millions of years? Billions even, maybe.”
“It’s been done. Anyway, we’re ‘way ahead of Old Mother in one respect-heat-treating.
We’ve got a growth cycle already that makes the original look sick.”
The new and improved leybyrdite was poured, forged, neotride-ground, and
heat-treated. A tailored-to-order mining head was built; and, in spite of the frantic and
highly capable opposition of the local life-forms, was driven into the mountainside.
This first unit took a long time, since everyone had to work in armor and anti-grav. After it
was in place, however, the job went much faster, as air was run in and the whole
installation was graved down to nine eighty-Earth-normal gravity-and people could work
in ordinary working clothes.
Section after section was attached; the whole gigantic assembly was jacked forward,
inch by inch.
Adams and his crew developed a super-flame-thrower which, instead of chemical flames,
projected a plasma jet-the heat of nuclear, not chemical, reaction. Cecily had twenty of
them made and installed at strategic points. It took a couple of weeks for the various
fauna to learn that such heat was quickly and inevitably fatal; but, having learned the fact,
they kept their distance and the work went easier and faster.
But the director brushed aside the scientists’ pleas for elsies in which to study. “I’m sorry,
Adams, but first things have got to come first. When we get a full stream of rhenium
coming out of that hole in the ground I’ll build you anything you want, but until then
absolutely nothing goes that isn’t geared directly to production.”
And she herself was everywhere. Dressed in leybyrdite helmet, leather packet, leather
breeches, and high-laced boots, she was in the point, in the middle, in the tail, and in all
stations, for whatever purpose intended. And, since no two operations are ever alike and
this one was like nothing else ever built, she was carrying the full load. But she knew
what she was doing, and hers was a mind that did not have to follow any book. She
ordered special machinery and equipment so regardlessly of cost that Desmond Phelps
almost had heart failure. When she wanted ten extra-special units, each of which would
cost over a hundred thousand dollars to build, she ordered them as nonchalantly as
though they were that many ballpoint pens; and Maynard okayed her every requisition
without asking a single question.
She had her troubles, of course, but only one of them was with her personnel-the revolt
of her section heads. Some of them resented the fact that she was a woman; some of
them really believed that they knew more about some aspects of the job than she did.
She called a meeting and told them viciously to do the job her way and quit dragging their
feet-or else. Next day, in four successive minutes, she fired four of them; whereupon the
others decided that Byrd was a hard-rock man after all and began to play ball.
She had her troubles, of course-what big job has ever gone strictly according to
plan?-but she met them unflinchingly head on and flattened them flat. She knew her stuff
and she held her crew and her job right in the palm of her hand. Even Maynard was
satisfied; not too many men could have run such a hairy job as smoothly as she was
doing it.
The last element was installed. The last tape was checked, rechecked, and
double-checked. Maynard, Smith, and Phelps, all in person-a truly unprecedented event,
this!-inspected and approved the whole project. Project Rhenia Four, fully automatic, was
ready to roll in its vast entirety.
Maynard stared thoughtfully at his project chief. Her helmet was under her left arm. She
hadn’t seen a hairdresser for five months; her rebellious brick-dust-red curls were
jammed into a nylon net. Her jacket, breeches, and boots were scuffed, stained, scarred,
and worn. She had lost pounds of weight; faint dark rings encircled both eyes. But those
eyes fairly sparkled; her whole mien was one of keen anticipation. Maynard had never
seen her in any such mood as this.
“Okay, Byrd; push the button,” he said.
“Uh-uh, chief, you push it. It’s your honor, really; nobody else in all space would have
stood back of me the way you have.”
“Thanks. It’d tickle me to; I’ve never started a big operation yet,” and the whole immense
project went smoothly to work.
Strained and tense, they watched it for half an hour. Then Maynard shook her hand.
“You were worth saving, Byrd. You’re an operator; a real performer. I hope you’ve got
over that ungodly insecurity complex of yours. You know what I’m going to do to you if
you ever start that hell-raising again?”
