John Rackham by Beanstalk Page A

leap and disappeared
downward. Jack scrambled after him, poised on the edge, and leaped. It was a
drop of some ten feet or more, and he braced himself for a heavy landing, but
his feet drove down through a mighty tangle of weeds and onto a dampness that
yielded and sprang back against his weight with very little shock. One stagger
and he was steady, up to his armpits in the stringy weed. It smelled of rank
decay.
    "Jasar?" He swung around, peering.
    "Right here!" The weed thrashed and a helmet appeared by his elbow. "Watch what
I do now. I'm going to fix that door." He extended his wrist, set a button
on it, and the orifice disappeared. "Turn the other way and it opens. Right? Now I’ ll shut it again,
like that. And don't you forget it. You may have to operate it on your own,
coming back. Now we will check your finder-beacon. No switch, this time; it's a
constant. Stick your arm out. Turn very slowly. You should feel something when
you're pointing at the ship."
    Jack
did as he was told, moving his arm steadily, and as it came near to aim a
tickle ran up his arm, faint at first but unmistakable when he was pointing
directly at it. A wondering thought came to mind. "You were already
prepared for a mission such as this, I think?"
    "That's
so. We have been working out the details of this gadgetry for some time. Top secret stuff. One of the hardest things in this war,
lad, or in any other, I suppose, is keeping the opposition guessing, thus
baffled, never to know just what you're going to hit him with next. And the
fewer people know of a secret the safer it is. That's why there were only two
of us trained for this operation. The other man cracked out at the last minute.
We did a heavy-gee simulation run, and his harness failed on him. The report is
that he will very probably live. There was no time to train a replacement.
Operation Beanstalk has too many critical deadlines to meet as it is."
    "Beanstalk?"
    "Doesn't mean anything. When you plan an operation you have to talk
about it to some extent, so it's our practice to call it something
meaningless. Then even if it does get repeated, and overheard by the wrong
ears, it won't hurt. But why are we standing here airing our teeth like this?
There's work to do. Can you see that tower?"
    Jack's
wits seemed to grow needles under pressure. "If you can still alter your
weight, with your belt, Jasar " he suggested,
"would it now be wise to make yourself less heavy, and thus ride on my
shoulder?"
    "And
see where I'm going!" Jasar growled. "I should have thought of that
myself. Hold hard a minute. There, try that. Give me your arm!"
    Jack
bent a knee, offered his arm, and in another moment the little man was perched
on his left shoulder, no more weight than a sack of cabbages.
    "Don't
strain yourself, Jack. Sing out when you get weary. And drop me fast if
anything the least unusual or dangerous happens; get it?"
    Jack
set away, half wading, half striding through the tangled mass of the weed, not
too secure on his feet but managing, and keeping an eye on the distant tower.
It looked a wearisome long way off.
    "What danger might
befall us here?" he asked.
    "Well,
let me explain the weed stuff first. Straight down under your feet is all the machinery, pumps and filters and stuff, that
perform the environmental upkeep of this station. Two things
at once. They keep the air fresh and breatheable, free of noxious fumes,
and they irrigate and fertilize this weed as fodder for fresh meat. That machinery
space is under the floor you're walking on. That's right, a floor. It's full of
pipelines, and it is covered with a layer of sponge, porous foam that provides
rooting for the growth, and the pipelines provide water and nourishment. So much for that. Now ... hup! Steady there; what have we here?"
    Jasar
clung tight as Jack blundered unexpectedly into a clear space that proved to be
a long lane barely wide enough for him too stand in, with his shoulders
brushing the weed on either side. The floor of