Tales of the Flying Mountains Read Online Free Page B

States can’t write off its huge investment in NASA, and in any case, positively not overnight. Research must go on. One advantage of Mr. Emett’s proposal is its modest cost. If we establish Project Dyna-Thrust, it should be feasible to discontinue various other activities and thus reduce the total budget—without feeling that we have broken faith with our predecessors or abandoned the Endless Frontier of Science.”
    More quasi-telepathy: Give NASA this crank undertaking for two or three years. It’ll provide the necessary excuse and cover for phasing out most of everything else. Let’s not shock the voters and endanger both our careers by letting the end come too abruptly, too rudely .
    â€œWell, now, Mr. Carter,” Stanhope said, “we might just go a little further into this. Mr. Harleman’s testimony has barely begun, and already it sounds interestin’. Yes, mighty interestin’, I must say. Ri-ight?”
    Of course, Emett was not altogether alone in his hopes. Enough reputable physicists conceded some theoretical possibility of success—though no useful probability, understand, for at least the next five hundred years—that the idea could safely be described as “worth study.” Enough personnel were willing to join in the effort that it could be organized. These tended to be far-out specialists who were skeptical of a space drive but who welcomed the chance to do basic research with expensive equipment; and graduate students desperate for thesis material; and engineers who didn’t have what it took to hold down any top-flight job, but who would work with plodding competence wherever they were paid.
    Harleman felt rather proud when he had finished rounding up that crew. It hadn’t been easy. Therefore he was doubly hurt when Emett protested: “B-b-b-but I don’t want that many!”
    â€œI beg your pardon?” Harleman wondered if his ears were failing him. These damned D.C. summers—and so few occasions for running down to the breezes of the Cape.…
    â€œA, uh, a small team,” Emett tried to explain. “Selected, uh, by myself. We, well, what we need is merely the, the, the use of different facilities—computer time, for instance, and, uh, access to the Astroelectronics Lab, and … well, these other people running around, they’ll, they’ll take up my time finding work for them!”
    â€œI see.” Harleman stroked his cheek and looked across his desk at the little man who jittered in a visitor’s chair. “I’m afraid you don’t see, though. It surprises me, when your original suggestion—that this project would keep NASA going a while—that was such a shrewd thought, I’m surprised you don’t realize that in government there is no such thing as having too many people working under you.”
    â€œThere is! There is! Gyrogravitics is, uh, at the s-s-stage nuclear physics was in … in 1930.… They couldn’t have used a, a gigatron and the whole huge outfit which serves one—not then.”
    â€œOh, yes, they could, Mr. Emett. Not directly, perhaps; but as means for getting more funds for the work they really wanted to do. Think. Government employees are also voters, and closer knit than average. Prestige and influence are proportional to numbers.” Harleman sighed. “I guess I’d better take charge till I can locate a suitable subadministrator for you. But you understand this means you’ll have to accept a lower title and salary.”
    â€œI d-don’t care. Just let me do my job.” Apparently nature had designed Quentin Emett for precisely one thing. All else, like eating, was incidental.
    It did not cross Harleman’s mind till later that similar remarks had been made about such folk as Oberth and Von Braun. He was too preoccupied with phone calls, memos, interviews, conferences, and tables of organization. For a while,