Tools of the Trade by Raymond F. Jones, Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, November, 1950
Copyright 1950 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?57623

Transcribed by Stewart Dickson from:  “Space, Space, Space”
Editor: William Sloane; Franklin Watts Publisher 1953
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?36392

See also the story of the search for this story in:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/529861/

For personal use only — Not for Publication

=========================================================================

The desert sun was slowly lighting the sleek, lazy backs of the ships on the field of “Joe’s
Service and Repair.”  It lit the distant hills, too promising a day of greater splendor than it could
possibly deliver in this barren land.   But Joe didn’t mind.  He liked big plans.  

  From the window of his second-story office he watched.   His normal working day began at dawn, and in the outer office he heard the entrance of his secretary, Mary Barnes.  She was devoted to him, but her quick heel taps registered the irritation of having to rise so early. 

  Joe stoked the big cigar in his mouth with long, pleasurable draughts.  The field was getting too
small.  Time for expansion, almost, but he wondered if this time he should set up a separate
location somewhere else.  Concentration meant efficiency but the bureaucrats who had to keep
tabs on him worried about “Joe’s Service and Repair” becoming too big.  Steadily, however,
they were becoming smaller and smaller fry.  Soon they wouldn’t matter at all—he hoped.

 He marveled at the colors of the hulls.  At midday most would be dingy, space-pocked gray, but now they seemed to glow with bright yellow and pink and hues of shining steel.

  There was the big Nadian.  She was having a new  drive, atomic, Class Six, he recalled.  Beside her was the much smaller Iban with new atmosphere pumps to be installed—half the crew had died
getting her into the repair depot.  Most of them represented tragedy, but that tragedy was less
because of him.

  He looked beyond the Nadian to the fine, golden hull that loomed even bigger a little way beyond.
He squinted for recognition, bending forward until his cigar almost touched the windowpane.  Then
he recognized it.

  “Mary!  How did that royal barge get on our field?   Mary—!”

  She came from the outer office at her own pace, but with her morning coiffure adjustments only half
 completed.  “I have the entry slip on the Martremant, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” she said.
“It was in the hopper this morning—came in during the night.  It is a very big job.  She was rammed
by a freighter that got out of control at Capitol Field just as the First Administrator was about to take
off.”

  “I can refuse service to anyone, and I refuse to have anything to do with those junketing politicians.
Good-will tour—bah!”

  The Martremant was the personal ship of the Galactic Union’s First Administrator.  With two
hundred of his commissioners, he was making a good-will tour through member galaxies.  Since
it was, of course, impossible to visit all, the party had honored Earth greatly, her galaxy being
one of the most remote from Administration Central.

  Joe looked up sharply as he became aware of Mary’s silence.   “Well, I can, can’t I—?”

  “I’m afraid not, Joe.”  Her brown eyes watched him seriously.  “Your charter forbids discrimination,
except by government ban or permission.  I’m sure there will be neither in this instance.  The job
carries a special government contract straight from the Capitol.”

  “Not only to I have to fix this barge, but, as a taxpayer, I have to foot my own bill?”

  “Stripped to its bare essentials, that’s about it.  The government is half panicky about the
accident.  Up to now the junket went off as rehearsed.  It looked as if the support of the First
Administrator had been assured for Earth’s candidate when the Administrator’s term expires in
six months.”

  “Now the political plums have all turned sour because some chowderhead rams the royal
barge, is that it?”

  “That’s it.  You can bet nobody slept on Capitol Hill last night.”

  Joe chuckled suddenly.   “Tough, isn’t it?  The vips will have to wait for repairs or a new ship.
Wouldn’t it be tough if we couldn’t find or make one essential part?  Of course, it would take a
long time to find that out.  I think I’ll like this job after all.”

  “Why don’t you just get it fixed as quickly as you can,” said Mary crossly, “and get it off your mind?
You breed ulcers this way.”

  Joe’s face sobered.   “All right, Mary.  We’ll do it your way.   I think the efficiency in this office
has picked up thirty percent since you came—but I wonder if we have as much fun—”

  “It’s not fun to hate anything as much as you do politicians.”

  “A person can’t be sweet all the time.  I don’t know of more suitable use to be made of the
pompous windbags.”

  “If I remember elementary history correctly, there was a time of technological government.”

  “A bunch of plumbers’ apprentices,” growled Joe.  The gang that got in was worse than the
politicians.”

  “That’s what everybody else thought, too.”

  “Look, you’re changing the subject.”  He took her arm with fatherly gentleness and led her
closer to the window.  “That hulk out there cost a billion, at least.  Its operating expenses on
this hundred-day junket are a quarter-million a day.  Who pays it?  Little guys like me and you.
A tax on this, a tax on that—half our life and substance are dribbled away supporting those . . .
those junketeers!”

  “Little guys like me and you—!  That calls for an increase next Thursday.  Here comes Mr.
Litchfield.  He looks as if he has troubles on his mind.  Ten to one it’s Martremant trouble.”

  She retreated to her own office as the chief repair engineer parked his scooter outside the
building and started up the stairs.

  Howard Litchfield looked more like a professional wrestler than a crack engineer.  He carried
his elbows slightly away from his body as if perpetually waiting for someone to photograph his
strong-man pose.

  “You’ve seen, I suppose,” he said.

