all,” Maynard went on. “We wanted a three-year contract, but Hoadman wouldn’t add a
day to his one-year position. So we’ll do even better than that. Type a memo, please,
Miss Champion. What we’ve said, and add, `Cancellable by either party on ten days’
notice in writing’!”
“What?” The mediator was shaken out of his calm. When Maynard handed him the
signed memorandum he handled it as though it might bite. Just what have you robber
barons got up your sleeves?”
“Nothing but our arms,” Smith assured him. “What could we have? Haven’t your spies
kept you informed of our every move?”
(No outsider as yet knew anything about Project Belmark, which was ready to go into full
production.)
“I don’t like this at all-not any part of it,” Wilson said, thoughtfully. “I don’t think I will
recommend signing any contract containing a cancellation clause. Even though I can’t see
it, I know there’s a hook in it somewhere . . . and I think I know what it is … but Hoadman
is perfectly sure that … ?”
“Go ahead, ask me,” Smith said. “I’ll answer-I’m not under oath. You smell something
because you can think. Hoadman can’t. Even if he could, and even if there were a hook in
the thing, he’ll grab it. He’ll have to. If he doesn’t, the miners will throw him out on his ear.
Besides, he’ll love it. Imagine the headlines= BURLEY HOADMAN, GIANT BRAIN OF
LABOR, BRINGS MIGHTY GALMET TO ITS KNEES’.”
“Mr. Maynard,” Wilson said, “please erase Mr. Smith’s remarks and this sentence from
the record.”
“By no means. Hoadman will of course listen to this supposedly top secret recording, and
to hear this bit may-just conceivably-be good for what ails him.”
Wilson wriggled uncomfortably and Miss Champion wrote another line of shorthand.
Discussion continued for another hour or so, after which Wilson took his leave.
The union signed, in spite of Wilson’s objections, because Burley Hoadman knew that
copper mining could not be automated except at prohibitive cost. Then Hoadman
announced to THE PRESS:
“This shows what a really tightly organized union can do. We are perfectly free to keep
ahead of the cost of living and we’ll keep it that way, since we can tie them up again any
time we please.”
Everything remained quiet then-except for some rumblings in other unions, none of which
had time to develop into serious strikes-for a couple of weeks. Then GalMet cancelled its
contract with the UCM. Simultaneously it announced a reduction in the price of copper to
eleven point three six one cents per pound FOB spaceport and began to supply all its
competitors with all the copper they wanted. (It did not develop until later that Ajax,
Revere, and all other large producers were merging with MetEnge). All mines worked by
United Copper Miners shut down. Salaried people were transferred. All machinery was
scrapped. All properties and buildings were either sold or simply abandoned. Then
Maynard talked to the reporters who had for many days been demanding a statement.
“In an economy subscribing fully to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest neither
stupidly avaricious capital nor serf labor would exist. Nor would such a corrupt
government as we now have. While it may be true that any people deserves the
government it gets, this three-pronged blight now threatening all civilization is intolerable
and something must be done about it. We have begun doing something about it by
making an example of Burley Hoadman and his unconscionably greedy United Copper
Miners, who…”
“One question, Mr. Maynard!” a reporter broke in. “In using the word `we’ do you claim
to be represent. . . “I claim nothing!” Maynard snapped. “I state as a fact that I am
speaking for the Galaxians-the free men and women and the intelligent capital of the
planets. These two component halves of production, eternally irreconcilable on Earth,
work together on the planets for the best good of all. To resume: the closed copper
mines will not be re-opened. There will never, in the foreseeable future, be any
employment anywhere for the skilled craftsmen known as copper miners. We have
deliberately automated the entire craft out of existence.
“We do not know whether Hoadman will believe this statement or not. Nor do we care. If
he wishes to use up his union’s funds in supporting the men in idleness rather than in
expediting their absorption into other industries, that is his privilege.
