The Repairman By HARRY HARRISON Illustrated by KRAMER 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 have cooked up, because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal companysecrets 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 and when you will work. A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn't crack with amolecular 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 this one here. "He made a quick note on his secretary plate. "I have deducted 13 creditsfrom your salary for the cost of the duplicate--as well as a 100-creditfine for firing a Solar inside a building. " I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondledmy contract. "According to this document, you can't quit. Ever. Therefore I have alittle job I know you'll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauri beacon has shutdown. It's a Mark III beacon. .. . " "_What_ kind of beacon?" I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beaconsfrom one arm of the Galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked onevery type or model made. But I had never heard of this kind. "Mark III, " the Old Man repeated, practically chortling. "I never heardof it either until Records dug up the specs. They found them buried inthe back of their oldest warehouse. This was the earliest type of beaconever built--by Earth, no less. Considering its location on one of theProxima Centauri planets, it might very well be 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 distillery than abeacon--must be at least a few hundred meters high. I'm a repairman, notan archeologist. This pile of junk is over 2000 years old. Just forgetabout it and build a new one. " The Old Man leaned over his desk, breathing into my face. "It would takea year to install a new beacon--besides being too expensive--and thisrelic is on one of the main routes. We have ships makingfifteen-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, when itreally should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are made tolast 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 of justplugging 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 a fleetof parts ships and junior mechanics to install them. But its not likethat at all. I have a fleet of expensive ships that are equipped to doalmost anything--manned by a bunch of irresponsibles like _you_. " I nodded moodily at his pointing finger. "How I wish I could fire you all! Combination space-jockeys, mechanics, engineers, soldiers, con-men and anything else it takes to do therepairs. I have to browbeat, bribe, blackmail and bulldoze you thugsinto doing a simple job. If you think you're fed up, just think how Ifeel. But the ships must go through! The beacons must operate!" I recognized this deathless line as the curtain speech and crawled to myfeet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching inhis papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled me onhis finger again. "And don't get any fancy ideas about jumping your contract. We canattach that bank account of yours on Algol II long before you could drawthe money out. " I smiled, a little weakly, I'm afraid, as if I had never meant to keepthat account a secret. His spies were getting more efficient every day. Walking down the hall, I tried to figure a way to transfer the moneywithout his catching on--and knew at the same time he was figuring a wayto outfigure me. It was all very depressing, so I stopped for a drink, then went on tothe spaceport. * * * * * By the time the ship was serviced, I had a course charted. The nearestbeacon to the broken-down Proxima Centauri Beacon was on one of theplanets of Beta Circinus and I headed there first, a short trip of onlyabout nine days in hyperspace. To understand the importance of the beacons, you have to understandhyperspace. Not that many people do, but it is easy enough to understandthat in this _non_-space the regular rules don't apply. Speed andmeasurements are a matter of relationship, not constant facts like thefixed universe. The first ships to enter hyperspace had no place to go--and no way toeven tell if they had moved. The beacons solved that problem and openedthe entire universe. They are built on planets and generate tremendousamounts of power. This power is turned into radiation that is punchedthrough into hyperspace. Every beacon has a code signal as part of itsradiation and represents a measurable point in hyperspace. Triangulationand quadrature of the beacons works for navigation--only it follows itsown rules. The rules are complex and variable, but they are still rulesthat a navigator can follow. For a hyperspace jump, you need at least four beacons for an accuratefix. For long jumps, navigators use as many as seven or eight. So everybeacon is important and every one has to keep operating. That is where Iand the other trouble-shooters came in. We travel in well-stocked ships that carry a little bit of everything;only one man to a ship because that is all it takes to operate theoverly efficient repair machinery. Due to the very nature of our job, wespend most of our time just rocketing through normal space. After all, when a beacon breaks down, how do you find it? Not through hyperspace. All you can do is approach as close as you canby using other beacons, then finish the trip in normal space. This cantake months, and often does. This job didn't turn out to be quite that bad. I zeroed on the BetaCircinus beacon and ran a complicated eight-point problem through thenavigator, using every beacon I could get an accurate fix on. Thecomputer gave me a course with an estimated point-of-arrival