  “The Martremant?”

  “We’re going to have trouble on this job.”

  “Why—what is it?”

  “This is one of the eight third-order ship in existence.  We’ve never had a third-order job in here 
before.”

  “So what?  There are twenty other jobs out there that are the first we’ve seen of their exact kind.
The  crew of the Martremant can give enough of their cerebral analogues to pin it down.”

  “They could—if they were alive.”

  Joe slowly removed his cigar.  “What happened to them?”

  “The freighter that knocked the ship out drove through the side of the officers’ quarters, and ended
by almost splitting the drive chambers in two.  Only twenty percent of the machinery is good.  All
crewmen with technical knowledge are dead.  The only ones left are cooks and stewards, and
they’re not Radalians, who built the vessel.”

  “And politicians—“ added Joe.

  “Who won’t move out.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right.  The First and his commissioners are still aboard.”

  “What about the atmosphere machinery?”

  “That’s the twenty percent that’s left.  Each state suite is self-contained and independent.
None of them got damaged.”

   “Well, why doesn’t the government just give them a new ship and junk the old one?  It would be
cheaper.  Don’t forget who pays the bill.”

  Litchfield shook his head and sat down on the polished desk.  “There was some mention of it,
I gather, but the First wants his personal barge back in Grade A shape with not a scratch showing, so
that’s what he was promised.  We have to deliver.”

  “It’s not his ship, anyway.  It belongs to the Galactic Commission.”

  “Sure, but who’s going to remind him?  He’s the F.A.”

  “I’d like to remind him!  I’d—“  Joe sensed the uselessness of another tirade.  He recalled
Mary’s advice—get the ship fixed.”

  “I’ll help you,” he announced decisively.  “Let’s get that thing off the field by the end of the week.”

  “This is already Monday!”

  “A man could breed a pretty good-sized ulcer in six days.”

  On the small scooters used for transportation about the vast field, they sped toward the hulk of the Martremant.  It was a squat tube of a hull about twenty stories high and three times as long.  Joe
gasped at the great gash in the rear third of it.

  “It would have been easier to take the tools to the job than bring that piece of junk here.  The
freighter must have rammed clear inside and then turned and come out sidewise.”

  “It exploded.  That’s why nobody will know for sure what happened.”

  Lights had been placed and Litchfield’s analysis crew were already deep in the process of 
photographing and carefully dismantling the wreckage.

  As Joe looked about, he became aware that there were others present who had no business to be—
but he knew who they were.

  You could tell them by the crease of their clothes, the glistening shine upon their shoes, the dainty
way they reached down every so often to dust imaginary specks from their knees.

  There were four of the this time.  The leader approached with outstretched hand, and 
recognition slowly flamed in Joe’s eyes.

  “I’m Mr. Johnson of the President’s office.  Perhaps you recall I used to be in Field Inspection,”  he
said.  “These men are—“

  “I remember,” said Joe slowly, glancing at  Johnson’s graying temples.  “You’re the Capitol’s
current wonder boy.  You write speeches now.”

  The man flushed, but he went on.  “These men are Mr. Burns, Mr. Cornwall, and Mr. Hansen, who
are of the Presidential Advisory Office.”

  Joe took the hand of each in sullen challenge.

  “We tried to locate you last night to discuss repair of the Martremant.  We finally authorized its entry,
since it had already arrived, anyway.”

  “I was home asleep until five and down here at five-thirty.  You didn’t look very hard for me.”

  “Perhaps you have been acquainted  with the tremendous significance of this job,” said Johnson.

  “I have.  You want it done promptly so you can all get your fingers in the next big pie to be cut
next election day.”

  The advisors’ faces grew masklike.  “The ship must be repaired with dispatch and accuracy, in
order to minimize the inconvenience to the Commissioners and the First Administrator.  We are
authorized to place every government facility required at your disposal and issue a blank check
for the work.”

  “On my account!” cried Joe.  “You offer me a blank check on my own bank account just like you
were Santa Claus.”

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr. Williams, that you don’t understand the matter of appropriations.”

  “I’m afraid I do.  But if you want this hulk fixed, my advice is to get out and stay out.  Every hour
you clutter up the field delays the work another day.”

  “It is necessary that we remain.  The President has delegated us to be on site and issue him hourly
reports on the progress of the work.”

  Groaning, Joe turned away.  Above their heads, he could see successive floors blasted upward
and torn with jagged holes.  Swaying lights and miniature shadows of crewmen showed the analysis
work going on in those far levels.

  “Did you check the files for Radalian analogues?” he asked Litchfield.

  “Yes.  We’ve never had any in here before of that race.  The First and his Radalian Commissioners
have already been asked.  They refused, of course.”

  “Naturally.” Joe growled.  “Who would expect a politician to let his brains be poked into?  We’d
find out what was behind all the double-talk we get.  Get a transcript of plans from Radal then.”

  “We already tried.  They report the plans are confidential, top-secret and super secret.  Therefore,
they cannot be given out.”

  Joe stood for perhaps five seconds while his blood pressure mounted.  Then we walked quietly
to where the four advisors were watching.  He spoke to them for approximately thirty seconds.
They held a consultation and moved toward the front end of the ship where the officials held forth in their luxurious suited.

