Triplanetary (10 page)

The Anti-Personnel mines had been giving trouble. Too many men were being killed by prematures, and nobody could find out why. The problem was handed to Siberia. Hinton tackled it, missed, and called for help. The Siberians rallied 'round. Kinnison loaded and tested mines. So did Paul and Tug and Blondie. Kinnison was testing, out in the Firing Area, when he was called to Administration to attend a Staff Meeting. Hinton relieved him. He had not reached the gate, however, when a guard car flagged him down.

"Sorry, sir, but there has been an accident at Pit Five and you are needed out there."

"Accident! Fred Hinton!" Is he ... ?"

"I'm afraid so, sir."

It is a harrowing thing to have to help gather up what fragments can be found of one of your best friends. Kinnison was white and sick as he got back to the firing station, just in time to hear the Chief Safety Officer say:

"Must have been carelessness—rank carelessness. I warned this man Hinton myself, on one occasion."

"Carelessness, hell!" Kinnison blazed. "You had the guts to warn me once, too, and I've forgotten more about safety in explosives than you ever will know. Fred Hinton was not careless—if I hadn't been called in, that would have been me."

"What is it, then?"

"I don't know—yet. I tell you now, though, Major Moulton, that I will know, and the minute I find out I'll talk to you again."

He went back to Siberia, where he found Tug and Paul, faces still tear-streaked, staring at something that looked like a small piece of wire.

"This is it, Uncle Ralph," Tug said, brokenly. "Don't see how it could be, but it is."

"What is what?" Kinnison demanded.

"Firing pin. Brittle. When you pull the safety, the force of the spring must break it off at this constricted section here."

"But damn it, Tug, it doesn't make sense. It's tension ... but wait—there'd be some horizontal component, at that. But they'd have to be brittle as glass."

"I know it. It doesn't seem to make much sense. But we were there, you know—and I assembled every one of those God damned mines myself. Nothing else could possibly have made that mine go off just when it did."

"O.K., Tug. We'll test 'em. Call Bart in—he can have the scale-lab boys rig us up a gadget by the time we can get some more of those pins in off the line."

They tested a hundred, under the normal tension of the spring, and three of them broke. They tested another hundred. Five broke. They stared at each other.

"That's it." Kinnison declared. "But this will stink to high Heaven—have Inspection break out a new lot and we'll test a thousand."

Of that thousand pins, thirty two broke.

"Bart, will you dictate a one-page preliminary report to Vera and rush it over to Building One as fast as you can? I'll go over and tell Moulton a few things."

Major Moulton was, as usual, "in conference," but Kinnison was in no mood to wait.

"Tell him," he instructed the Major's private secretary, who had barred his way, "that either he will talk to me right now or I will call District Safety over his head. I'll give him sixty seconds to decide which."

Moulton decided to see him. "I'm very busy, Doctor Kinnison, but ... "

"I don't give a swivel-eyed tinker's damn how busy you are. I told you that the minute I found out what was the matter with the M2 mine I'd talk to you again. Here I am. Brittle firing pins. Three and two-tenths percent defective. So I'm ... "

"Very irregular, Doctor. The matter will have to go through channels ... "

"Not this one. The formal report is going through channels, but as I started to tell you, this is an emergency report to you as Chief of Safety. Since the defect is not covered by specs, neither Process nor Ordnance can reject except by test, and whoever does the testing will very probably be killed. Therefore, as every employee of Stoner and Black is not only authorized but positively instructed to do upon discovering an unsafe condition, I am reporting it direct to Safety. Since my whiskers are a trifle longer than an operator's, I am reporting it direct to the Head of the Safety Division; and I am telling you that if you don't do something about it damned quick—stop production and slap a HOLD order on all the M2AP's you can reach—I'll call District and make you personally responsible for every premature that occurs from now on."

Since any safety man, anywhere, would much rather stop a process than authorize one, and since this particular safety man loved to throw his weight around, Kinnison was surprised that Moulton did not act instantly. The fact that he did not so act should have, but did not, give the naive Kinnison much information as to conditions existing Outside the Fence.

