The Makeshift Rocket (9 page)

‘Yes, yes. Tell it to the King’s marines.’

‘Just a minute!’ she begged, frantic. ‘Just a minute and I’ll get you out! Rory, I swear I never—Look out, I’ll have to cut the door open—’

Herr Syrup dropped the plastifoam extinguisher and clapped a hand on her wrist as she picked up the torch. ‘Vat you ban doing?’ he yelped.

‘I’ve got to release him!’ cried Emily. ‘We’ve got to! He hasn’t anything in there to keep him alive!’

Herr Syrup gave her a long stare. ‘So you t’ink his life is vort’ more dan all de folk vat maybe get killed if dere is a var, huh?’ he asked slowly.

‘Yes … no … oh, I don’t know!’ sobbed the girl, struggling in his grasp and kicking at his ankles. ‘We’ve got to let him out, that’s all!’

‘Now vait, vait yust a minute. I t’ought of dis problem right avay. It is not so hard. Dere is ventilator shafts running
all t’rough de ship, maybe ten centimeters diameter. Ve yust unscrew a fan in vun and drop down cans of space rations to him. And a can opener, natural. It vill not hurt him to eat cold beans and drink beer for a vile. He has also got a bat’room in dere, and I t’ink a pack of cards. He vill be okay.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ whispered Emily.

She put her lips close to the door and called: ‘Did you hear that, Rory? We’ll send you food through the ventilator. And don’t worry about it being just cold beans. I mean, I’ll make you nice hot lunches and wrap them well so you can get them intact. I’m not a bad cook, Rory, honestly, I’ll prove it to you. Oh, and do you have a razor? Otherwise I’ll find one for you. I mean, you don’t want to come out all brisdy – I mean – oh, never mind!’

‘So,’ rumbled the prisoner. ‘Yes, I heard.’ Suddenly he shouted with laughter. ‘Ah, t’is sweet of yez, darlin’, but it won’t be needful. Ye’ll be releasin’ me in a day or two at the most.’

Herr Syrup started and glared at the door. ‘Vat’s dat?’ he snapped.

‘Why, t’is simple ’tis. For the lifeboats are down on Grendel, an’ even the propulsive units of every spacesuit aboard, not to speak of the radio an’ radar, an’ the spare electrical parts is all in here with me. An’ so, for the matter of it, is the engines. Ye can’t get the King’s help, ye can’t even get back to ground, without a by-your-leave from me. So I’ll expect ye to open the door in as few hours as it takes for that fact to sink home into the square head of yez. Haw, haw, haw!’

‘Det var some fanden
,’ said the engineer.

‘What?’

‘De hell you say. I got to look into dis.’ Herr Syrup scurried from the cabin, his nightgown flapping about his hairy
shanks and the forgotten fire extinguisher still jetting plastifoam on the floor behind him.

‘Oh, dear.’ Emily wrung her hands. ‘We just don’t have any luck.’

McConnell’s voice came back: ‘Never mind, macushla, for I heard how ye feared for me life, an’ that at a moment whin ye thought ye’d the upper hand. So ’tis humbly I ask your pardon for all I said earlier this night. ‘Twas a good trick ye’ve played on me now, even if it did not work, an’ many a long winter evenin’ we’ll while away in after years a-laughin’ at it.’

‘Oh, Rory!’ breathed Emily, leaning against the door.

‘Oh, Emily!’ breathed McConnell on his side.

‘Rory!’ whispered the girl, closing her eyes.

The unnoticed plastifoam crept up toward her ears.

Sarmishkidu slithered into the Number Three hold and found Herr Syrup huddled gloomily beneath one of the enormous beer casks. He had a mug in one hand and the tap of the keg in the other. Claus perched on a rack muttering: ‘Damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von’t damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von’t sit up all night damning Rory McConnell.’

‘Oh, there you are,’ said the Martian. ‘Your breakfast has gotten cold.’

‘I don’t vant no breakfast,’ said Herr Syrup. He tossed off his mug and tapped it full again.

‘Not even after your triumph last watch?’

‘Vat good is a triumph ven I ain’t triumphant? I have sealed him into de engine room, jo, vich is to say ve can’t move de ship from dis orbit. You see, de polarity reverser vich I installed on de geegee lines, to give us veight, is in dere vit’ him, and ve can’t travel till it has been taken out again. So ve can’t go direct to New Vinshester ourselves. And he has also de electrical parts locked up vit’ him.’

‘I have never sullied my mathematics with any attempt at a merely practical application,’ said Sarmishkidu piously, ‘but I have studied electromagnetic theory and it would appear upon integration of the Maxwell equations that you
could rip out wires here and there, machine the bar and plate metal stored for repair work in the shop, and thus improvise an oscillator.’