She laughed. “You and Babe both seem to have the same idea; he says he’ll knock me
as cold as ice-cream. You, too?”
No, I don’t think that’s the indicated treatment. I’ll get you pie-eyed on the best brandy in
Beardsley’s cellar.”
“Don’t tempt me, chief!” she laughed again as Smith, Phelps, Leyton, Deston, Jones, and
the others came up to add their congratulations to Maynard’s.
They kept on watching the tremendous installation, less and less tensely and with more
and more eating and sleeping, for fifty more hours, during which time a hundred
freighters departed with their heavy loads. Then all tension disappeared. Having run this
long, it would continue to run; with only normal supervision and maintenance.
“Now for the usual party,” Smith said. “Unusual, it should be, since this is a highly unusual
installation. How about it, everybody?”
“Let’s have a big dance,” Barbara suggested. “Dress up and everything.”
“Oh, let’s!” Cecily almost squealed. She was still in her scuffed leathers, still ready for
any emergency. Her hair was still a tightly-packed mop. “We’re all rested enough-I just
had fourteen hours’ sleep and two big steaks. Let’s go!”
We’re off, Curly.” Bernice took her arm. “We’ll help each other get all prettied up. Herc,
how about locking the ships together, so we won’t get all mussed up in those horrible
suits?”
“Can do, pet.” Jones gave his wife the smile reserved for her alone; a smile that softened
wonderfully his hard, craggy, deeply-tanned face. “For beauty in distress we’d do even
more than that.”
In about an hour, then, the party began. Bernice and Cecily were standing together when
Jones and Leyton came up to them. The red-head was a good inch taller than tall
Bernice; she would have stood five feet ten without her four-inch heels. Both gowns were
as tight as they could be without showing stress-patterns; both were strapless, backless,
and almost frontless; both hemlines bisected kneecaps.
The two men were just about of a size-six feet three, and twenty pounds or so over two
hundred. Leyton was handsome; Jones very definitely was not. Leyton was the softer; it
was not part of his job to keep himself at the peak of physical fitness. He was, however,
by no means soft. Being “softer” than Theodore Jones left a lot of room for a man to be
in very good shape indeed, and Lewis Leyton was.
Both men stopped and Jones whistled expressively; a perfectly-executed wolf-whistle.
“This must be Miss Byrd.” He smiled as he took her hand and bowed over it-and, as a
space officer, he really knew how to bow. “Miss Byrd, may I have the honor and the
pleasure of the second number, please?”
She dipped a half-curtsy and laughed. “You may indeed, sir,” and Leyton swept her
away.
Jones danced first with his wife, of course; then led Cecily out onto the floor. For a
minute they danced in silence, each conscious of what a superb performer the other was
and of how perfectly they matched. She was the first to speak.
“You’re looking at my hair. Don’t, Here, please. Nobody in all space can do anything with
it, and I didn’t have time. to let your beauty-shop even try.”
“Do you really mean that, Curly; or are you just fishing?”
“Of course I mean it! Look at Bun’s hair, or Bobby’s, or anybody’s! They can fix it any
way they please and change it any time they please. But this stuff?” She shook her
intractable mop. “This carroty-pink-sorrel mess of rusty steel-turnings? Nobody can do
anything with it whatever. I can’t even bleach it or dye it-or even wear a wig. It’s bad
enough, the color and the way it is now, but with it anything else, with my turkey-egg
face, I look just simply like the wrath of God. Honestly.”
“If that’s really the way you look at it, I think I’ll tell a tale out of school. You know Bun
isn’t the jealous type.”
Of course she isn’t. My God, with what she’s got, why should she be? How could she
be?”
“Okay. Since she met you she’s told me a dozen times that if anybody in all space could
make a hair-piece like that-nobody can, she says-she’d shave her head and get one