  Fifteen minutes later they emerged and went to the communications office.  Within an hour the
transcript of the plans was on Litchfield’s desk.

  It made Joe feel good.  He smiled expansively at the stack of sheets.

  “That is the first time I ever saw a politician who was any good in a pinch.  Now, we ought to be able to go on without any more trouble  We won’t even need an analogue.  Maybe I ought to go back to
the office and see what Mary’s got for me.  If you need me—“

  Litchfield listened absently.  The responsibility for repair was his.  The stack of sheets describing the drive was three feet high.  It would be necessary to resort to cerebral absorption methods to
comprehend all that mass of data, but it didn’t worry him.  He had opened the broad structural
schematic and the stereoscopic representation of the engines as they were in place.

  The tan of his face became suddenly a shade lighter.  “Wait a minute, Joe.  Out troubles aren’t over yet.  This may be the time we don’t make it—“

  “What’s the matter now?  We’ve got the plans of the ship.  All we need to do is follow them.
Anything a critter can build, we can fix.”

  “Providing we have the tools.”

  “Tools?  We’ve got a tool department.  Art Rawlins can build any tool you need.”

  “Think Art ever heard of the molecular spray technique?”

  “Joe slowly dropped his cigar into a spittoon and retreated from the doorway.  “Molecular
spray—it’s only a rumor.  You hear it at least once a week.”

  “Not any more is it just a rumor.  These plans specify it.”

  Joe bent over the charts.  They had been given English titling automatically during transmission.
Litchfield was right.  The engines were designed to be constructed by spray technique.

  He knew what thats meant.  It was the only way they could be built.  Any other construction
method would require a new design for the whole power plant.

  Joe knew virtually nothing of the technique.  He had never found anyone who had even seen it.
According to rumor, however, it was remotely akin to the printing of electrical circuits which had
been common for hundreds of years.

  It was a means of building up three-dimensional objects of unlimited complexity by spraying on molecules in precise streams of variable constituency.  The spray was keyed by an intricate matrix
system that steered automatically the tool mechanism and changed the quality of the molecules from
uranium to soft putty if it was called for.  It was possible to leave channels, build in wiring, and
assemble parts in any degree of intimacy required by design, a degree far surpassing that possible by clumsy nut and bolt or welding techniques.

  “There ought to be spray equipment aboard ship,” said Joe.  “If repairs were required, I understand they would have to tear the thing down and build it up again.”

  “Could be, but any sign of a machine shop was volatilized.  As it stands, we’d have to build a factory
to build the tool before we could even start on the ship—provided we could get the plans for the tools.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard.  We could get them the same way we got the drive data.”

  “Let’s try once more to get them to settle for conventional drive.  We can set them up with a good
second-order outfit.  Maybe the Presidential Advisors can put some pressure in that direction.”

  Joe called them in and explained the situation.  They tried to look as if they comprehended what
spray technique was all about, but Johnson shook his head.

  “I guess we should have mentioned it first,” he said, “that the Administrator asked if you understood 
the spray methods.  We said you did, because we felt sure you would have no trouble with the
construction methods.  He said that was fine, because his people only rented the equipment from
the makers—some other race who won’t let it out of their hands.  The tool design is not available.”  

  “Then we’ll have to substitute,” said Litchfield.   “There’s no possible way to obtain spray tools in
any reasonable time.  We can install a good second-order drive.  You’ll have to make it right with the
First.”

  “You want to substitute a simpler, less efficient drive?” 

  “If the junketeers want to get under way in the next six years.”

  “We can’t allow it,” said Johnson.  “This represents the thing the President sent us to guard against.
The ship has to be repaired as it was.”

  “That represents the political mind at work under a full head of steam!”  exclaimed Joe.  “We can’t
be given the tools, but we have to do the job anyway!  Now, listen—“

  “Suppose you listen, Mr. Williams.  How would it look for the First Administrator to go limping
around the galaxies explaining that he was behind schedule because his ship got wrecked on Sol III
and the Terrestrians were incapable of matching his drives?

  “How would it look not only from our political viewpoint, but from the standpoint of your technical
capabilities, your business?  Consider the effect if it got spread around that ‘Joe’s Service and Repair’ 
had muffed the First Administrator’s job?  In spite of my own personal distress in this matter, it is
with a great deal of pleasure I view your position over a very rickety barrel.

  “Good day, Mr. Williams—Mr. Litchfield.”

  “All right—here’s the last word,” said Joe.  “We’ll fix the Martremant so well that the original
builders won’t know it’s been repaired—and by the end of the week.  You may include that in your
next hourly report to the President.”

  Litchfield didn’t look up when they had gone.  He continued to stare down at the drawing, but he
spoke to Joe.  “You know what you just said?”

  “You bet I do!  Call in all three crew shifts who’ll be on the repair job.  We’ll give them cerebral on
the the drive plans.  Get Art Rawlins and his whole tool crew down here.  Start them making matrices
from these plans.

  “Then tell them to make some spray tools and get to work.”

  “Just like that?”

  Joe’s face was suddenly more bitter than Litchfield remembered it for a long time.  He leaned
over the table of drawings to look out the window.  The quartet of advisors seemed in a jovial mood
as they went toward the ship.

  “They may not represent the President’s views,” said Joe, “but for themselves they’ve already
written off this crop of plums.  They have given up, but they think they’re going to watch us lose
our shirts in this deal.

