“Oh, sure!”
Harriman was worried but tried not to show it. He did not trust Dixon, even bearing gifts. He stood up suddenly. “I’ve got to run, gentlemen. I leave you to Mr. Strong and Mr. Kamens. Come along, Monty.” Kamens, he was sure, would not spill anything prematurely, even to nominal full partners. As for Strong—George, he knew, had not even let his left hand know how many fingers there were on his right.
He dismissed Montgomery outside the door of the partners’ personal office and went across the hall. Andrew Ferguson, chief engineer of Harriman Enterprises, looked up as he came in. “Howdy, Boss. Say, Mr. Strong gave me an interesting idea for a light switch this morning. It did not seem practical at first but—”
“Skip it. Let one of the boys have it and forget it. You know the line we are on now.”
“There have been rumors,” Ferguson answered cautiously.
“Fire the man that brought you the rumor. No-send him on a special mission to Tibet and keep him there until we are through. Well, let’s get on with it. I want you to build a Moon ship as quickly as possible.”
Ferguson threw one leg over the arm of his chair, took out a pen knife and began grooming his nails. “You say that like it was an order to build a privy.”
“Why not? There have been theoretically adequate fuels since way back in ‘49. You get together the team to design it and the gang to build it; you build it—I pay the bills. What could be simpler?”
Ferguson stared at the ceiling. “‘Adequate fuels—’” he repeated dreamily.
“So I said. The figures show that hydrogen and oxygen are enough to get a step rocket to the Moon and back—it’s just a matter of proper design.”
“‘Proper design,’ he says,” Ferguson went on ifl the same gentle voice, then suddenly swung around, jabbed the knife into the scarred desk top and bellowed, “What do you know about proper design? Where do I get the steels? What do I use for a throat liner? How in the hell do I burn enough tons of your crazy mix per second to keep from wasting all my power breaking loose? How can I get a decent mass-ratio with a step rocket? Why in the hell didn’t you let me build a proper ship when we had the fuel?”
Harriman waited for him to quiet down, then said, “What do we do about it, Andy?”
“Hmmm. . . . I was thinking about it as I lay abed last night—and my old lady is sore as hell at you; I had to finish the night on the couch. In the first place, Mr. Harriman, the proper way to tackle this is to get a research appropriation from the Department of National Defense. Then you—”
“Damn it, Andy, you stick to engineering and let me handle the political and financial end of it. I don’t want your advice.”
“Damn it, Delos, don’t go off half-cocked. This is engineering I’m talking about. The government owns a whole mass of former art about rocketry—all classified. Without a government contract you can’t even get a peek at it.”
“It can’t amount to very much. What can a government rocket do that a Skyways rocket can’t do? You told me yourself that Federal rocketry no longer amounted to anything.”
Ferguson looked supercilious. “I am afraid I can’t explain it in lay terms. You will have to take it for granted that we need those government research reports. There’s no sense in spending thousands of dollars in doing work that has already been done.”
“Spend the thousands.”
“Maybe millions.”
“Spend the millions. Don’t be afraid to spend money. Andy, I don’t want this to be a military job.” He considered elaborating to the engineer the involved politics back of his decision, thought better of it. “How bad do you actually need that government stuff? Can’t you get the same results by hiring engineers who used to work for the government? Or even hire them away from the government right now?”
Ferguson pursed his lips. “If you insist on hampering me, how can you expect me to get results?”