Thin Edge, Page 2

already in position in the universaljoint itself. When everything was ready, he said: "Give 'er a try atlength."

  The tug moved away from the asteroid, paying out the cable as itwent.

  Hauling around an asteroid that had a mass on the order of one hundredseventy-four million metric tons required adequate preparation. Thenonmagnetic stony asteroids are an absolute necessity for the BeltCities. In order to live, man needs oxygen, and there is no trace ofan atmosphere on any of the little Belt worlds except that which Manhas made himself and sealed off to prevent it from escaping intospace. Carefully conserved though that oxygen is, no process is or canbe one hundred per cent efficient. There will be leakage into space,and that which is lost must be replaced. To bring oxygen from Earth inliquid form would be outrageously expensive and even more outrageouslyinefficient--and no other planet in the System has free oxygen for thetaking. It is much easier to use Solar energy to take it out of itscompounds, and those compounds are much more readily available inspace, where it is not necessary to fight the gravitational pull of aplanet to get them. The stony asteroids average thirty-six per centoxygen by mass; the rest of it is silicon, magnesium, aluminum,nickel, and calcium, with respectable traces of sodium, chromium,phosphorous manganese, cobalt, potassium, and titanium. The metallicnickel-iron asteroids made an excellent source of export products toship to Earth, but the stony asteroids were for home consumption.

  This particular asteroid presented problems. Not highly unusualproblems, but problems nonetheless. It was massive and had a high rateof spin. In addition, its axis of spin was at an angle of eighty-onedegrees to the direction in which the tug would have to tow it to getit to the processing plant. The asteroid was, in effect, a hugegyroscope, and it would take quite a bit of push to get that axistilted in the direction that Harry Morgan and Jack Latrobe wanted itto go. In theory, they could just have latched on, pulled, and let thething precess in any way it wanted to. The trouble is that that wouldnot have been too good for the anchor bolt. A steady pull on theanchor bolt was one thing: a nickel-steel bolt like that could take apull of close to twelve million pounds as long as that pull was alongthe axis. Flexing it--which would happen if they let the asteroidprecess at will--would soon fatigue even that heavy bolt.

  The cable they didn't have to worry about. Each strand was a fine wireof two-phase material--the harder phase being borazon, the softerbeing tungsten carbide. Winding these fine wires into a cable made aflexible rope that was essentially a three-phase material--with thevacuum of space acting as the third phase. With a tensile strengthabove a hundred million pounds per square inch, a half inch cablecould easily apply more pressure to that anchor than it could take.There was a need for that strong cable: a snapping cable that issuddenly released from a tension of many millions of pounds can bedangerous in the extreme, forming a writhing whip that can lashthrough a spacesuit as though it did not exist. What damage it did toflesh and bone after that was of minor importance; a man who loses allhis air in explosive decompression certainly has very little use forflesh and bone thereafter.

  "All O.K. here," Jack's voice came over Harry's headphones.

  "And here," Harry said. The strain gauges showed nothing out of theordinary.

  "O.K. Let's see if we can flip this monster over," Harry said,satisfied that the equipment would take the stress that would beapplied to it.

  He did not suspect the kind of stress that would be applied to himwithin a few short months.

  II

  The hotel manager was a small-minded man with a narrow-minded outlookand a brain that was almost totally unable to learn. He was, in short,a "normal" Earthman. He took one look at the card that had beendropped on his desk from the chute of the registration computer andreacted. His thin gray brows drew down over his cobralike brown eyes,and he muttered, "Ridiculous!" under his breath.

  The registration computer wouldn't have sent him the card if therehadn't been something odd about it, and odd things happened so rarelythat the manager took immediate notice of it. One look at the titlebefore the name told him everything he needed to know. Or so hethought.

