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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Altamont cast a quick, routine glance at the instrument panelsand then looked down through the transparent nose of thehelicopter at the yellow-brown river five hundred feet below.Next he scraped the last morsel from his plate and ate it.
"What did you make this out of, Jim?" he asked. "I hope you keptnotes while you were concocting it. It's good."
"The two smoked pork chops left over from yesterday evening,"Loudons said, "and that bowl of rice that's been taking up spacein the refrigerator the last couple of days, together with alittle egg powder and some milk. I ground the chops up and mixedthem with the rice and other stuff. Then added some bacon, tomake grease to fry it in."
Altamont chuckled. That was Loudons, all right: he could take afew left-overs, mess them together, pop them in the skillet, andhave a meal that would turn the chef back at the Fort green withenvy. He filled his cup and offered the pot.
"Caffchoc?" he asked.
Loudons held his cup out to be filled, blew on it, sipped, andthen hunted on the ledge under the desk for the butt of the cigarhe had half-smoked the evening before.
"Did you ever drink coffee, Monty?" the socio-psychologist asked,getting the cigar drawing to his taste.
"Coffee? No. I've read about it, of course. We'll have toorganize an expedition to Brazil, sometime, to get seeds and tryraising some."
Loudons blew a smoke ring toward the rear of the cabin.
"A much overrated beverage," he replied. "We found some, once,when I was on that expedition into Idaho, in what must have beenthe stockroom of a hotel. Vacuum-packed in moisture-proofcontainers, and free from radioactivity. It wasn't nearly as goodas caffchoc.
"But then, I suppose, a pre-bustup coffee drinker couldn'tstomach this stuff we're drinking."
Loudons looked forward, up the river they were following. "Getanything on the radio?" he asked. "I noticed you took us up toabout ten thousand, while I was shaving."
Altamont got out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the formerslowly and carefully.
"Not a whisper. I tried Colony Three, in the Ozarks, and I triedto call in that tribe of workers in Louisiana. I couldn't geteither."
"Maybe if we tried to get a little more power on the set...."
That was Loudons, too, Altamont thought. There wasn't a betterman at the Fort, when it came to dealing with people. Butconfront him with a problem about things and he was lost.
That was one of the reasons why he and the stocky, phlegmaticsocial scientist made such a good team, he thought. As far as he,himself, was concerned, people were just a mysterious,exasperatingly unpredictable order of things which were subjectto no known natural laws.
And Loudons thought the same thing about machines: he couldn'tpsychoanalyze them.
Altamont gestured with his pipe toward the nuclear-electricconversion unit, between the control-cabin and the livingquarters in the rear of the boxcar-sized helicopter.
"We have enough power back there to keep this windmill in the airtwenty-four hours a day, three hundred and s