"But they need those mines very badly; they are an item of very heavy production. If we stop them ... how long? Have you any suggestions?"

"Yes. Call District and have them rush through a change of spec—include heat-treat and a modified Charpy test. In the meantime, we can get back into full production tomorrow if you have District slap a hundred-per-cent inspection onto those pins."

"Excellent! We can do that—very fine work, Doctor! Miss Morgan, get District at once!"

This, too, should have warned Kinnison, but it did not. He went back to the Laboratory.

Tempus fugited.

Orders came to get ready to load M67 H.E.A.T. (105 m/m High Explosive, Armor Tearing) shell on the Nine, and the Siberians went joyously to work upon the new load. The explosive was to be a mixture of TNT and a polysyllabic compound, everything about which was highly confidential and restricted.

"But what the hell's so hush-hush about that stuff?" domanded Blondie, who, with five or six others, was crowding around the Czar's desk. Unlike the days of Cappy Sumner, the private office of the Chief Chemist was now as much Siberia as Siberia itself. "The Germans developed it originally, didn't they?"

"Yes, and the Italians used it against the Ethiopians which was why their bombs were so effective. But it says 'hush-hush,' so that's the way it will be. And if you talk in your sleep, Blondie, tell Betty not to listen."

The Siberians worked. The M67 was put into production. It was such a success that orders for it came in faster than they could be filled. Production was speeded up. Small cavitations began to appear. Nothing serious, since they passed Inspection. Nevertheless, Kinnison protested, in a formal report, receipt of which was formally acknowledged.

General Somebody-or-other, Entwhistle's Commanding Officer, whom none of the Siberians had ever met, was transferred to more active duty, and a colonel—Snodgrass or some such name took his place. Ordnance got a new Chief Inspector.

An M67, Entwhistle loaded, prematured in a gun-barrel, killing twenty seven men. Kinnison protested again, verbally this time, at a staff meeting. He was assured—verbally—that a formal and thorough investigation was being made. Later he was informed—verbally and without witnesses that the investigation had been completed and that the loading was not at fault. A new Commanding Officer—Lieutenant-Colonel Franklin—appeared.

The Siberians, too busy to do more than glance at newspapers, paid very little attention to a glider-crash in which several notables were killed. They heard that an investigation was being made, but even the Czar did not know until later that Washington had for once acted fast in correcting a bad situation; that Inspection, which had been under Production, was summarily divorced therefrom. And gossip spread abroad that Stillman, then Head of the Inspection Division, was not a big enough man for the job. Thus it was an entirely unsuspecting Kinnison who was called into the innermost private office of Thomas Keller, the Superintendent of Production.

"Kinnison, how in hell do you handle those Siberians? I never saw anything like them before in my life."

"No, and you never will again. Nothing on Earth except a war could get them together or hold them together. I don't 'handle' them—they can't be 'handled.' I give them a job to do and let them do it. I back them up. That's all."

"Umngpf." Keller grunted. "That's a hell of a formula—if I want anything done right I've got to do it myself. But whatever your system is, it works. But what I wanted to talk to you about is, how'd you like to be Head of the Inspection Division, which would be enlarged to include your present Chemical Section?"

"Huh?" Kinnison demanded, dumbfounded.

"At a salary well up on the confidential scale." Keller wrote a figure upon a piece of paper, showed it to his visitor, then burned it in an ash-tray.

Kinnison whistled. "I'd like it—for more reasons than that. But I didn't know that you—or have you already checked with the General and Mr. Black?"

"Naturally," came the smooth reply. "In fact, I suggested it to them and have their approval. Perhaps you are curious to know why?"

"I certainly am."

"For two reasons. First, because you have developed a crew of technical experts that is the envy of every technical man in the country. Second, you and your Siberians have done every job I ever asked you to, and done it fast. As a Division Head, you will no longer be under me, but I am right, I think, in assuming that you will work with me just as efficiently as you do now?"

"I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't" This reply was made in all honesty; but later, when he came to understand what Keller had meant, how bitterly Kinnison was to regret its making!