  “Remember the times we beat Johnson when he was in Field Inspection?  He hates our guts.
They all do, because we produce, and they can’t do anything but sit on the sidelines.  They make
believe they run the show while inside they eat their hearts out because they are so incompetent
in the ordinary business of living.

  “If we fail on this job, they’ll see that we’re black-balled in every part of the Union.  The fact that
we represent Terra in the field of service and repair doesn’t matter any more.  They figure we can
be replaced.”

  From long custom Litchfield gave only half a ear to Joe’s political tirades, but he saw that Joe was
completely right this time.  The politicians whose strangling regulations had been loosed by Joe’s
persistence were not going to let this golden opportunity go by.

  Suddenly he was mad too.  “The end of the week,” he muttered.

  Art Rawlins considered himself the biggest man on the place.  Physically, he was.  Joe wouldn’t have tolerated the huge, slow-moving bulk in any lesser man, but Rawlins was probably the best tool
engineer on the planet.

  “You can’t make things without tools,” was his motto, “and I’m the man who makes the tools that
make the machines,” he finished modestly.  “Without me, nobody works.”

  He was given the problem without the political angles.  There was no dismay in his reaction.
Rather, he scented in it the challenge of his career.  He exhaled a happy snort of enthusiasm as
Joe finished outlining the details.

  “Molecular spray!” he exclaimed.  “I’ve heard of it half a dozen times in the last three months.  But
no crew that has come in has ever seen it.  Now we’ve got a ship that uses it!”

  “But, without analogues of the designing race, and with no plans of the spray, can you build it?”

  “I don’t see why not.  There’s not an artifact made that doesn’t leave tool marks indicating the
mental process of the mind that made it—and the tools with which he built.  There should be enough
information in the plans of the ship to identify and build the tools.”

  “All right.  I hope so.  We’re setting up a cerebral for the repair crews this morning.  You’ll want to 
get in on that with your crew.  Get them into the cerebral room in fifteen minutes.”

  Cerebral indoctrination was a method of short-circuiting the acquiring of data.  It implanted items
of information directly into the cortex without sending it through the long, circuitous, interference-filled
channels of the senses.

  From the original data, scanning machines produced impulses exactly like the waves of a perfectly
healthy brain as it thought through the problem.  These impulses acted directly upon the molecules of 
the recipients’ brains, imposing the data within.

  Joe and Litchfield sat in on the session, absorbing the vast flood of information regarding the
design of the Martremant.  When it was over, they felt sure they could have designed the tools by
which the engines would have to be built.  But they knew it was an illusion.  There was still a
tremendous job of analysis to be done, and they lacked Art Rawlins’ special skill in evaluating the
data they had.

  The repair crews filed out of the room at the end of the two-hour session.  Rawlins and his men
continued to sit there in their chairs, their headpieces in their laps.  It was when he saw them that
Joe felt the intense sinking inside him.

  “What’s the matter?” he said thinly.  “Wasn’t it any good?”

  Art Rawlins’ wide jowls circled downward to rest against his upper chest.  “Let’s run through it
again, Joe.  This time change the differential to get fabrication analysis instead of design and
function.”

  The smaller group of men sat there for another two hours while the machine went through the
thousands of drawings and stereoscopes once more.  Then the lights were on again, Rawlins was
slumped still lower.

  “I was right the first time,” he muttered.  “It’s no wonder the spray technique is so scarce if the
inventors want to keep it hidden.  Nobody could figure it out from scratch.”

  “Why?”

  “The tools …  the tools to make the spray—we can’t make them.”

  For about three-quarters of a minute Joe thought he hadn’t heard right.  Then he saw that Rawlins
wasn’t joking, but was perfectly serious in his absurd-sounding statement.

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked.  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’d have to go down through four or five separate derivations to try to get to the basic
technologies involved.  By then, the trail would be so faint and the variables so large that it would be
meaningless.” 

  “I’ve never heard of taking four or five derivations of a cerebral,” said Litchfield.

  “Neither has anyone else.  It’s never come up in such a series as this before.  Look:  We now have 
an understanding of what the third-order-drive engines are like.  We know what the molecular spray 
tools to build them are like—but we don’t know how to build the the tools to build the tools with which 
to build the spray—and maybe one order of tools below that.  See what I mean?”

  Joe’s voice sounded awed by this complexity that he had never imagined.  “It still sounds crazy.”

  “That’s the way it is.  Take our tools.  Suppose an aborigine could utilize cerebral processes to
analyze a sawed block of wood, for example.

  “He would first discover the need of a steel saw and would get a pretty god idea of what it was like.
His next derivative would be the machine tools to make the saw.  That would be pretty faint.  He’d go
on down to steel-making processes and discover the necessity for iron ore—but he’d never reach any geological knowledge that would show him how to locate it.  He’d never get as far as the technology
of smelting it or tempering it.  Those items just wouldn’t be there in the sawing process.

  “So it is with the spray.  There are at least five separate and unknown technologies that step down
to any level with which we are now familiar.  The chances of our discovering how to build a
molecular spray are absolutely, mathematically zero.  The information has got to come from outside,
or not at all.”

  “Nevertheless, the ship has to be repaired and off the field by the end of the week,” said Joe.