as well asa built-in safety factor I never could eliminate from the machine. I would much rather take a chance of breaking through near some starthan spend time just barreling through normal space, but apparently Techknows this, too. They had a safety factor built into the computer so youcouldn't end up inside a star no matter how hard you tried. I'm surethere was no humaneness in this decision. They just didn't want to losethe ship. * * * * * It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middleof nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all thestars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finallyrang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece. A fast reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and acomparison with its absolute magnitude showed its distance. Not as badas I had thought--a six-week run, give or take a few days. After feedinga course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the accelerationtank and went to sleep. The time went fast. I rebuilt my camera for about the twentieth time andjust about finished a correspondence course in nucleonics. Mostrepairmen take these courses. Besides their always coming in handy, thecompany grades your pay by the number of specialties you can handle. Allthis, with some oil painting and free-fall workouts in the gym, passedthe time. I was asleep when the alarm went off that announced planetarydistance. Planet two, where the beacon was situated according to the old charts, was a mushy-looking, wet kind of globe. I tried to make sense out ofthe ancient directions and finally located the right area. Stayingoutside the atmosphere, I sent a flying eye down to look things over. Inthis business, you learn early when and where to risk your own skin. Theeye would be good enough for the preliminary survey. The old boys had enough brains to choose a traceable site for thebeacon, equidistant on a line between two of the most prominent mountainpeaks. I located the peaks easily enough and started the eye out fromthe first peak and kept it on a course directly toward the second. Therewas a nose and tail radar in the eye and I fed their signals into ascope as an amplitude curve. When the two peaks coincided, I spun theeye controls and dived the thing down. I cut out the radar and cut in the nose orthicon and sat back to watchthe beacon appear on the screen. [Illustration] The image blinked, focused--and a great damn pyramid swam into view. Icursed and wheeled the eye in circles, scanning the surrounding country. It was flat, marshy bottom land without a bump. The only thing in aten-mile circle was this pyramid--and that definitely wasn't my beacon. Or wasn't it? I dived the eye lower. The pyramid was a crude-looking thing ofundressed stone, without carvings or decorations. There was a shimmer oflight from the top and I took a closer look at it. On the peak of thepyramid was a hollow basin filled with water. When I saw that, somethingclicked in my mind. * * * * * Locking the eye in a circular course, I dug through the Mark IIIplans--and there it was. The beacon had a precipitating field and abasin on top of it for water; this was used to cool the reactor thatpowered the monstrosity. If the water was still there, the beacon wasstill there--inside the pyramid. The natives, who, of course, weren'teven mentioned by the idiots who constructed the thing, had built a niceheavy, thick stone pyramid around the beacon. I took another look at the screen and realized that I had locked the eyeinto a circular orbit about twenty feet above the pyramid. The summit ofthe stone pile was now covered with lizards of some type, apparently thelocal life-form. They had what looked like throwing sticks and arbalastsand were trying to shoot down the eye, a cloud of arrows and rocksflying in every direction. I pulled the eye straight up and away and threw in the control circuitthat would return it automatically to the ship. Then I went to the galley for a long, strong drink. My beacon was notonly locked inside a mountain of handmade stone, but I had managed toirritate the things who had built the pyramid. A great beginning for ajob and one clearly designed to drive a stronger man than me to thebottle. Normally, a repairman stays away from native cultures. They are poison. Anthropologists may not mind being dissected for their science, but arepairman wants to make no sacrifices of any kind for his job. For thisreason, most beacons are built on uninhabited planets. If a beacon _has_to go on a planet with a culture, it is usually built in someinaccessible place. Why this beacon had been built within reach of the local claws, I hadyet to find out. But that would come in time. The first thing to do wasmake contact. To make contact, you have to know the local language. And, for _that_, I had long before worked out a system that wasfool-proof. I had a pryeye of my own construction. It looked like a piece of rockabout a foot long. Once on the ground, it would never be noticed, thoughit was a little disconcerting to see it float by. I located a lizardtown about a thousand kilometers from the pyramid and dropped the eye. It swished down and landed at night in the bank of the local mud wallow. This was a favorite spot that drew a good crowd during the day. In themorning, when the first wallowers arrived, I flipped on the recorder. After about five of the local days, I had a sea of native conversationin the memory bank of the machine translator and had tagged a fewexpressions. This is fairly easy to do when you have a machine memory towork with. One of the lizards gargled at another one and