  The registration robot handled routine things routinely. If they werenot routine, the card was dropped on the manager's desk. It was thenthe manager's job to fit everything back into the routine. He graspedthe card firmly between thumb and forefinger and stalked out of hisoffice. He took an elevator down to the registration desk. His troublewas that he had seized upon the first thing he saw wrong with the cardand saw nothing thereafter. To him, "out of the ordinary" meant"wrong"--which was where he made his mistake.

  There was a man waiting impatiently at the desk. He had put the cardthat had been given him by the registration robot on the desk and wastapping his fingers on it.

  The manager walked over to him. "Morgan, Harry?" he asked with a firmbut not arrogant voice.

  "Is this the city of York, New?" asked the man. There was a touch ofcold humor in his voice that made the manager look more closely athim. He weighed perhaps two-twenty and stood a shade over six-two, butit was the look in the blue eyes and the bearing of the man's bodythat made the manager suddenly feel as though this man were someoneextraordinary. That, of course, meant "wrong."

  Then the question that the man had asked in rebuttal to his ownpenetrated the manager's mind, and he became puzzled. "Er ... I begyour pardon?"

  "I said, 'Is this York, New?'" the man repeated.

  "This is New York, if that's what you mean," the manager said.

  "Then I am Harry Morgan, if that's what you mean."

  The manager, for want of anything better to do to cover hisconfusion, glanced back at the card--without really looking at it.Then he looked back up at the face of Harry Morgan. "Evidently youhave not turned in your Citizen's Identification Card for renewal, Mr.Morgan," he said briskly. As long as he was on familiar ground, heknew how to handle himself.

  "Odd's Fish!" said Morgan with utter sadness, "How did you know?"

  The manager's comfortable feeling of rightness had returned. "Youcan't hope to fool a registration robot, Mr. Morgan," he said "When adiscrepancy is observed, the robot immediately notifies a person inauthority. Two months ago, Government Edict 7-3356-Hb abolished titlesof courtesy absolutely and finally. You Englishmen have clung to themfor far longer than one would think possible, but that has beenabolished." He flicked the card with a finger. "You have registeredhere as 'Commodore Sir Harry Morgan'--obviously, that is the name andanti-social title registered on your card. When you put the card intothe registration robot, the error was immediately noted and I wasnotified. You should not be using an out-of-date card, and I will beforced to notify the Citizen's Registration Bureau."

  "Forced?" said Morgan in mild amazement. "Dear me! What a terriblystrong word."

  The manager felt the hook bite, but he could no more resist theimpulse to continue than a cat could resist catnip. His brain did nothave the ability to overcome his instinct. And his instinct was wrong."You may consider yourself under arrest, Mr. Morgan."

  "I thank you for that permission," Morgan said with a happy smile."But I think I shall not take advantage of it." He stood there withthat same happy smile while two hotel security guards walked up andstood beside him, having been called by the manager's signal.

  Again it took the manager a little time to realize what Morgan hadsaid. He blinked. "Advantage of it?" he repeated haphazardly.

  * * * * *

  Harry Morgan's smile vanished as though it had never been. His blueeyes seemed to change from the soft blue of a cloudless sky to thesteely blue of a polished revolver. Oddly enough, his lips did notchange. They still seemed to smile, although the smile had gone.

  "Manager," he said deliberately, "if you will pardon my using yourtitle, you evidently cannot read."

  The manager had not lived in the atmosphere of the Earth's Citizen'sWelfare State as long as he had without knowing that dogs eat dogs. Helooked back at the card that had been delivered to his desk onlyminutes before and
this time he read it thoroughly. Then, with agesture, he signaled the Security men to return to their posts. But hedid not take his eyes from the card.

  "My apologies," Morgan said when the Security police had retired outof earshot. There was no apology in the tone of his voice. "I perceivethat you can read. Bully, may I say, for you." The bantering tone wasstill in his voice, the pseudo-smile still on his lips, the chill ofcold steel still in his eyes. "I realize that titles of courtesy areillegal on earth," he continued, "because courtesy itself is illegal.However, the title 'Commodore' simply means that I am entitled tocommand a spaceship containing two or more persons other than