  The others in the room stared at him with a sort of pity as if his mind had slipped into a rut from
which it would never emerge.

  “Go over it again,” he said.  “Try it down to the hundredth differential if necessary.  Drain it of 
everything it’s got, and then have a try at it again.  I’ll see you later.”

  Litchfield followed him out of the analysis building into the hot sunlight of the field.  Dingy, dust-
covered haze hung over all of the desert now and the distant hills were shaded a dirty color.  He
remembered the splendor of the morning and looked accusingly skyward.  If any day was ever a
bust, this one was.

  They walked half of the mile up to the site of the wrecked Martremant before either spoke.  Then
Joe stopped, looked towards the ship with grim defiance shaping his face.

  “Howard,” he said slowly, “in all the rumors you’ve heard about the molecular spray, whose name
has been connected with it?  Did you ever hear before of this mysterious, secret race that’s supposed to have concocted it?”

  “Why, no.  It’s always mentioned in connection with the Radalians, but I supposed that was because
the Radalians appear to be the only ones using it in their third-order ships—after what Johnson
reported about the First.”

  “I don’t believe it.  It’s too thin.  I think the Radalians themselves built it.”

  “That’s crazy!  Why would they be withholding it when we can’t fix their ship without it?”

  “Only the special gods of the politicians could answer that one.  The whole thing reeks of the
thinking of the political mind.  Whenever a political deal is going on there are always lies and counterlies.  In this deal, one of them is the story of the mysterious builders of the molecular spray.
And there is one way we can find out with absolute certainty.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll get us a Radalian analogue.”

  There was a white plume of dust growing slowly in their direction from the damaged Martremant.
At its head were twin scooters bearing two of Litchfield’s analysis crew.  The illusion of slowness
disappeared as the little carriers crackled up and stopped with a burst of gray dust.

  “Trouble!”  one exclaimed.  “Those crazy politicians—you’ve got to get them out of there.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere.   They’re loose all over the place.  They got tired of sitting in their plush staterooms
so they put on pressure suits and now they’re kibitzing all over the place—telling us how to do our
jobs!  The windbags—!”

  “At least our friends from the President’s office ought to be able to keep the vips out of our hair
while we work,” said Litchfield.

  “Not only that,” continued his crewman, “but their suit exhausts smell up the place until we can’t breathe.”

  “You say they’re trying to tell you how to do the job—?” said Joe.

  “Yeah—I finished a picture of an assembly and was starting to tear it apart when one of these
walking nightmares suddenly sticks out ten of his arms or legs and garrumps in his own language
and then says, now on my world, young man, we perform such an operation this way!”

  “Were any of them Radalians?”

  “I don’t know, but you’ve got to get them out of the way.”

  Joe turned to Litchfield.  “They’re trying to show the man how to do his job.  What more could we
want?”

  “A bunch of junketing, kibitzing commissioners won’t do much good.  They couldn’t run the ship,
let alone build it.”

  “No, but if we had an analogue—a Radalian analogue—we’d know how to build the tools to build the 
tools to build it.  We could differentiate all the way down to the most basic technology required.” 

  “I suppose you’ll just step up to the First Administrator and ask him for it.”

  “Something like that.  I’ve sparred with them long enough to know something about how
political minds tick.  One thing they can’t resist is a Tour.”

  The atmosphere inside the ship was foul.  There were at least a score of clumsy, alien pressure suits within range of their vision as they climbed in through the rent in the hull.

  Some suits were squat, some tall, some with eight appendages, some with three or four.  Some were filled with liquid, others with gas of chemistry and pressure that would be instant death to a
Terrestrian.

  It was the exhaust from some of these that Joe and Litchfield smelled immediately.  Methane, chlorine and fluorine were the least deadly that they recognized.

  And every one of the politicians was equipped with a cerebropath by which he could make himself
heard and understood in order to inflict his opinions on the helpless workman nearest him.

  Close by, a six-appendaged creature was earnestly instructing a workman in his job—and
exuding a foul aroma that Joe didn’t recognize at once.  While they watched, the workman
quietly rolled over with his face staring upward.

  The alien commissioner straightened in perplexity.  “That fellow is incompetent.  We can’t allow
such to work on our vessel.  See that he is replaced.”

  And the creature marched austerely away.

  Funny, Joe thought.  You travel a million light-years and find creatures that look like something
that should be crawling on the bottom of the sea.  Even among them a politician is a politician—
arrogant, demanding, and wholly ignorant of ninety-nine percent of the subjects upon which he
essays to pontificate.

  Joe and Litchfield hunted up the advisors and explained the problem.

  “Sorry,” said Johnson.  “It is their ship, you know.  If you can’t stand their breathing methane down
your necks, you’ll just have to work in pressure suits yourselves.”

  In the eyes of Johnson and the three others Joe could see the grinning faces of all of the host of
inspectors and bureaucrats he had bested in his long career.  They hated him because they
belonged to a dying race of bureaucrats and he was their successor.  But they had never had him
bound so tightly in their red tape as now.

  Direct appeal to the foreign commissioners was, of course, useless.  They might retreat from their
kibitzing, but they would put Earth down as an unfriendly planet of sub-sentient life on which it was
not safe to have a space vessel repaired.

