Being an interstellar trouble shooter wouldn’t be so bad …if I could shoot the trouble!
The Old Man had that look of intense glee on his face that meant someonewas in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great featof intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attackbeing the best defense and so forth.
“I quit. Don’t bother telling me what dirty job you havecooked up, because I have already quit and you do not want to revealcompany secrets to me.”
The grin was even wider now and he actually chortled as he thumbed abutton on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the deliveryslot onto his desk.
“This is your contract,” he said. “It tells how andwhen you will work. A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that youcouldn’t crack with a molecular disruptor.”
I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a singlemotion. Before it could fall, I had my Solar out and, with a wide-angleshot, burned the contract to ashes.
The Old Man pressed the button again and another contract slid out onhis desk. If possible, the smile was still wider now.
“I should have said a duplicate of your contract—like thisone here.” He made a quick note on his secretary plate. “Ihave deducted 13 credits from your salary for the cost of theduplicate—as well as a 100-credit fine for firing a Solar inside abuilding.”
I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondledmy contract.
“According to this document, you can’t quit. Ever. ThereforeI have a little job I know you’ll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauribeacon has shut down. It’s a Mark III beacon.…”
“What kind of beacon?” I asked him. I have repairedhyperspace beacons from one arm of the Galaxy to the other and was sureI had worked on every type or model made. But I had never heard of thiskind.
“Mark III,” the Old Man repeated, practically chortling.“I never heard of it either until Records dug up the specs. Theyfound them buried in the back of their oldest warehouse. This was theearliest type of beacon ever built—by Earth, no less. Consideringits location on one of the Proxima Centauri planets, it might very wellbe the first beacon.”
I looked at the blueprints he handed me and felt my eyes glaze withhorror. “It’s a monstrosity! It looks more like a distillerythan a beacon—must be at least a few hundred meters high.I’m a repairman, not an archeologist. This pile of junk is over2000 years old. Just forget about it and build a new one.”
The Old Man leaned over his desk, breathing into my face. “Itwould take a year to install a new beacon—besides being tooexpensive—and this relic is on one of the main routes. We haveships making fifteen-light-year detours now.”
He leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and gave me LectureForty-four on Company Duty and My Troubles.
“This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, whenit really should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are madeto last forever—or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down,it is never an accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter ofjust plugging in a new part.”
He was telling me—the guy who did the job while he sat back on hisfat paycheck in an air-conditioned office.
He rambled on. “How I wish that were all it took! I would have afleet of parts ships and junior mechanics to install them. But its notlike that at all. I have a fleet of expensive ships that are equipped todo almost anything—manned by a bunch of irresponsibles likeyou.”
I nodded moodily at his po