The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (41 page)

“Hydraulic system’s O.K., anyhow,” called Peebles, as Tom throttled down. “More over and take a strain to the right, sharp as you can without fouling the cable on the track. We’ll see if we can walk this track on.”

Tom backed up, cut sharply to the right, and drew the cable out almost at right angles to the other machine. Peebles held the right track of the Seven with the brake and released both steering cluches. The left track now could turn free, the right not at all. Tom was running at a quarter throttle in his lowest gear, so that his machine barely crept along, taking the strain. The Seven shook gently and began to pivot on the taut right track, unbelievable foot-pounds of energy coming to bear on the front of the track where it rode high up on the idler wheel. Peebles released the right brake with his foot and applied it again in a series of skilled, deft jerks. The track would move a few inches and stop again, force being applied forwards and sidewards alternately, urging the track persuasively back in place. Then, a little jolt and she was in, riding true on the five truck rollers, the two track carrier rollers, the driving sprocket and the idler.

Peebles got off and stuck his head in between the sprocket and the rear carrier, squinting down and sideways to see if there were any broken flanges or roller bushes. Tom came over and pulled him out by the seat of his trousers. “Time enough for that when you get her in the shop,” he said, masking his nervousness. “Reckon she’ll roll?”

“She’ll roll. I never saw a track in that condition come back that easy. By gosh, it’s as if she was tryin’ to help!”

“They’ll do it sometimes,” said Tom stiffly. “You better take the tow-tractor, Peeby. I’ll stay with this’n.”

“Anything you say.”

And cautiously they took the steep slope down, Tom barely holding the brakes, giving the other machine a straight pull all the way. And so they brought
Daisy Etta
down to Peebles’ out-door shop, where they pulled her cylinder head off, took off her starting motor, pulled out a burned clutch facing, had her quite helpless—

And put her together again.

“I tell you it was outright, cold-blooded murder,” said Dennis hotly. “An’ here we are takin’ orders from a guy like that. What are we goin’ to do about it?” They were standing by the cooler – Dennis had run his machine there to waylay Chub.

Chub Horton’s cigar went down and up like a semaphore with a short circuit. “We’ll skip it. The black-topping crew will be here in another two weeks or so, an’ we can make a report. Besides, I don’t know what happened up there any more than you do. In the meantime we got a runway to build.”

“You don’t know what happened up there? Chub, you’re a smart man. Smart enough to run this job better than Tom Jaeger even if he wasn’t crazy. And you’re surely smart enough not to believe all that cock and bull about that tractor runnin’ out from under that grease-monkey. Listen—” He learned forward and tapped Chub’s chest. “He said it was the governor. I saw that governor myself an’ heard ol’ Peebles say there wasn’t a thing wrong with it. Th’ throttle control rod had slipped off its yoke, yeah – but you know what a tractor will do when the throttle control goes out. It’ll idle or stall. It won’t run away, whatever.”

“Well, maybe so, but—”

“But nothin’! A guy that’ll commit murder ain’t sane. If he did it once, he can do it again and I ain’t fixin’ to let that happen to me.”

Two things crossed Chub’s steady but not bright mind at this. One was that Dennis, whom he did not like but could not shake, was trying to force him into something that he did not want to do. The other was that under all of his swift talk Dennis was scared spitless.

“What do you want to do – call up the sheriff?”

Dennis ha-ha-ed appreciatively – one of the reasons he was so hard to shake. “I’ll tell you what we can do. As long as we have you here, he isn’t the only man who knows the work. If we stop takin’ orders from him, you can give ’em as good or better. An’ there won’t be anything he can do about it.”

“Doggone it, Dennis,” said Chub, with sudden exasperation. “What do you think you’re doin’ – handin’ me over the keys to the kingdom or something? What do you want to see me bossin’ around here for?” He stood up. “Suppose we did what you said? Would it get the field built any quicker? Would it get me any more money in my pay envelope? What do you think I want – glory? I passed up a chance to run for council-man once. You think I’d raise a finger to get a bunch of mugs to do what I say – when they do it anyway?”

“Aw, Chub – I wouldn’t cause trouble just for the fun of it. That’s not what I mean at all. But unless we do something about that guy we ain’t safe. Can’t you get that through your head?”

“Listen, windy. If a man keeps busy enough he can’t get into trouble. That goes for Tom – you might keep that in mind. But it goes for you, too. Get back up on that rig an’ get back to the marl pit.” Dennis, completely taken by surprise, turned to his machine.

“It’s a pity you can’t move earth with your mouth,” said Chub as he walked off. “They could have left you to do this job single-handed.”