the second oneturned around. I tagged this expression with the phrase, "Hey, George!"and waited my chance to use it. Later the same day, I caught one of themalone and shouted "Hey, George!" at him. It gurgled out through thespeaker in the local tongue and he turned around. When you get enough reference phrases like this in the memory bank, theMT brain takes over and starts filling in the missing pieces. As soon asthe MT could give a running translation of any conversation it heard, Ifigured it was time to make a contact. * * * * * I found him easily enough. He was the Centaurian version of agoat-boy--he herded a particularly loathsome form of local life in theswamps outside the town. I had one of the working eyes dig a cave in anoutcropping of rock and wait for him. When he passed next day, I whispered into the mike: "Welcome, OGoat-boy Grandson! This is your grandfather's spirit speaking fromparadise. " This fitted in with what I could make out of the localreligion. Goat-boy stopped as if he'd been shot. Before he could move, I pushed aswitch and a handful of the local currency, wampum-type shells, rolledout of the cave and landed at his feet. "Here is some money from paradise, because you have been a good boy. "Not really from paradise--I had lifted it from the treasury the nightbefore. "Come back tomorrow and we will talk some more, " I called afterthe fleeing figure. I was pleased to notice that he took the cash beforetaking off. After that, Grandpa in paradise had many heart-to-heart talks withGrandson, who found the heavenly loot more than he could resist. Grandpahad been out of touch with things since his death and Goat-boy happilyfilled him in. I learned all I needed to know of the history, past and recent, and itwasn't nice. In addition to the pyramid being around the beacon, there was a nicelittle religious war going on around the pyramid. It all began with the land bridge. Apparently the local lizards had beenliving in the swamps when the beacon was built, but the builders didn'tthink much of them. They were a low type and confined to a distantcontinent. The idea that the race would develop and might reach _this_continent never occurred to the beacon mechanics. Which is, of course, what happened. A little geological turnover, a swampy land bridge formed in the rightspot, and the lizards began to wander up beacon valley. And foundreligion. A shiny metal temple out of which poured a constant stream ofmagic water--the reactor-cooling water pumped down from the atmospherecondenser on the roof. The radioactivity in the water didn't hurt thenatives. It caused mutations that bred true. A city was built around the temple and, through the centuries, thepyramid was put up around the beacon. A special branch of the priesthoodserved the temple. All went well until one of the priests violated thetemple and destroyed the holy waters. There had been revolt, strife, murder and destruction since then. But still the holy waters would notflow. Now armed mobs fought around the temple each day and a new band ofpriests guarded the sacred fount. And I had to walk into the middle of that mess and repair the thing. It would have been easy enough if we were allowed a little mayhem. Icould have had a lizard fry, fixed the beacon and taken off. Only"native life-forms" were quite well protected. There were spy cells onmy ship, all of which I hadn't found, that would cheerfully rat on mewhen I got back. Diplomacy was called for. I sighed and dragged out the plastifleshequipment. * * * * * Working from 3D snaps of Grandson, I modeled a passable reptile headover my own features. It was a little short in the jaw, me not havingone of their toothy mandibles, but that was all right. I didn't have tolook _exactly_ like them, just something close, to soothe the nativemind. It's logical. If I were an ignorant aborigine of Earth and I raninto a Spican, who looks like a two-foot gob of dried shellac, I wouldimmediately leave the scene. However, if the Spican was wearing a suitof plastiflesh that looked remotely humanoid, I would at least stay andtalk to him. This was what I was aiming to do with the Centaurians. When the head was done, I peeled it off and attached it to an attractivesuit of green plastic, complete with tail. I was really glad they hadtails. The lizards didn't wear clothes and I wanted to take along a lotof electronic equipment. I built the tail over a metal frame thatanchored around my waist. Then I filled the frame with all the equipmentI would need and began to wire the suit. When it was done, I tried it on in front of a full-length mirror. It washorrible but effective. The tail dragged me down in the rear and gave mea duck-waddle, but that only helped the resemblance. That night I took the ship down into the hills nearest the pyramid, anout-of-the-way dry spot where the amphibious natives would never go. Alittle before dawn, the eye hooked onto my shoulders and we sailedstraight up. We hovered above the temple at about 2, 000 meters, until itwas light, then dropped straight down. It must have been a grand sight. The eye was camouflaged to look like aflying lizard, sort of a cardboard pterodactyl, and the slowly flappingwings obviously had nothing to do with our flight. But it was impressiveenough for the natives. The first one that spotted me screamed anddropped over on his back. The others came running. They milled andmobbed and piled on top of one another, and by that time I had landed inthe plaza fronting the temple. The priesthood arrived. I folded my arms in a regal stance. "Greetings, O noble servers of theGreat God, " I said. Of course I didn't say it out