‘Sure,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘Dat is easy. But remember, New Vinshester is about ten t’ousand kilometers avay. Any little laboratory model powered yust off a 220-volt line to some cabin, is not going to carry a broadcast dat far. At least, not vun vich has a reasonable shance of being noticed dere in all de cosmic noise. I do have access to some powerful batteries. By discharging dem very quick, ve can send a strong signal: but short-lived, so it is not likely in so little a time dat anyvun on de capital asteroid is listening in on dat particular vavelengt’. For you see, vit’out de calibrated standards and meters vich McConnell has, I cannot control de freqvency vich no vun of New Vinshester’s small population uses or is tuned in on.’

He sighed. ‘No, I have spent de night trying to figure out somet’ing, and all I get is de answer I had before. To make an S.O.S. dat vill have any measurable shance of being heard, ve shall have to have good cable, good impedances, meters and so on – vich McConnell is now sitting on. Or else ve shall have to run for a long time t’rough many unknown freqvencies, to be sure of getting at least vun vich will be heard; and for dat ve shall have to use de enshine room g’enerator, vich McConnell is also sitting on.’

‘He is?’ Sarmishkidu brightened. ‘But it puts out a good many thousands of volts, doesn’t it?’

‘I vas speaking figurative, damn de luck.’ Herr Syrup put the beer mug to his lips, lifted his mustache out of the way with a practiced forefinger, and bobbed his Adam’s apple for a while.

Sarmishkidu folded his walking tentacles and let down his
bulbous body. He waggled his ears, rolled his eyeballs, and protested: ‘But we can’t give up yet! We just can’t. Here iss all dis beautiful beer that I could sell at fifty percent profit, even if I have the pretzels und popcorn free. And what good is it doing? None!’

‘Oh, I vouldn’t say dat,’ answered Herr Syrup, a trifle blearily, and drew another mugful.

‘Dis lot has too much carbonation for my taste,’ he complained. ‘You t’ink I ban an American? It makes too much head.’

‘That’s on special order from me,’ confided the Martian. ‘In the head is the profit, if one is not too generous in scraping it off.’

‘You is got too many arms and not enough soul,’ said Herr Syrup. ‘I t’ink for dat I let you clean out my cabin. It is got full vit’ congealed plastifoam. And to make a new fire extingvisher for it, vy, I take a bottle of your too carbonated beer and if dere is a fire I shake it and take my t’umb off de mout’ and—Of course!’ mused Herr Syrup, ‘could be you got so much CO
²
coming out, I get t’rown backwards.’

‘If you don’t like my beer,’ said Sarmishkidu, half closing his eyes, ‘you can just let me have the stein you got.’

‘Action and reaction,’ said Herr Syrup.

‘Hm?’

‘Newton’s t’ird law.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, but what relevance does that have to—’

‘Beer. I shoot beer out de front end of de bottle, I get tossed on my can.’

‘But you said it was a bottle.’

‘Ja, ja, ja, ja
—’

‘Weiss’ nicht wie gut ich dir bin
?’ sang the Martian.

‘I mean,’ said Herr Syrup, wagging a solemn finger, ‘de bottle is a kind of rocket. Vy, it could even – it could even—’

His voice ground to a halt. The mug dropped from his hand and splashed on the floor.

‘Beerslayer!’ screamed Claus.

‘But darlin’,’ said Rory McConnell into the intercom, ‘I don’t like dried apricots.’

‘Oh, hush,’ said Emily Croft from the galley. ‘You’ve never been healthier in your life.’

‘I feel like I’m rottin’ away. Not through the monotony so much, me sweet, whilst I can be hearin’ the soft voice of yez, but the only exercise I can get is calisthinics, which has always bored me grievous.’

‘True,’ said Emily, ‘all those fuel pipes and things don’t leave much room for classical dancing, do they? Poor dear!’

‘I’d trade me mother’s brown pig for a walk in the rain wi’ yez, macushla.’

‘Well, if you’d only give us your parole not to make trouble, dear, we could let you out this minute.’

‘No, ye well know the Force has me prior oath an’ the Force I’ll fight for till ’tis disbanded either through victory or defeat. An’ how long will it take the auld
omadhaun
Syrup to realize ’tis him has been defayted? I’ve lain in here almost a week be the clock. I hear noises day an’ night from the machine room, an’ devil a word I can get of what’s goin’ on. Let me out, swateheart! I bear no ill will. I’ll kiss the pretty lips of ye an’ we’ll all go down to Grendel an’ say nothin’ about what’s happened. Save of course that I’ve won the loveliest girl in the galaxy for me own.’

‘I wish I could,’ sighed Emily. ‘How I wish it!
O Dion who sent my heart mad with love
!

‘Who’s this Dion?’ bristled Major McConnell.