Chub walked slowly towards the outcropping, switching at beach pebbles with a grade stake and swearing to himself. He was essentially a simple man and believed in the simplest possible approach to everything. He liked a job where he could do everything required and where nothing turned up to complicate things. He had been in the grading business for a long time as an operator and survey party boss, and he was remarkable for one thing – he had always held aloof from the cliques and internecine politics that are the breath of life to most construction men. He was disturbed and troubled at the backstabbing that went on around him on various jobs. If it was blunt, he was disgusted, and subtlety simply left him floundering and bewildered. He was stupid enough so that his basic honesty manifested itself in his speech and actions, and he had learned that complete honesty in dealing with men above and below him was almost invariably painful to all concerned, but he had not the wit to act otherwise, and did not try to. If he had a bad tooth, he had it pulled out as soon as he could. If he got a raw deal from a superintendent over him, that superintendent would get told exactly what the trouble was, and if he didn’t like it, there were other jobs. And if the pulling and hauling of cliques got in his hair, he had always said so and left. Or he had sounded off and stayed; his completely selfish reaction to things that got in the way of his work had earned him a lot of regard from men he had worked under. And so, in this instance, he had no hesitation about choosing a course of action. Only – how did you go about asking a man if he was a murderer?

He found the foreman with an enormous wrench in his hand, tightening up the new track adjustment bolt they had installed in the Seven.

“Hey, Chub! Glad you turned up. Let’s get a piece of pipe over the end of this thing and really bear down.” Chub went for the pipe, and they fitted it over the handle of the four-foot wrench and hauled until the sweat ran down their backs, Tom checking the track clearance occasionally with a crowbar. He finally called it good enough and they stood there in the sun gasping for breath.

“Tom,” panted Chub, “did you kill that Puerto Rican?”

Tom’s head came up as if someone had burned the back of his neck with a cigarette.

“Because,” said Chub, “if you did you can’t go on runnin’ this job.”

Tom said, “That’s a lousy thing to kid about.”

“You know I ain’t kiddin’. Well, did you?”

“No!” Tom sat down on a keg, wiped his face with a bandanna. “What’s got into you?”

“I just wanted to know. Some of the boys are worried about it.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Some of the boys, huh? I think I get it. Listen to me, Chub. Rivera was killed by that thing there.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the Seven, which was standing ready now, awaiting only the building of a broken cutting corner on the blade. Peebles was winding up the welding machine as he spoke. “If you mean, did I put him up on the machine before he was thrown, the answer is yes. That much I killed him, and don’t think I don’t feel it. I had a hunch something was wrong up there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it and I certainly didn’t think anybody was going to get hurt.”

“Well, what was wrong?”

“I still don’t know.” Tom stood up. “I’m tired of beatin’ around the bush, Chub, and I don’t much care any more what anybody thinks. There’s somethin’ wrong with that Seven, something that wasn’t built into her. They don’t make tractors better’n that one but whatever it was happened up there on the mesa has queered this one. Now go ahead and think what you like, and dream up any story you want to tell the boys. In the meantime you can pass the word – nobody runs that machine but me, understand? Nobody!”

“Tom—”

Tom’s patience broke. “That’s all I’m going to say about it! If anybody else gets hurt it’s going to be me, understand? What more do you want?”

He strode off, boiling. Chub stared after him, and after a long moment reached up and took the cigar from his lips. Only then did he realize that he had bitten it in two; half the butt was still inside his mouth. He spat and stood there shaking his head.

“How’s she going, Peeby?”

Peebles looked up from the welding machine. “Hi, Chub, have her ready for you in twenty minutes.” He gauged the distance between the welding machine and the big tractor. “I should have forty feet of cable,” he said, looking at the festoons of arc and ground cables that hung from the storage hooks in the back of the welder. “Don’t want to get a tractor over here to move the thing, and don’t feel like cranking up the Seven just to get it close enough.” He separated the arc cable and threw it aside, walked to the tractor, paying the ground cable off his arm. He threw out the last of his slack and grasped the ground clamp when he was eight feet from the machine. Taking it in his left hand, he pulled hard, reaching out with his right to grasp the mouldboard of the Seven, trying to get it far enough to clamp on to the machine.

Chub stood there watching him, chewing on his cigar, absent-mindedly diddling with the controls on the arc-welder. He pressed the starter-button, and the six-cylinder motor responded with a purr. He spun the work-selector dials idly, threw the arc generator switch—

A bolt of incredible energy, thin, searing, blue-white, left the rod-holder at his feet, stretched itself
fifty feet
across to Peebles, whose fingers had just touched the mouldboard of the tractor. Peebles’ head and shoulders were surrounded for a second by a violet nimbus, and then he folded over and dropped. A circuit breaker clacked behind the control board of the welder, but too late. The Seven rolled slowly backwards, without firing, on level ground, until it brought up against a road-roller.

Chub’s cigar was gone, and he didn’t notice it. He had the knuckles of his right hand in his mouth, and his teeth sunk into the pudgy flesh. His eyes protruded; he crouched there and quivered, literally frightened out of his mind. For old Peebles was burned almost in two.

They buried him next to Rivera. There wasn’t much talk afterwards; the old man had been a lot closer to all of them than they had realized until now. Harris, for once in his rum-dumb, lightheaded life, was quiet and serious, and Kelly’s walk seemed to lose some of its litheness. Hour after hour Dennis’ flabby mouth worked, and he bit at his lower lip until it was swollen and tender. Al Knowles seemed more or less unaffected, as was to be expected from a man who had something less than the brains of a chicken. Chub Horton had snapped out of it after a couple of hours and was very nearly himself again. And in Tom Jaeger swirled a black, furious anger at this unknowable curse that had struck the camp.