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distance. He saw it again on screen from a pickup atop the central tower. As
soon as the party was comfortably settled in the executive apartments on the
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upper levels, he and Yves Jacquemont and Mack Vibart and Schalk Retief, the
construction engineer, found an aircar in one of the hangars and went to have
a closer look at her.
She had all her collapsium on, except for a hundredfoot circle at the top and
a number of rectangular openings around the sides. Yves Jacquemont said that
would be where the airlocks would go.
"They always put them on last. But don't be surprised at anything you find or
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er.txt don't find inside. As soon as the skeleton's up they put the armor on,
and then build the rest of the ship out from the middle. It might be slower
getting material in through the airlock openings, but it holds things together
while they're working."
They put on the car's lights, lifted to the top, and let down through the
upper opening. It was like entering a huge globular spider's web, globe within
globe of interlaced girders and struts and braces, extending from the center
to the outer shell. Even the spider was home-a three-hundred-foot ball of
collapsium, looking tiny at the very middle.
"Why, this isn't a ship!" Vibart cried in disgust. "This is just the outside
of a ship. They haven't done a thing inside."
"Oh, yes, they have," Jacquemont contradicted, aiming a spotlight toward the
shimmering ball in the middle. "They have all the engines in-Abbott lift
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and-drive, Dillingham hyperdrives, pseudograv, power reactors, converters,
everything. They wouldn't have put on the shielding if they hadn't. They did
that as soon as they had the outside armor on."
"Wonder why they didn't finish her, if they got that far," Retief said.
"They didn't need her. They'd had it; they wanted to go home."
"Well, we're not going to finish her, not with any fifteen men," Retief said.
"One man has only two hands, two feet and one brain; he can only handle so
much robo-equipment at a time."
"I never expected we'd build a ship ourselves," Conn said. "We came to look
the place over and get a few claims staked. When we've done that, we'll go
back and get a real gang together."
"I don't know where you'll find them," Jacquemont commented. "We'll need a
couple of hundred, and they ought all to be graduate engineers. We can't do
this job with farm-tramps."
"You made some good shipyard men out of farmtramps on Barathrum."
"And what'll you do for supervisors?"
"You're one. General superintendent. Mack, you and Schalk are a couple of
others. You just keep a day ahead of your men in learning the job, you'll do
all right."
Vibart turned to Jacquemont. "You know, Yves, he'll do it," he said. "He
doesn't know how impossible this is, and when we try to tell him, he won't
believe us. You can't stop a guy like that. All right, Conn; deal me in."
"I won't let anybody be any crazier than I am,"
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Jacquemont declared, and then looked around the vastness of the empty ship
with its lacework of steel. "All you need is about ten million square feet of
decks and bulkheads, an air-and-water system, hydroponic tanks and
carniculture vats, astrogation and robo-pilot equipment, about which I know
very little, a hyperspace pilot system, about which I know nothing at all . .
. Conn, why don't you just build a new Merlin? It would be simpler."
"I don't want a new Merlin. I'm not even interested in the original Merlin.
This is what I want, right here."
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He told his father, by screen, about the ship. "I believe we can finish her,
but not with the gang that's here. We'll need a couple of hundred men. Now,
with the supplies we've found, we can stay here indefinitely. Should we do
more exploring and claim some more of these places, or should we come home
right away and start recruiting, and then come back with a large party, start
work on the ship, and explore and make further claims as we have time?" he
asked.
"Better come back as soon as possible. Just explore Port Carpenter, find out
what's going to be needed to finish the ship and what facilities you have to
produce it, and get things cleaned up a little so that you can start work as
soon as you have people to do it. I'm organizing another company-don't laugh,
now; I've only started promotioneering-which I think we will call Trisystem &
Interstellar Spacelines. Get me all the views you can of the ship herself and
of the steel mills and that sort of thing that will produce material for
finishing her; I want.to use them in promotion. By the way, has she a name?"
"Only a shipyard construction number."
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"Then suppose you call her Ouroboros, after Genji Gartner's old ship, the one
that discovered the Trisystem."
"Ouroboros 11; that's fine. Will do."
"Good. I'll have Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong make application for a charter
right away. We'll have to make Alpha-Interplanetary one of the stockholding
companies, and also Koshchei Exploitation & Development, and, of course,
Litchfield Exploration & Salvage . . . ."
It was a pity there really wasn't a Merlin. If this kept on nothing else would
be able to figure out who owned how much stock in what.
They found the on-the-job engineering office for the ship in a small dome half
a mile from the construction dock. Yves Jacquemont and Mack Vibart and Schalk
Retief moved in and buried themselves to the ears in specifications and
blueprints. The others formed into parties of three or four, and began looking
about production facilities for material. There was a steel mill a mile from
the construction site; it was almost fully robotic. Iron ore went in at one
end, and finished sheet steel and girders and deck plates came out at the
other, and a dozen men could handle the whole thing. There was a collapsium
plant; there were machine-shops and forging-shops. Every time they finished
inspecting one, Yves Jacquemont would have a list of half a dozen more plants
that he wanted found and examined yesterday morning at the latest.
Some of them were in a frightful mess; work had been suspended and everybody
had gone away leaving everything as it was. Some were in perfect order, ready
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to go into operation again as soon as power was put on. It had depended,
apparently, upon the personal character of whoever had been in charge in the
end. The nuclear-electric power unit plant was in the latter class. The man in
charge of it evidently hadn't believed in leaving messes behind, even if he
didn't expect to come back.
It was built in the shape of a T. One side of the cross-stroke contained the
cartridge-case plant, where presses formed sheet-steel cylinders, some as
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