  “All right, will you do this, then?” said Joe.  “Will you convey my respects to the First Administrator
and ask him if he would care for a personally conducted tour of my place?  Since the repair work is
well in hand, I find myself free and would be glad to be at his service.”

  The advisors gave him uniform, startled glances.  Johnson blinked.  “I don’t see why not.”  he said,
slowly turning over the idea to find the catch.  “You’re sure the work is in hand?”  We should like to 
report that to the President.”

  “You may assure him that he has nothing to worry about, but a good deal depends upon my friendly
relations with the First Administrator.   Will you be so kind as to introduce me?”

  Suspicious still, he left and returned in a moment with a grotesque, armored hulk.

  “Lochneil, the Radalian, First Administrator of the Galactic Union,” said Johnson.

  The creature extended one of two stubby appendages.  Two others he kept wrapped around his
waist—as if he were afraid he’d get his shirt stolen, Joe thought.

  “And this is Joe Williams, owner and operator of ‘Joe’s Service and Repair’—“

  Be nice to him, Joe told himself fiercely.  This is the guy that can make the field look like another
archaeological site if he’s rubbed the wrong way.

  “Glad to know you,” said Joe.

  “And I,” said the Radalian.  “Your name is known widely in many galaxies.”

  The old oil, Joe muttered to himself and smiled appreciatively.  “Yes, we get customers from a
variety of ports.”

  “It’s comforting to know that our vessel is in such good hands.  You are experiencing no 
unusual difficulties, I trust?”

  “Oh, no.  Everything’s coming along fine.  We are old hands at working with strange machinery.
We have quite a complete system for analyzing cultural artifacts foreign to our own system.”

  “That’s what I have been told,” said Lochneil with interest.  “in fact, I had hoped during this good-will
tour to investigate your place.  Time would not have permitted, but this unfortunate accident has
forced the delay upon us.  Your offer of which Mr. Johnson spoke is extremely welcome.  That is, if
you’re not too busy, of course.”

  Was there ever a politician who didn’t ask that fool question while he consumed the time and
energies of his betters, Joe wondered.  The tools to make the tools to make the tools—

  It kept ringing through his head like a stupid jingle that had no end or meaning.  He had to get a
Radalian analogue.  He was sure he was right—but if this hunch were a bust—

  “We have a carrier that will make it easier than trying to walk in the pressure suit,” he offered.

  “Not at all.  Your gravity is light.  I shall enjoy the stroll.”

  You and who else, Joe thought, glancing towards the dust-covered pavement that seemed to be
faintly smoking ion the heat of mid-afternoon.  But already the Radalian was striding away.

  Joe caught up with him.  “That building directly across the field is the hospital.  We attempt to give
medical attention to all who are sick or injured when they arrive.”

  “Your depot is extremely far advanced to have such.”

  He introduced the First Administrator to Dr. Yates, in charge of the hospital.  Immediately it was like
old home week, and Joe was startled at the ease with which Lochneil conducted himself in Yates’
presence.  The old doctor was crotchety and hated people asking silly questions.

  But he showed Lochneil the pressure suites where natural accommodations of temperature,
pressure and atmosphere could be supplied in an infinite variety of combinations.

  For an hour the Administrator pressed him with questions about the mechanical and biological
functions of the complex hospital—how they operated on creatures that couldn’t be depressurized,
that had to be continually in atmospheres deadly to Earthmen—
  Yates answered them all with obvious pleasure.

  A political trick, Joe thought irritably, the ability to appear interested in something about which you
don’t give a single, minute damn.  But that wasn’t the answer, either, he recognized with a start.  The
First Administrator was actually interested in these things.  He acted like a creature with a mind that
could absorb such technical information.

  He found himself almost pleased with the company of the First Administrator, and chafed irritably
against this breach of principle.

  They went from there to the great machine shops where Lochneil grilled the official in charge in a
way that made old Mortenson enjoy it.  The Administrator insisted on operating some of the
complex fabricating tools—a twenty-ton shear, an eighty-foot planer, the giant lathes.

  Next came the library and museum where vast accumulations of encyclopedic data on a hundred
thousand races was stored.

  “That is most complete,” said the First Administrator in frank awe.  “It is almost superior to our
Union facilities.”

  The afternoon was nearly over and the sun was setting in an unembarrassed attempt to re-enact
some of the morning’s glory.  Evening crews had come on, but Lochneil showed no signs of giving up.
Joe was hungry and tired.  He was afraid the First Administrator would want to read the whole
library—or worse, yet, that he would suddenly decide to quit.

  They had to make one more stop—just one more.

  “Engineering analysis is last,” said Joe wearily.

  “Outside of administration, that about completes what we have here—except the hotel, of course, and you wouldn’t care to see that now, I’m sure.”

  “I must see your analysis section,” said Lochneil.  “That is almost legendary among starmen.”

  Joe led him into the building and showed him the files of tapes.  “We have better than a
hundred thousand analogues of members of foreign races.  These have all been gathered since I
started the depot when I was young.

  “You are aware, of course, of the basis of analogue work.  It depends upon the fact that in the
brain of each race are typical neural structures.  The artifacts of the race are always analogous
to portions of these structures.  If we have so much as one percent of the data relative to a certain
artifact, we can usually determine the rest by interpolation from neural analogues.”

  “Without the analogue your whole establishment would be virtually helpless, would it not?”