He moved into Stillman's office, and found there what he thought was ample reason for his predecessor's failure to make good. To his way of thinking it was tremendously overstaffed, particularly with Assistant Chief Inspectors. Delegation of authority, so widely preached throughout Entwhistle Ordnance Plant, had not been given even lip service here. Stillman had not made a habit of visiting the lines; nor did the Chief Line Inspectors, the boys who really knew what was going on, ever visit him. They reported to the Assistants, who reported to Stillman, who handed down his Jovian pronouncements.

Kinnison set out, deliberately this time, to mold his key Chief Line Inspectors into just such a group as the Siberians already were. He released the Assistants to more productive work; retaining of Stillman's office staff only a few clerks and his private secretary, one Celeste de St. Aubin, a dynamic, vivacious—at times explosive—brunette. He gave the boys on the Lines full authority; the few who could not handle the load he replaced with men who could. At first the Chief Line Inspectors simply could not believe; but after the affair of the forty millimeter, in which Kinnison rammed the decision of his subordinate past Keller, past the General, past Stoner and Black, and clear up to the Commanding Officer before he made it stick, they were his to a man.

Others of his Section Heads, however, remained aloof. Pettier, whose Technical Section was now part of Inspection, and Wilson, of Gages, were two of those who talked largely and glowingly, but acted obstructively if they acted at all. As weeks went on, Kinnison became wiser and wiser, but made no sign. One day. during a lull, his secretary hung out the "In Conference" sign and went into Kinnison's private office.

"There isn't a reference to any such Investigation anywhere in Central Files." She paused, as if to add something, then turned to leave.

"As you were, Celeste. Sit down. I expected that. Suppressed—if made at all. You're a smart girl, Celeste, and you know the ropes. You know that you can talk to me, don't you?"

"Yes, but this is ... well, the word is going around that they are going to break you, just as they have broken every other good man on the Reservation."

"I expected that, too." The words were quiet enough, but the man's jaw tightened. "Also, I know how they are going to do it"

"How?"

"This speed-up on the Nine. They know that I won't stand still for the kind of casts that Keller's new procedure, which goes into effect tonight, is going to produce ... and this new C.O. probably will."

Silence fell, broken by the secretary.

"General Sanford, our first C.O., was a soldier, and a good one," she declared finally. "So was Colonel Snodgrass. Lieutenant Colonel Franklin wasn't; but he was too much of a man to do the dir ... "

"Dirty work," dryly. "Exactly. Go on."

"And Stoner, the New York half—ninety five percent, really—of Stoner and Black, Inc., is a Big Time Operator. So we get this damned nincompoop of a major, who doesn't know a f-u-s-e from a f-u-z-e, direct from a Wall Street desk."

"So what?" One must have heard Ralph Kinnison say those two words to realize how much meaning they can be made to carry.

"So what!" the girl blazed, wringing her hands. "Ever since you have been over here I have been expecting you to blow up—to smash something—in spite of the dozens of times you have told me a fighter can not slug effectively, Celeste, until he gets both feet firmly planted.' When—when—are you going to get your feet planted?"

"Never, I'm afraid," he said glumly, and she stared. "So I'll have to start slugging with at least one foot in the air."

That startled her. "Explain, please?"

"I wanted proof. Stuff that I could take to the District—that I could use to tack some hides out flat on a barn door with. Do I get it? I do not. Not a shred. Neither can you. What chance do you think there is of ever getting any real proof?"

"Very little," Celeste admitted. "But you can at least smash Pettier, Wilson, and that crowd. How I hate those slimy snakes! I wish that you could smash Tom Keller, the poisonous moron!"

"Not so much moron—although he acts like one at times—as an ignorant puppet with a head swelled three sizes too big for his hat. But you can quit yapping about slugging—fireworks are due to start at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, when Drake is going to reject tonight's run of shell."

"Really? But I don't see how either Pettier or Wilson come in."

"They don't. A fight with those small fry—even smashing them wouldn't make enough noise. Keller."

"Keller!" Celeste squealed. "But you'll ... "

"I know I'll get fired. So what? By tackling him I can raise enough hell so that the Big Shots will have to cut out at least some of the rough stuff. You'll probably get fired too, you know—you've been too close to me for your own good."