.

  It was all very depressing, so I stopped for a drink, then went on tothe spaceport.

  * * * * *

  By the time the ship was serviced, I had a course charted. The nearestbeacon to the broken-down Proxima Centauri Beacon was on one of theplanets of Beta Circinus and I headed there first, a short trip of onlyabout nine days in hyperspace.

  To understand the importance of the beacons, you have to understandhyperspace. Not that many people do, but it is easy enough to understandthat in this _non_-space the regular rules don't apply. Speed andmeasurements are a matter of relationship, not constant facts like thefixed universe.

  The first ships to enter hyperspace had no place to go--and no way toeven tell if they had moved. The beacons solved that problem and openedthe entire universe. They are built on planets and generate tremendousamounts of power. This power is turned into radiation that is punchedthrough into hyperspace. Every beacon has a code signal as part of itsradiation and represents a measurable point in hyperspace. Triangulationand quadrature of the beacons works for navigation--only it follows itsown rules. The rules are complex and variable, but they are still rulesthat a navigator can follow.

  For a hyperspace jump, you need at least four beacons for an accuratefix. For long jumps, navigators use as many as seven or eight. So everybeacon is important and every one has to keep operating. That is where Iand the other trouble-shooters came in.

  We travel in well-stocked ships that carry a little bit of everything;only one man to a ship because that is all it takes to operate theoverly efficient repair machinery. Due to the very nature of our job, wespend most of our time just rocketing through normal space. After all,when a beacon breaks down, how do you find it?

  Not through hyperspace. All you can do is approach as close as you canby using other beacons, then finish the trip in normal space. This cantake months, and often does.

  This job didn't turn out to be quite that bad. I zeroed on the BetaCircinus beacon and ran a complicated eight-point problem through thenavigator, using every beacon I could get an accurate fix on. Thecomputer gave me a course with an estimated point-of-arrival as well asa built-in safety factor I never could eliminate from the machine.

  I would much rather take a chance of breaking through near some starthan spend time just barreling through normal space, but apparently Techknows this, too. They had a safety factor built into the computer so youcouldn't end up inside a star no matter how hard you tried. I'm surethere was no humaneness in this decision. They just didn't want to losethe ship.

  * * * * *

  It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middleof nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all thestars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finallyrang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece.

  A fast reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and acomparison with its absolute magnitude showed its distance. Not as badas I had thought--a six-week run, give
or take a few days. After feedinga course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the accelerationtank and went to sleep.

  The time went fast. I rebuilt my camera for about the twentieth time andjust about finished a correspondence course in nucleonics. Mostrepairmen take these courses. Besides their always coming in handy, thecompany grades your pay by the number of specialties you can handle. Allthis, with some oil painting and free-fall workouts in the gym, passedthe time. I was asleep when the alarm went off that announced planetarydistance.

  Planet two, where the beacon was situated according to the old charts,was a mushy-looking, wet kind of globe. I tried to make sense out ofthe ancient directions and finally located the right area. Stayingoutside the atmosphere, I sent a flying eye down to look things over. Inthis business, you learn early when and where to risk your own skin. Theeye would be good enough for the preliminary survey.

  The old boys had enough