The Repairman Read online

brains to choose a traceable site for thebeacon, equidistant on a line between two of the most prominent mountainpeaks. I located the peaks easily enough and started the eye out fromthe first peak and kept it on a course directly toward the second. Therewas a nose and tail radar in the eye and I fed their signals into ascope as an amplitude curve. When the two peaks coincided, I spun theeye controls and dived the thing down.

  I cut out the radar and cut in the nose orthicon and sat back to watchthe beacon appear on the screen.

  The image blinked, focused--and a great damn pyramid swam into view. Icursed and wheeled the eye in circles, scanning the surrounding country.It was flat, marshy bottom land without a bump. The only thing in aten-mile circle was this pyramid--and that definitely wasn't my beacon.

  Or wasn't it?

  I dived the eye lower. The pyramid was a crude-looking thing ofundressed stone, without carvings or decorations. There was a shimmer oflight from the top and I took a closer look at it. On the peak of thepyramid was a hollow basin filled with water. When I saw that, somethingclicked in my mind.

  * * * * *

  Locking the eye in a circular course, I dug through the Mark IIIplans--and there it was. The beacon had a precipitating field and abasin on top of it for water; this was used to cool the reactor thatpowered the monstrosity. If the water was still there, the beacon wasstill there--inside the pyramid. The natives, who, of course, weren'teven mentioned by the idiots who constructed the thing, had built a niceheavy, thick stone pyramid around the beacon.

  I took another look at the screen and realized that I had locked the eyeinto a circular orbit about twenty feet above the pyramid. The summit ofthe stone pile was now covered with lizards of some type, apparently thelocal life-form. They had what looked like throwing sticks and arbalastsand were trying to shoot down the eye, a cloud of arrows and rocksflying in every direction.

  I pulled the eye straight up and away and threw in the control circuitthat would return it automatically to the ship.

  Then I went to the galley for a long, strong drink. My beacon was notonly locked inside a mountain of handmade stone, but I had managed toirritate the things who had built the pyramid. A great beginning for ajob and one clearly designed to drive a stronger man than me to thebottle.

  Normally, a repairman stays away from native cultures. They are poison.Anthropologists may not mind being dissected for their science, but arepairman wants to make no sacrifices of any kind for his job. For thisreason, most beacons are built on uninhabited planets. If a beacon _has_to go on a planet with a culture, it is usually built in someinaccessible place.

  Why this beacon had been built within reach of the local claws, I hadyet to find out. But that would come in time. The first thing to do wasmake contact. To make contact, you have to know the local language.

  And, for _that_, I had long before worked out a system that wasfool-proof.

  I had a pryeye of my own construction. It looked like a piece of rockabout a foot long. Once on the ground, it would never be noticed, thoughit was a little disconcerting to see it float by. I located a lizardtown about a thousand kilometers from the pyramid and dropped the eye.It swished down and landed at night in the bank of the local mud wallow.This was a favorite spot that drew a good crowd during the day. In themorning, when the first wallowers arrived, I flipped on the recorder.

  After about five of the local days, I had a sea of native conversationin the memory bank of the machine translator and had tagged a fewexpressions. This is fairly easy to do when you have a machine memory towork with. One of the lizards gargled at another one and the second oneturned around. I tagged this expression with the phrase, "Hey, George!"and waited my chance to use it. Later the same day, I caught one of themalone and shouted "Hey, George!" at him. It gurgled out through thespeaker in the local tongue and he turned around.

  When you get enough reference phrases like this in the memory bank, theMT brain takes over and starts filling in the missing pieces. As soon asthe MT could give a running translation of any conversation it heard, Ifigured it was time to make a contact.

  * * * * *

  I found him easily enough. He was the Centaurian version of agoat-boy--he herded a particularly loathsome form of local life in theswamps outside the town. I had one of the working eyes dig a cave in anoutcropping of rock and wait for him.

  When he passed next day, I whispered into the mike: "Welcome, OGoat-boy Grandson! This is your grandfather's spirit speaking fromparadise." This fitted in with what I could make out of the localreligion.