“It has been threatened that other unions will, in spite of contractual obligations, walk out
in sympathy with the UCM, to enforce Hoadman’s demand that we pay four men
double-scale wages to sit on cushioned chairs and play stud poker while one machine
does the work. In reply to these threats I say now that we are prepared to cope with
such retaliation at any level of action required.
“We are ready even for a complete general strike by all the unions of WestHem. In that
case all imports to and all exports from Earth will stop. Earth will stew in its own juice
until the vast majority of WestHem’s people, the unorganized people, decide to get
themselves out of the mess into which, by their own stupidity, laziness, and lack of
interest, they got themselves.
This blast was broadcast immediately; and in less than an hour Antonio Grimes,
president of the Brotherhood of Professional Drivers, was on Miss Champion’s com,
demanding access to Maynard.
Since she was expecting the call, he was put on at once.
“Good morning, Mr. Maynard,” he began. He was a short man, inclined to fat, with heavy
jowls and small, piercing eyes. At the table with him were his three major lieutenants
and-not much to Maynard’s surprise -WestHem’s Secretary of Labor Deissner and Chief
Mediator Wilson. “You overlooked the fact that nothing can replace the truck and the
freight-copter. The situation, however, is not beyond repair. For a nominal sum, say a
quarter-mega, I might not pull the boys off tomorrow morning.
“The trouble with you, Grimes,” Maynard said, quietly, “is that while you’re smart, clever,
and cunning, you can’t really think. You haven’t got the brain for it.”
“That crack’ll cost you, Big Shot!” Grimes roared, shedding in the instant his veneer of
gentility. “I’ll show you who’s got a brain, you. . .”
“Shut up and listen!” Maynard snapped. “If you had had any fraction of a brain you would
have known that we knew exactly what you would do.”
“Like hell you knew! If you did you wouldn’t’ve . . .” Grimes paused; it became evident
that his train of thought had all of a sudden been derailed.
“The only question is, how big a battle do you want for an opener? All over WestHem at
once, or just one spaceport at first, to see what we have? If you can think at all you’d
better start doing it, because the bigger a flop you make the deader you’ll be when it’s
over.”
“Comet-gas! You can’t scare me!” “I can’t? That’s nice.”
“Who’d want to shoot the whole wad at once? One at a time; one day apart. Tomorrow
morning I seal New York Spaceport so tight a cockroach can’t get in or out.”
“And we’ll open it. Here’s your one and only warning. Before we send our freight-copters
in. . .”
Just how do you think you’ll get any copters off the ground?”
“Wait and see. Before a copter lofts we’ll come in on the ground. East on Carter Avenue.
Through Gate Twelve. Along Way Twelve to the Cygnus. I’m telling you this because I
don’t want our machines to kill anybody. They’ll be fully automatic, so programmed that
we won’t be able to stop them ourselves. Hence any goons along that designated route
who can’t get out of the way in time will be committing suicide. If you shoot down any of
our copters your gun-crews will be killed. That is all.”
“Hot-dog!” Grimes gloated. “Drawing us a map-handing it to us on a platted What you’ll
run into along..”
Miss Champion flipped a switch and the screen went blank.
Carter Avenue became a very busy street. The biggest and heaviest trucks available,
loaded to capacity with broken concrete and rock, were jammed into that avenue,
blocking it solidly-pavement, parkway, and sidewalk-from building wall to building wall for
one full mile. Riflemen with magnums sat at windows; fifty-caliber machine-guns and
forty-millimeter quick-firing rifles peered down from roofs; anti-tank weapons of all kinds
commanded every yard of that soon-to-be-disputed mile.
Grimes and his strategists had expected a fleet of heavy tanks. What appeared,
however, exceeded their expectations by ten raised to a power. They were-in a
way-tanks; but tanks of a size, type, and heft never before seen on Earth. There were
only two of them; but each one was twenty feet high, sixty feet wide, and a hundred and
eighty feet long. They were not going fast, but when they reached the barricade, side by
side and a couple of feet apart, they did not even pause. Both front ends reared up as