And Check the Oil Randall Garrett

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.And Check the OilAstounding – October 1958(1958)*Randall GarrettIf we could only get hold of a working interstellar spaceship, we would of course be out among the stars ourselves.They keep telling us.!-I DON'T KNOW who got me into it.Somebody mentioned my name to somebody else, I suppose, and then some third party agreed, so my name was sent to the FBI.Those worthy gentlemen stewed over my recorded past and my reputable present, and came up with a forecast on my probable future, all of which was duly forwarded to the persons interested.They chewed it all over, and I was nabbed for the job.Of course, it wasn't quite as crude as that.They couldn't and didn't draft me; instead, they got Hoffstetter to do it He was the perfect man for the job, too; he knows that the way to whet the scientific appetite is to give it a tidbit that it can't swallow until it's been chewed over for a long time.He came strolling into my lab one day with a grin spread across his chubby face and said: "Hi, Doc.I asked at your office first, but the girl said you'd be in the lab.I should have known you'd never go in for paper work.""Hi, Hoff," I said."Still working for Uncle Sam'l?""Well, it feels like work, and I'm drawing a paycheck.What's cooking?"He meant the question literally.He was pointing at the Wolff flask on the lab bench in front of me.There was a thermometer in one neck, a mercury-sealed electric stirrer in another, and a specially designed fractionating column attached to the third.The whole thing was attached to a vacuum pump, and the stuff in the flask was boiling merrily.I knew he wasn't really interested, so I just said: "A bunch of benzine derivatives, I hope.What's on your mind, Hoff?""I've got a job for you, Doc," Hoffstetter said casually.I peered at the thermometer, checked the time, and put the figures on my data sheet."Yeah? What kind of a job?"His grin grew wider."Now, what kind of a job would I be giving to the world's greatest chemist? Dishwashing?""I've done plenty of that," I told him."And knock off that 'world's greatest' bunk.I'm not, and you know it""You are as far as this job is concerned.Here." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small box.He set it on the lab bench and flipped it open.It was padded inside like a jeweler's box, and a small sealed flask nestled itself comfortably in the padding.The flask wasn't any bigger than the first joint of my thumb.It was about three-quarters full of some straw-colored liquid.I didn't pick it up.I just looked at it and then looked up at Hoffstetter."So?""It's all yours," he said, "all one and a half milliliters of it.We want to know what it is."This time, I picked the flask up.It was a trifle heavier than I'd expected it to be.The liquid inside was more viscous than water.In fact, the stuff looked and flowed like a good grade of light machine oil."Where'd you get it?" I asked."I can't tell you, Doc," Hoffstetter said.That irritated me."Well, is there anything you can tell me? This bottle's sealed.What happens if I break the seal? Does it oxidize on exposure to air, or evaporate, or what?""Oh, that.That was just to prevent leakage.No, it's fairly stable, I imagine.Odorless.Nonpoisonous, as far as I know, though I don't think anyone's tried to taste it.Oily.I don't know the boiling point."I was holding the flask up to the light, and I noticed that the meniscus at the surface was convex."And it doesn't wet glass," I said."Hell," said Hoffstetter, "it doesn't wet anything.""Interesting," I admitted."Is this the biggest sample you could get?"Hoffstetter spread his hands."It's all I have.""Not much to work with," I told him, "but I'll see what I can do.""Fair enough," he said."Send the analysis and the bill to me, personally." He handed me a card."And keep it under your hat.""Fair enough," I said."I'll let you know in a week or so."-It was a lot less than a week.Three days later, I got Hoffstetter on the phone."Hoff, where the devil did you get that stuff?""Why?" he countered."What's that got to do with it?""Because it doesn't act like anything I ever came across before.""You mean you can't analyze it?" he asked.His voice sounded worried."I didn't say that.The first thing I did was get a spectroscope reading, so I can tell you to a T what elements are in the stuff.But the molecular weight is something fierce.It's way too high.""What do you mean, 'too high'?""Well, the stuff ought to be a solid, not a nice, free-flowing liquid," I told him."And it's a devil of a lot more stable than it ought to be, all things considered.Can you possibly get me any more of it?"There was a silence at the other end for a moment.Then Hoffstetter said: "Do you think you could analyze it if you had more time and more of the stuff?""Sure.Where can I get it?"Hoffstetter had me with a gaff, and he knew it.I could almost see his grin coming across the phone wires.He made his proposition.I hemmed and hawed for all of five minutes before I took it.-It didn't take long for me to get a leave of absence from my own company.I just left it in the hands of my business partner, George Avery, and took off.The lab staff could handle almost anything that came along while I was gone.Hoffstetter and I caught a commercial airline stratocruiser out to the West Coast, and an Air Force jet bomber took us from there.I had no idea of where we were headed, except that it was an unidentified island somewhere in the South Pacific.The plane rolled to a halt at the end of a long runway.A squad of Air Force men, each armed with a heavy pistol at his belt, came sprinting up to help us unload.I'd requisitioned some equipment I needed from the Air Force labs, and it was all neatly packed in crates in the belly of the ship.The Air Force men treated the crates as though they were babies, which I appreciated no little.The first thing that caught my eyes as I stepped off the plane was the big metal dome that towered over every other building on the base, even the control tower.It looked thick and squat, even so; it looked like a big, flat, black Easter egg sitting on its larger end.It was a hundred feet high and at least seventy-five feet through at its thickest part.Don't ask me why I didn't recognize it for what it was.I should have, I suppose.I should have taken one look at it, and said to myself: "Well, what do you know? A spaceship!" but somehow I had always assumed that a spaceship would be a tall thin cigar of polished metal, not a fat, eggy-looking, dead black thing like this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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