Footfall

“Beats me how you find your way around.” Whitey Lowenstein took off the welder’s mask and cap. “Ten minutes to quitting time. Beer?”

“I’ll join you if I can.”

The Chuckanut was crowded, but Whitey had saved a corner booth. He had two girls with him. Harry sank into the booth gratefully and waved for a pitcher.

“We’d about given you up,” Lowenstein said. “You remember Pat.” He took Pat’s hand and held it. “And that’s Janet. What kept you?”

“Rohrs wanted to go over some stuff. Hi, Pat. Nice to meet you, Janet. What do you do for the project?”

“Pat’s a clerk,” Janet said. “I’m a welder, like Whitey.”

“Tough job.” She didn’t look big enough, either.

“I can handle it,” Janet said.

Whitey watched Harry chug a large glass, refill it, and chug again. “Okay, Harry, I give up. I’ve seen you carrying General Gillespie’s briefcase. I’ve heard your stories about Kansas, and I even believe them, but then I’ve seen you sweeping floors. I watched you connect up electrical lines. Today you show me where to weld that rail thing, and then you’re in a conference with Rohrs for an hour after quitting time.”

“Harry, just what in hell are you?”

Harry laughed. “You’d never guess in a million years. Whitey, I’m a trusty.”

“A what?”

Pat giggled.

“Remember when we met?”

“Yeah, I thought you were an atomjack.”

“Remember there was a big security flap that day?”

“You remember the big flap, right? Trust me, it was the day you met me. I caused it. I helped smuggle a newspaper reporter into here, right into General Gillespie’s house.”

“Harry, goddammit, I never know when you’re bullshitting me.”

“Not this time. The guy’s name was Roger Brooks. I don’t know how he found out there was a story here, but he hired me to bring him here from Colorado Springs. Turns out he’d known Mrs. Gillespie a long time.”

“Jeez, and you brought him in here?” Janet didn’t sound very friendly.

“Yeah, well, I’d been told you weren’t hiding anything but snouts. And I’d captured a snout—”

“You what?” Janet demanded.

“Captured a snout.”

“He did, too,” Whitey said. “He’ll tell you about it if you ask. Or if you don’t ask.”

“Aw! Anyway, bringing Roger in seemed like a good idea at the time. But Roger figured out what Archangel was before I did, and he clipped me and stole the truck. Next thing I know I wake up in General Gillespie’s front yard with about a zillion Marines and Air Police. Every one of them’s pointing a gun at me, and here comes the General himself. He didn’t look too friendly.”

“I don’t reckon he would have,” Whitey said. “What did you do?”

“Do? I pleaded for mercy.”

“Must have worked …”

“Yeah. I had one thing going for me. I used to work for Congressman Dawson …”

“Right. You told me. The guy the snouts have making speeches for them. It was his wife you had ride the snout.”

Janet laughed. “Harry, you sound like a good man to know.”

“Oh, I am, I am. Anyway, since I knew his friends, it made the General a little more ready to listen. After a while he decided I wasn’t really a bad guy, so he made me an offer. I could go to work as a gofer, or they’d send me off to Port Angeles.”

“Better than Walla Walla,” Whitey said. “Port Angeles is where they send you if you quit.”

“Yeah,” Pat said. “But it’s a drag. I must know ten, twelve guys who went over there and decided they’d rather be back here. It’s not a bad place, but there’s nothing to do except grow vegetables, and they still censor any letters you want to send out.”

“That’s what the General told me,” Harry said. “I thought about it for maybe fifteen seconds. Christ, I was beginning to rust in Colorado Springs. I’d have gone nuts in Port Angeles.

“So they made me a gofer. I do what the General wants. They pay me pretty good, and — I’m in it, I’m where it’s happening. I’ve been all over that ship, I bet I know my way around inside the Brick as good as anybody except maybe Max Rohrs. I’ve worked on the steam lines for the attitude controls, and I helped the Navy guys install those big guns off the New Jersey, Jesus those are big, and the Army guys with their missile launchers.” Harry grinned wolfishly. “Shee-it, if we can get this thing up there, those snouts’ll think Mount Whitney is coming after them next!”

Whitey lifted his glass. “Bigger and better surprises.”

“Right. A willing foe and sea room!”

“What’s that?”

“Nelson. A British admiral—”

“Hell, I know who Nelson was.”

“Okay. It was his toast. And that’s the story.”

“Pretty good story. You fall in the shit and come up smelling like a rose.”

“I thought so. Now I don’t know! These twelve-hour workdays are killing me.”

Whitey nodded agreement. “Won’t last much longer, though.”

“No, I guess not. We still have to mount the Brick on the Shell and the Shuttles on the Brick. I wish there was more than just one way to test those shock absorbers.”

“How are they-?”

“Launch. What else is big enough for them? Christ, the ship’s just full of kludged-up stuff, it’s all we can do to get all the kludges put down on the drawings. I sure feel sorry for anybody who has to fix this sucker.”

“You, maybe.”