‘Nobody you need worry about, dear. It’s only a quotation. Translated, naturally. But what I mean to say is, Mr.
Syrup and Mr. Sarmishkidu have so much to take care of and it won’t be long now, I swear it won’t, just another day or two, they say, and then their project will be over and they can – Oh! I promised not to tell! But what I mean, dear, is that I’ll stay behind and I’m not supposed to let you out immediately, maybe not for still another day, but I’ll look after you and make you nice lunches and – Yes,’ said Emily with a slight shudder, ‘there won’t even be any more dried fruit in your meals, because I’ve run out of what there was; in fact, for days now I’ve been giving it all to you and eating corned beef and drinking beer myself, and I must admit it tastes better than I remembered, so if you insist on calcifying your liver after we’re married, why, I suppose I’ll have to also, and actually, darling, I don’t know anyone who I’d rather calcify my liver with. Really.’

‘What is all this?’ Rory McConnell stepped back, his big frame tensing. ‘Ye mean they’ve not just been putterin’ about, but have some plan?’

‘I mustn’t tell! Please, beloved, honestly, I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy, and now I must go. They need me to help too. I have been installing pipe lines and things and actually, dear, it’s very exciting. I mean, when I use a welding torch I have to wear a helmet very much like a classical dramatic mask, so I stand there reciting from the
Agamemnon
as if I were on a real Athenian stage, and do you know, I think when this is all over and we’re married and have our own Greek theater in the garden I’ll organize a presentation of the whole
Orestes
trilogy – in the original, of course – with welding outfits. ‘Bye now!’ Emily blew a kiss down the intercom and pattered off.

Rory McConnell sat down on a generator shield and began most furiously to think.

The first beer-powered spaceship in history rested beneath a derrick by the main cargo hatch.

It was not as impressive as Herr Syrup could have wished. Using a small traveling lift for the heavy work, he had joined four ten-ton casks of Nashornbräu end to end with a light framework. The taps had been removed from the kegs and their bungholes plugged, simple electrically-controlled Venturi valves in the plumb center being substituted. Jutting on orthogonal axes from each barrel there were also L-shaped exhaust pipes, by which it was hoped to control rotation and sideways motion. Various wires and shafts, their points of entry sealed with gunk, plunged into the barrels, ending in electric beaters. A set of relays was intended to release each container as it was exhausted. The power for all this – it did not amount to much – came from a system of heavy-duty EXW batteries at the front end.

Ahead of those batteries was fastened a box, some two meters square and three meters long. Sheets of plastic were set in its black-painted sides by way of windows. The torso and helmet of a spacesuit jutted from the roof, removably fastened in a screwthreaded hatch cover which could be turned around. Beside it was a small stovepipe valve holding two self-closing elastic diaphragms through which tools could be pushed without undue air loss. The box had been put together out of cardboard beer cases, bolted to a light metal
frame and carefully sized and gunked.

‘You see,’ Herr Syrup had explained grandly, ‘in dis situation, vat do ve need to go to New Vinshester? Not an atomic motor, for sure, because dere is almost negligible gravity to overcome. Not a nice streamlined shape, because ve have no air hereabouts. Not great structural strengt’, for dere is no strain odder dan a very easy acceleration; so beer cardboard is strong enough for two, t’ree men to sit on a box of it under Eart’ gravity. Not a fancy t’ermostatic system for so short a hop, for de sun is far avay, our own bodies make heat and losing dat heat by radiation is a slow process. If it does get too hot inside, ve can let a little vater evaporate into space t’rough de stovepipe to cool us; if ve get chilly, ve can tap a little heat t’rough a coil off de batteries.

‘All ve need is air. Not even much air, since I is sitting most of de time and you ban a Martian. A pair of oxygen cylinders should make more dan enough;
ja
, and ve vill need a chemical carbon-dioxide absorber, and some dessicating stuffs so you do not get a vater vapor drunk. For comfort ve vill take along a few bottles beer and some pretzels to nibble on.

‘As for de minimal boat itself, I have tested de exhaust velocity of hot, agitated beer against vacuum, and it is enough to accelerate us to a few hundred kilometers per hour, maybe t’ree hundred, if ve use a high enough mass ratio. And ve vill need a few simple navigating instruments, an ephemeris, slide rule, and so on. As a precaution, I install my bicycle in de cabin, hooked to a simple home-made generator, yust a little electric motor yuggled around to be run in reverse, vit’ a rectifier. Dat vay, if de batteries get too veek ve can recharge dem. And also a small, primitive oscillator ve can make, short range,
ja
, but able to run a gamut of frequencies vit’out exhausting de batteries, so ve can send an S.O.S. ven ve ban
qvite close to New Vinshester. Dey hear it and send a spaceship out to pick us up, and dat is dat.’