  “Right.  That’s the key that allows the whole place to operate.”

  “May I see the Radalian analogues that you have on hand?”

  “We have none at all of your race.”

  “That is most unfortunate—and even more so that we are unable to allow specimens from those
of us who are present.  Your request was relayed to us, but of course it was not necessary in order to
repair the ship.”

  “Oh, no.  We just wanted to increase our files.  The repair work was well under way when we made
the request.”

  “Fortunately—otherwise it might have been delayed.”

  Joe felt the tension of fatigue growing strong within him.  “Over here,” he said, “are the chambers
used for interviewing and analogue taking.  Would you care to see what we can do in the way of
duplicating your environment?”

  “Of course.”

  Lochneil recited the atmospheric constituents and required pressures and temperatures.

  “When the green light glows you may remove your pressure suit.  I will be on the other side of
this transparent wall.”

  Would the fool actually do it?  Joe was so tired he was almost trembling.  He feared his anxiety
showed, but Lochneil seemed oblivious to all but the mechanical intricacies of the chamber.

  Joe sealed the door and took his place in the interviewer’s chair.  As the green light flashed,
Lochneil cautiously opened a panel at the side of his face.

  “Very agreeable.  Like a spring day on my home world.”

  He stripped off the pressure suit while Joe sat as if paralyzed.  The Radalian was a sleek
creature who seemed covered with bright green velvet.  Great wild eyes shifting at random
in the bulging sockets.  Scanning vision, Joe thought.  He had seen it twice before, but didn’t
know it was in the Radalians.

  The First Administrator strode about, flexing his short and long limbs with pleasurable freedom
from the suit.

  Like a politician strutting abound on the platform, Joe thought.  But that wasn’t right, he knew 
somehow.  Lochneil was of a different cast from the local politicians.  He spoke and talked like a
man who could perform—

  He sat down opposite Joe.  “Extremely well done,”  he said.   “I have not seen anything to
compare with it in all my travels.  I only regret that our visit was at the expense of our crew.”

  He began fingering the panel at his side.  He picked up the helmet used for analogue taking.
“This is what, now?”  he said.

  “That picks up the neural pulses and sends them on to the recorder.”

  Lochneil gave a pompous grrmf and eyed the gadget closely.

  Joe fingered the row of controls on the arm of his chair.  His hands were sweaty.

  If he puts it on, I’ll let him have it—

  He did—

  And Joe did.

  He blasted the brain of Lochneil with one quick flash that went deep to extract millions of neural
patterns.  It was a bitter technique seldom used, but possible.  It differed from the ordinary recording
in the same way a photograph by intense flash differs from a time picture.  And it always knocked
the patient out—sometimes seriously.

  For a long time Joe just sat there.  The great eyes of Lochneil were staring wildly and still scanning
slowly—but utterly vacant.

  He would be all right—Joe hoped and prayed.  But he prayed also for the impossible—that Lochneil 
might be as completely stupid as the run of the mill politicians in regard to technical matters.

  It was already much too late for that, for the First Administrator had displayed many times the
comprehension of his Terrestrian kind.  And, much as he hated to admit it to himself, Joe liked the
man.

  He called Yates, who swore at him and left his dinner table.  Then he called Litchfield and explained
what he had done.  The engineer swore, too, and called him a fool for pulling such a stunt.

  Then Joe sat down and waited for them to come, almost convinced that their opinions of him were
correct. 

  Yates came first and took the stiff Lochneil away with scarcely a word to Joe.  When Litchfield came,
Joe was examining the tapes.

  “You really put the fat in the fire.”

  “I don’t know.  I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “You shouldn’t think at all after a day like this.  Let’s get a drink and go home to bed.”

  “No—we’ve got to examine these analogues.  If I’m right, we can start making the tools to make the
tools to make …  oh, hell!  we can start tonight.”

  “And I suppose the First won’t even know what hit him?”

  “Let’s not speak of it now.”

  They took the tape into the scanning room and placed it in one of the machines.  Beside it, they
placed the data take from the Radalian plans.  Then Joe pressed the button and watched the screen.
After a moment he sat back with a sigh.  This was it.  The Radalian analogue nailed down the spray 
to the lowest technical level.

  They didn’t sleep that night, and by morning it was raining.  That was appropriate, Joe thought, for
the events that would certainly transpire this day.

  Art Rawlins had slaved beside them all night and by morning his eyes were as baggy as his grin was wide.  “We can make the spray, now,” he said.  “You watch!”

  By dawn Lochneil had still not awakened.  Joe went over to the hospital suite while Litchfield and
Rawlins got things under way.  Joe wanted to be alone with the First Administrator.  He didn’t want
anyone else to have to share the brunt of Lochneil’s wrath.

  But the First Administrator awoke without wrath or indignation.  He sat up so suddenly it almost
shocked Joe.  Then he grinned ruefully.  At lease Joe took it for a Radalian grin.

  “That was a foolish thing for me to do,” said Lochneil.  “I didn’t even give you time to warn me, did
I?” 

  Joe exhaled—long and deep—and a slow, grim tension began to build up anew within him.  The
Radalian intended to pose as innocent of understanding what had taken place.  But Joe knew that
was a lie.  The questions he had heard yesterday could not have come from one too ignorant to know
his analogue had been taken.

