Tales of the Flying Mountains by Poul Anderson Page B

those of us who’re off duty. It’d be a trifle longer if we didn’t happen to have an empty bag at the moment. But never very long. Even running under thrust the whole distance, Jupe’s a good ways off. They’ve no time to waste.”
    â€œWhat is the next ship due?”
    â€œThe Pallas Castle is expected in the second watch from now.”
    â€œSecond watch. I see.” Warburton stalked on with a brooding expression on his puritan face.
    Blades might have speculated about that, but someone asked him why the station depended on spin for weight. Why not put in an internal field generator, like a ship? Blades explained patiently that an Emett large enough to produce uniform pull through a volume as big as the Sword was rather expensive. “Eventually, when we’re a few megabucks ahead of the game——”
    â€œDo you really expect to become rich?” Ellen asked. Her tone was awed. No Earthsider had that chance any more, except for the great corporations. “ Individually rich?”
    â€œWe can’t fail to. I tell you, this is a frontier like nothing since the conquistadores. We could very easily have been wiped out in the first couple of years—financially or physically—by any of a thousand accidents. But now we’re too far along for that. We’ve got it made, Jimmy and I.”
    â€œWhat will you do with your wealth?”
    â€œLive like an old-time sultan,” Blades grinned. Then, because it was true as well as because he wanted to shine in her eyes: “Mostly, though, we’ll go on to new things. There’s so much that needs to be done. Not simply more asteroid mines. We need farms, timber, parks, passenger and cargo liners, every sort of machine. I’d like to try getting at some of that water frozen in the Saturnian System. Altogether, I see no end to the jobs. It’s no good our depending on Earth for anything. Too expensive, too chancy. The Belt has to be made completely self-sufficient.”
    â€œWith a nice rakeoff for Sword Enterprises,” Gilbertson scoffed.
    â€œWhy, sure. Aren’t we entitled to some return?”
    â€œYes. But not so out of proportion as the Belt companies seem to expect. They’re only using natural resources that rightly belong to the people and the accumulated skills and wealth of an entire society.”
    â€œHuh! The people didn’t do anything with the Sword. Jimmy and I and our boys did. No society was around here grubbing nickel-iron and riding out gravel storms; we were.
    â€œLet’s leave politics alone,” Warburton snapped. But it was mostly Ellen’s look of distress that shut Blades up.
    To everybody’s relief, they reached Central Control about then. It was a complex of domes and rooms, crammed with more equipment than Blades could put a name to. Computers were in Chung’s line, not his. He wasn’t able to answer all of Warburton’s disconcertingly sharp questions.
    But in a general way he could. Whirling through vacuum with a load of frail humans and intricate artifacts, the Sword must be at once machine, ecology, and unified organism. Everything had to mesh. A failure in the thermodynamic balance, a miscalculation in supply inventory, a few mirrors perturbed out of proper orbit, might spell Ragnarok. The chemical plant’s purifications and syntheses were already a network too large for the human mind to grasp as a whole, and it was still growing. Even where men could have taken charge, automation was cheaper, more reliable, less risky of lives. The computer system housed in Central Control was not only the brain, but the nerves and heart of the Sword.
    â€œEntirely cryotronic, eh?” Warburton commented. “That seems to be the usual practice at the stations. Why?”
    â€œThe least expensive type for us,” Blades answered. “There’s no problem in maintaining liquid helium here.”
    Warburton’s gaze