loud, just whisperedloud enough for the throat mike to catch. This was radioed back to theMT and the translation shot back to a speaker in my jaws. The natives chomped and rattled and the translation rolled out almostinstantly. I had the volume turned up and the whole square echoed. Some of the more credulous natives prostrated themselves and others fledscreaming. One doubtful type raised a spear, but no one else tried thatafter the pterodactyl-eye picked him up and dropped him in the swamp. The priests were a hard-headed lot and weren't buying any lizards in apoke; they just stood and muttered. I had to take the offensive again. "Begone, O faithful steed, " I said to the eye, and pressed the controlin my palm at the same time. It took off straight up a bit faster than I wanted; little pieces ofwind-torn plastic rained down. While the crowd was ogling this ascent, Iwalked through the temple doors. "I would talk with you, O noble priests, " I said. Before they could think up a good answer, I was inside. * * * * * The temple was a small one built against the base of the pyramid. Ihoped I wasn't breaking too many taboos by going in. I wasn't stopped, so it looked all right. The temple was a single room with amurky-looking pool at one end. Sloshing in the pool was an ancientreptile who clearly was one of the leaders. I waddled toward him and hegave me a cold and fishy eye, then growled something. The MT whispered into my ear, "Just what in the name of the thirteenthsin are you and what are you doing here?" I drew up my scaly figure in a noble gesture and pointed toward theceiling. "I come from your ancestors to help you. I am here to restorethe Holy Waters. " This raised a buzz of conversation behind me, but got no rise out of thechief. He sank slowly into the water until only his eyes were showing. Icould almost hear the wheels turning behind that moss-covered forehead. Then he lunged up and pointed a dripping finger at me. "You are a liar! You are no ancestor of ours! We will--" "Stop!" I thundered before he got so far in that he couldn't back out. "I said your ancestors sent me as emissary--I am not one of yourancestors. Do not try to harm me or the wrath of those who have PassedOn will turn against you. " When I said this, I turned to jab a claw at the other priests, using themotion to cover my flicking a coin grenade toward them. It blew a nicehole in the floor with a great show of noise and smoke. The First Lizard knew I was talking sense then and immediately called ameeting of the shamans. It, of course, took place in the public bathtuband I had to join them there. We jawed and gurgled for about an hour andsettled all the major points. I found out that they were new priests; the previous ones had all beenboiled for letting the Holy Waters cease. They found out I was thereonly to help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this, tentatively, and we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy pathsacross the floor. There was a bolted and guarded door that led into thepyramid proper. While it was being opened, the First Lizard turned tome. "Undoubtedly you know of the rule, " he said. "Because the old priestsdid pry and peer, it was ruled henceforth that only the blind couldenter the Holy of Holies. " I'd swear he was smiling, if thirty teethpeeking out of what looked like a crack in an old suitcase can be calledsmiling. He was also signaling to him an underpriest who carried a brazier ofcharcoal complete with red-hot irons. All I could do was stand and watchas he stirred up the coals, pulled out the ruddiest iron and turnedtoward me. He was just drawing a bead on my right eyeball when my braingot back in gear. "Of course, " I said, "blinding is only right. But in my case you willhave to blind me before I _leave_ the Holy of Holies, not now. I need myeyes to see and mend the Fount of Holy Waters. Once the waters flowagain, I will laugh as I hurl myself on the burning iron. " * * * * * He took a good thirty seconds to think it over and had to agree with me. The local torturer sniffled a bit and threw a little more charcoal onthe fire. The gate crashed open and I stalked through; then it banged tobehind me and I was alone in the dark. But not for long--there was a shuffling nearby and I took a chance andturned on my flash. Three priests were groping toward me, theireye-sockets red pits of burned flesh. They knew what I wanted and ledthe way without a word. A crumbling and cracked stone stairway brought us up to a solid metaldoorway labeled in archaic script _MARK III BEACON--AUTHORIZED PERSONNELONLY_. The trusting builders counted on the sign to do the whole job, for there wasn't a trace of a lock on the door. One lizard merely turnedthe handle and we were inside the beacon. I unzipped the front of my camouflage suit and pulled out theblueprints. With the faithful priests stumbling after me, I located thecontrol room and turned on the lights. There was a residue of charge inthe emergency batteries, just enough to give a dim light. The meters andindicators looked to be in good shape; if anything, unexpectedly brightfrom constant polishing. I checked the readings carefully and found just what I had suspected. One of the eager lizards had managed to open a circuit box and hadpolished the switches inside. While doing this, he had thrown one of theswitches and that had caused the trouble. * * * * * Rather, that had _started_ the trouble. It wasn't going to be ended byjust reversing the water-valve switch. This valve was supposed to beused only for repairs, after the pile was damped. When the water was cutoff with the pile in operation, it had