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over it. One of them was a fair blacksmith, and after a ritual sacrifice and a round
of prayers he shoved a bar of iron into the charcoal and Jason pumped the
bellows until it glowed white hot. With much hammering and cursing, it was
laboriously formed into a sturdy open-end wrench with an offset head to get at
the countersunk nuts. Jason made sure that the opening was slightly undersized,
then took the untempered wrench to the work site and filed the jaws to an exact
fit. After being reheated and quenched in oil he had the tool that he hoped would
do the job.
Edipon must have been keeping track of the work progress, for he was
waiting near the engine when Jason returned with the completed wrench.
"I have been under," he announced, "and have seen the nuts that the
devilish Appsalanoj have concealed within solid metal. Who would have
suspected! It still seems to me impossible that one metal could be hidden within
another. How could that be done?"
"Easy enough. The base of the assembled engine was put into a form and
the molten covering metal poured into it. It must have a much lower melting
point than the steel of the engine, so there would be no damage. They just have a
better knowledge of metal technology in the city, and counted upon your
ignorance."
"Ignorance! You insult-"
"I take it back. I just meant they thought they could get away with the
trick; and since they didn't, they are the stupid ones. Does that satisfy you?"
"What do you do next?"
"I take off the nuts and when I do there is a good chance that the poison-
hood will be released and can simply be lifted off."
"It is too dangerous for you to do. The fiends may have other traps ready
when the nut is turned. I will send a strong slave to turn them while we watch
from a distance. His death will not matter."
"I'm touched by your concern for my health, but as much as I would like to
take advantage of the offer, I cannot. I've been over the same ground and reached
the reluctant conclusion that this is one job of work that I have to do myself.
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Taking off those nuts looks entirely too easy, and that's what makes me
suspicious. out for any more trickery at the same time-and that is something that
only I can do. Now I suggest you withdraw with the troops to a safer spot."
There was no hesitation about leaving; footsteps rustled quickly on the
sand and Jason was alone. The leather walls flapped slackly in the wind, and
there was no other sound. Jason spat on his palms, controlled a slight shiver, and
slid into the pit. The wrench fitted neatly over the nut, he wrapped both hands
around it, and, bracing his leg against the pit wall, began to pull.
And stopped. Three turns of thread on the bolt projected below the nut,
scraped clean of metal by the industrious Mikah. Something about them looked
very wrong, though he didn't know quite what. But suspicion was enough.
"Mikah," he shouted, but had to call loudly two more times before his
assistant poked his head tentatively around the screen. "Nip over to the
petroleum works and get me one of their bolts threaded with a nut-any size, it
doesn't matter."
Jason warmed his hands by the stove until Mikah returned with the oily
bolt, then waved him out to rejoin the others. Back in the pit, he held it up next to
the protruding section of Appsalan bolt and almost shouted with joy. The threads
on the engine bolt were canted at a slightly different angle: where one ran up, the
other ran down. The Appsalan threads had been cut in reverse, with a lefthand
thread.
Throughout the galaxy there existed as many technical and cultural
differences as there were planets, but one of the few things they all had in
common, inherited from their terrestrial ancestors, was a uniformity of thread.
Jason had never thought about it before, but when he mentally ran through his
experiences on different planets he realized that they were all the same. Screws
went into wood, bolts went into threaded holes, and nuts all went onto bolts
when you turned them with a clockwise motion. Counterclockwise removed
them. In his hand was the crude d'zertano nut and bolt, and when he tried it it
moved in the same manner. But the engine bolt did not: it had to be turned
clockwise to remove it.
Dropping the nut and bolt, he placed the wrench on the massive engine
bolt and slowly applied pressure in what felt like the completely wrong direction-
as if he were tightening, not loosening. It gave slowly, first a quarter-turn, then a
half-turn. Bit by bit the projecting threads vanished, until they were level with the
surface of the nut. It turned easily now, and within a minute it fell into the pit. He
threw the wrench after it and scrambled out. Standing at the edge, he carefully
sniffed the air, ready to run at the slightest smell of gas. There was nothing.
The second nut came off as easily as the first, and with no ill effects. Jason
pushed a sharp chisel between the upper case and the baseplate where he had
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removed the solder, and when he leaned on it the case shifted slightly, held down
only by its own weight.
From the entrance to the enclosure he shouted to the group huddled in the
distance. "Come on back-this job is almost finished."
They all took turns at sliding into the pit and looking at the projecting
bolts, and made appreciative sounds when Jason leaned on the chisel and showed
that the case was free.
"There is still the little matter of taking it off," he told them, "and I'm sure
that grabbing and heaving is the wrong way. That was my first idea, but the
people who assembled that thing had some bad trouble in store for anyone who
tightened those nuts instead of loosening them. Until we find out what that is, we
are going to tread very lightly. Do you have any big blocks of ice around here,
Edipon? It is winter now, isn't it?"
"Ice? Winter?" Edipon mumbled, caught off guard by the change of
subject. He rubbed at the reddened tip of his prominent nose. "Of course it is
winter. Ice-there must be ice on the higher lakes in the mountain; they are always
frozen at this time of the year. But what do you want ice for?"
"You get it and I'll show you. Have it cut in nice flat blocks that I can stack
I'm not going to lift off the hood-I'm going to drop the engine out from
underneath it!"
By the time the slaves had brought the ice down from the distant lakes
Jason had rigged a strong wooden frame flat on the ground around the engine
and pushed sharpened metal wedges under the hood; then he had secured the
wedges to the frame. Now, if the engine was lowered into the pit, the hood would
stay above, supported by the wedges. The ice would take care of this. Jason built a
foundation of ice under the engine and then slipped out the supporting bars. As
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