  Goat-boy stopped as if he'd been shot. Before he could move, I pushed aswitch and a handful of the local currency, wampum-type shells, rolledout of the cave and landed at his feet.

  "Here is some money from paradise, because you have been a good boy."Not really from paradise--I had lifted it from the treasury the nightbefore. "Come back tomorrow and we will talk some more," I called afterthe fleeing figure. I was pleased to notice that he took the cash beforetaking off.

  After that, Grandpa in paradise had many heart-to-heart talks withGrandson, who found the heavenly loot more than he could resist. Grandpahad been out of touch with things since his death and Goat-boy happilyfilled him in.

  I learned all I needed to know of the history, past and recent, and itwasn't nice.

  In addition to the pyramid being around the beacon, there was a nicelittle religious war going on around the pyramid.

  It all began with the land bridge. Apparently the local lizards had beenliving in the swamps when the beacon was built, but the builders didn'tthink much of them. They were a low type and confined to a distantcontinent. The idea that the race would develop and might reach _this_continent never occurred to the beacon mechanics. Which is, of course,what happened.

  A little geological turnover, a swampy land bridge formed in the rightspot, and the lizards began to wander up beacon valley. And foundreligion. A shiny metal temple out of which poured a constant stream ofmagic water--the reactor-cooling water pumped down from the atmospherecondenser on the roof. The radioactivity in the water didn't hurt thenatives. It caused mutations that bred true.

  A city was built around the temple and, through the centuries, thepyramid was put up around the beacon. A special branch of the priesthoodserved the temple. All went well until one of the priests violated thetemple and destroyed the holy waters. There had been revolt, strife,murder and destruction since then. But still the holy waters would notflow. Now armed mobs fought around the temple each day and a new band ofpriests guarded the sacred fount.

  And I had to walk into the middle of that mess and repair the thing.

  It would have been easy enough if we were allowed a little mayhem. Icould have had a lizard fry, fixed the beacon and taken off. Only"native life-forms" were quite well protected. There were spy cells onmy ship, all of which I hadn't found, that would cheerfully rat on mewhen I got back.

  Diplomacy was called for. I sighed and dragged out the plastifleshequipment.

  * * * * *

  Working from 3D snaps of Grandson, I modeled a passable reptile headover my own features. It was a little short in the jaw, me not havingone of their toothy mandibles, but that was all right. I didn't have tolook _exactly_ like them, just something close, to soothe the nativemind. It's logical. If I were an ignorant aborigine of Earth and I raninto a Spican, who looks like a two-foot gob of dried shellac, I wouldimmediately leave the scene. However, if the Spican was wearing a suitof plastiflesh that looked remotely humanoid, I would at least stay andtalk to him. This was what I was aiming to do with the Centaurians.

  When the head was done, I peeled it off and attached it to an attractivesuit of green plastic, complete with tail. I was really glad they hadtails. The lizards didn't wear clothes and I wanted to take along a lotof electronic equipment. I built the tail over a metal frame thatanchored around my waist. Then I filled the frame with all the equipmentI would need and began
to wire the suit.

  When it was done, I tried it on in front of a full-length mirror. It washorrible but effective. The tail dragged me down in the rear and gave mea duck-waddle, but that only helped the resemblance.

  That night I took the ship down into the hills nearest the pyramid, anout-of-the-way dry spot where the amphibious natives would never go. Alittle before dawn, the eye hooked onto my shoulders and we sailedstraight up. We hovered above the temple at about 2,000 meters, until itwas light, then dropped straight down.

  It must have been a grand sight. The eye was camouflaged to look like aflying lizard, sort of a cardboard pterodactyl, and the slowly flappingwings obviously had nothing to do with our flight. But it was impressiveenough for the natives. The first one that spotted me screamed anddropped over on his back. The others came running. They milled andmobbed and piled on top of one another, and by that time I had landed inthe plaza fronting the temple. The priesthood arrived.

  I