started to overheat and theautomatic safeties had dumped the charge down the pit. I could start the water again easily enough, but there was no fuel leftin the reactor. I wasn't going to play with the fuel problem at all. It would be fareasier to install a new power plant. I had one in the ship that wasabout a tenth the size of the ancient bucket of bolts and produced atleast four times the power. Before I sent for it, I checked over therest of the beacon. In 2000 years, there should be _some_ sign of wear. The old boys had built well, I'll give them credit for that. Ninety percent of the machinery had no moving parts and had suffered no wearwhatever. Other parts they had beefed up, figuring they would wear, butslowly. The water-feed pipe from the roof, for example. The pipe wallswere at least three meters thick--and the pipe opening itself no biggerthan my head. There were some things I could do, though, and I made alist of parts. The parts, the new power plant and a few other odds and ends were chutedinto a neat pile on the ship. I checked all the parts by screen beforethey were loaded in a metal crate. In the darkest hour before dawn, theheavy-duty eye dropped the crate outside the temple and darted awaywithout being seen. I watched the priests through the pryeye while they tried to open it. When they had given up, I boomed orders at them through a speaker in thecrate. They spent most of the day sweating the heavy box up through thenarrow temple stairs and I enjoyed a good sleep. It was resting insidethe beacon door when I woke up. * * * * * The repairs didn't take long, though there was plenty of groaning fromthe blind lizards when they heard me ripping the wall open to get at thepower leads. I even hooked a gadget to the water pipe so their HolyWaters would have the usual refreshing radioactivity when they startedflowing again. The moment this was all finished, I did the job they werewaiting for. I threw the switch that started the water flowing again. There were a few minutes while the water began to gurgle down throughthe dry pipe. Then a roar came from outside the pyramid that must haveshaken its stone walls. Shaking my hands once over my head, I went downfor the eye-burning ceremony. The blind lizards were waiting for me by the door and looked evenunhappier than usual. When I tried the door, I found out why--it wasbolted and barred from the other side. "It has been decided, " a lizard said, "that you shall remain hereforever and tend the Holy Waters. We will stay with you and serve yourevery need. " A delightful prospect, eternity spent in a locked beacon with threeblind lizards. In spite of their hospitality, I couldn't accept. "What--you dare interfere with the messenger of your ancestors!" I hadthe speaker on full volume and the vibration almost shook my head off. The lizards cringed and I set my Solar for a narrow beam and ran itaround the door jamb. There was a great crunching and banging from thejunk piled against it, and then the door swung free. I threw it open. Before they could protest, I had pushed the priests out through it. The rest of their clan showed up at the foot of the stairs and made agreat ruckus while I finished welding the door shut. Running through thecrowd, I faced up to the First Lizard in his tub. He sank slowly beneaththe surface. "What lack of courtesy!" I shouted. He made little bubbles in the water. "The ancestors are annoyed and have decided to forbid entrance to theInner Temple forever; though, out of kindness, they will let the watersflow. Now I must return--on with the ceremony!" The torture-master was too frightened to move, so I grabbed out his hotiron. A touch on the side of my face dropped a steel plate over my eyes, under the plastiskin. Then I jammed the iron hard into my phonyeye-sockets and the plastic gave off an authentic odor. A cry went up from the crowd as I dropped the iron and staggered inblind circles. I must admit it went off pretty well. * * * * * Before they could get any more bright ideas, I threw the switch and myplastic pterodactyl sailed in through the door. I couldn't see it, ofcourse, but I knew it had arrived when the grapples in the claws latchedonto the steel plates on my shoulders. I had got turned around after the eye-burning and my flying beast hookedonto me backward. I had meant to sail out bravely, blind eyes facinginto the sunset; instead, I faced the crowd as I soared away, so I madethe most of a bad situation and threw them a snappy military salute. Then I was out in the fresh air and away. When I lifted the plate and poked holes in the seared plastic, I couldsee the pyramid growing smaller behind me, water gushing out of the baseand a happy crowd of reptiles sporting in its radioactive rush. Icounted off on my talons to see if I had forgotten anything. One: The beacon was repaired. Two: The door was sealed, so there should be no more sabotage, accidental or deliberate. Three: The priests should be satisfied. The water was running again, myeyes had been duly burned out, and they were back in business. Whichadded up to-- Four: The fact that they would probably let another repairman in, underthe same conditions, if the beacon conked out again. At least I had donenothing, like butchering a few of them, that would make themantagonistic toward future ancestral messengers. I stripped off my tattered lizard suit back in the ship, very glad thatit would be some other repairman who'd get the job. --HARRY HARRISON Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Galaxy_ February 1958. Extensive researchdid not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publicationwas renewed.