  Lochneil was still playing a lying political game, and to what purpose Joe could not guess.

  “Are you hurt?” he said solicitously.  “We’re deeply sorry a thing like this should happen.  The
current—“

  “A slight headache is all.  I’d like to return to the ship now.  I feel hungry.”

  “Stay right where you are.  Breakfast is coming up!”

  On Wednesday they had the tools to make the tools to make the tools to make the spray.

  On Thursday they had the tools to make the tools to make the spray.

  Friday, they had the spray.

  In the process, Art Rawlins had filled a hangar fifteen hundred feet long with machinery.  He had
taken advantage of the offer of Johnson to use available government facilities.  For two solid days
fleets of ships had poured machines and technicians into the place.

  On the third day the single piece of equipment required to rebuild the Martremant emerged.

  The evening shift on Friday began the rebuilding.  The ship was moved a considerable distance
and shielded heavily—but the junketeers refused to move.  Of them all, only Lochneil was on hand
to watch the process.

  It was wholly automatic, but Joe had the honor of pressing the button to start the process.  Inside
the ship, a great backing plate had been prepared.  In front of it, an intricate scaffold held the
nozzle that sprayed out a great machine, molecule by molecule.

  Simultaneously, on each floor. the process went on, building the units that would drive the ship at
third-order velocities.

  And Joe had not yet solved the lie of Lochneil.  But he was about to, he thought.  It was now or
never.

  He fed the heavy piles of matrix plates into the scanning chambers of the molecular spray.  While
Lochneil—and only Lochneil was looking, he switched a pair of matrices.

  He stepped back then, absently watching the functioning of the machine  On the tube faces, they
could watch the building as it proceeded inside the ship.  Joe was aware of Lochneil’s eyes upon him.
The great scanning eyes of the First Administrator were spinning back and forth like mad radar 
beams.

  At last, with a cry of dismay, the Radalian leaped for the controls of the machine just as the scanning
of the erroneous matrix began.

  He cut the power and gestured helplessly toward the matrix.

  “I thought … it seemed … are you sure it’s working all right?”

  “Now how about the full story?” said Joe.  “You’ve been pulling our legs ever since you came here.
Why?

  “You knew perfectly well how the molecular spray was to be built.  You could have told us, but you
played dumb.  Then you deliberately sat in the analogue chair and gave me the analogue I had tried
so hard to get.  There must be a reason, and even if you’re the First Administrator, it ought to be a
good one.”

  Lochneil smiled slowly and turned to the controls.  He changed the matrix and started the machine
again.  Then he faced Joe.

  “I was quite sure you never would get the Martremant repaired in any reasonable time without the
analogue.  That’s why I gave it to you.  You see, I happen to be the inventor of the spray process. 

  Joe swallowed hard.  “You … the spray—?”

  “We came here for the prime purpose of getting information first-hand from your people about your
people.  The conferences and dinners and polite exchanges we were subjected to in your Capital
seemed like a deliberate barrier to prevent that.  So we had planned a secret mission to accomplish
what a straightforward visit seemed unable to do.

  “Then, suddenly, the accident made it possible.  Our kibitzing, as you called it was quite deliberate.
We wanted to observe you in natural circumstances.  We wanted to observe your attempts to solve
the problem without knowing you were being given the molecular spray.  Your results were 
admirable.”

  “But why all this?” said Joe.  “It still makes no sense.  You—the spray designer, and First 
Administrator.  We haven’t a single being on our whole planet who could occupy correspondingly
similar positions.”

  “I know,” said Lochneil.  “That is the tragedy of your people.  We have studied and marveled over
your organization since you entered the Union.  You will not be flattered, I’m sure, to know that among
the sociobiologists of more advanced civilizations you are classified as ‘political primitives.’  Hundreds
of theses have been written to describe and explain how a culture can advance in such a lopsided
manner as yours.

  “Good government is simply good living, and we are taught how to live with one another.  Therefore,
it is hardly startling among us that I, the inventor of the spray, should also serve a term as First
Administrator.  The implications of your term ‘political’ do not exist among us.”

  “Then there is no intention of choosing an Earthman for First Administrator?” said Joe.

  “On the contrary, we are seriously considering the appointment.  It would give you considerable
political confidence as a people.

  “We have watched with pleasure your progress since entering the Union.  Your bureaucracy is
dying at an increasing rate, and we should like to offer assistance in its replacement.  There is in
your language the term, I believe, that expresses somewhat the situation—wheels within wheels.”

  Joe got it then.  The faint implications that had been present in the Lochneil analogue.

  Wheels within wheels—

  Concentric coteries of increasingly tight and advanced organizations within the vast Galactic Union.
Primitive worlds, such as Earth, were allowed to believe there was only a loose federation.  But they
were thinking now of inviting Earth to join one of the inner circles—

  “I hope if you choose an Earthman you will get a man who can beat a politician at his own game,”
said Joe.

  “I shall.  I surely shall.  He will be handpicked and trained for the position, and I have a positive
recommendation already to make as soon as we return to Administration Central.

  “It has been a pleasure to know you and watch you at work.  Exhausting all lesser alternatives, you
resorted to extremities only when necessary.  You operate according to correct political principles, Mr.
Williams.  In fact, I would say you are an excellent politician.”