Question of Comfort | Page 2

down and 2,499,999,999 to go.
Within a few days, a new opposition coalition formed, headed by the Mind. Fortunately, they helped. I'd hesitated on one last point. Pushed. I gambled the momentum of the initial enthusiasm would carry it.
* * * * *
Originally the plan was a series of rooms, glassed off, that people could stare into. There was something much better; engineering and I spent 36 hours straight, figuring costs, juggling space and equipment, until the modification didn't look too expensive--juggling is always possible in technical proposals. For the results, the cost was worth it. I hand-carried the proposal in.
Why not take people through the rooms? We could even design a simulated, usable spacesuit. There'd be airlock doors between the rooms for effectiveness, insulation, economy. No children under ten allowed; no adults over 50. They'd go through in groups of 10 or 11.
Sure, I realized this was the most elaborate, most ambitious concession ever planned. The greatest ever attempted in its line, it would cost--both us and the public. But people will pay for value. They'd go for a buck-and-a-half or even two; the lines of those filing past the windows, at 50 cents a crack, would also bring in the dough.
They bought it. Not all--they nixed my idea of creating exact environmental conditions; and I didn't insist, luck and Hollywood being what they are.
From the first, I established a special group to work on one problem. They were dubbed the Gravity Gang, and immediately after, the GG. I hired them for the gravity of the situation, a standard gag that, once uttered, became as trite as the phrase. The Tour's realism would be affected by normal weight sensations.
The team consisted of a female set designer--who'd turn any male head--from the Studio, a garage mechanic with 30 years' experience, an electronics engineer, a science fiction writer, and the prettiest competent secretary available. I found Hazel, discovering with delight she'd had three years of anthropology at UCLA.
As soon as they assembled, I explained their job: find a way to give the illusion of lessened gravity.
Working conditions would be the best possible--why I'd wanted the women pretty--and their time was their own. I found the GG responded by working 10 hours a day and thinking another 14. They were that sort.
I couldn't know the GG was foredoomed to failure by its very collective nature; nor could I know, by its nature, the GG meant the difference between my success and failure.
The opposition put one over; we'd started referring to the job as Tour of the System Project. Next day, it was going the rounds as TS project. Words, words, and men will always fight with words.
Actually, the initials were worthy of the name. The engineering problems mounted like crazy. Words, words, and one of them got to the outside world. Or maybe it was the additional construction crew we hired.
One logical spot for the building was next to the moon flight. The Tour building now would be bigger than first planned, so we extended it southeasterly. This meant changing the roadbed of the Santa Fe & Disneyland R.R. It put me up to my ears in plane surveying--and gave me a nasty shock.
I looked up at someone's shout, in time to see a ton of cat rolling down the embankment at me.
* * * * *
What we were doing was easy. Using a spiral to transition gradually from tangent to circular curve and from circular curve to tangent. Easy? Yeah. Sure.
If this was my baby, I'd damned well better know its personality traits. I was out with the surveyors, I was out with the construction gang, I was out at the wrong time.
As the yellow beast, mindless servant of man, thundered down, I dove for the rocks. Thank God for the rocks--we'd had to import them: the soil in Orange County is fine for oranges, but too soft for train roadbeds.
Choking on the dust, I rolled over. The cat perched, grinning drunkenly, on the rocks. The opposition or an accident? Surely the Mind wasn't that desperate. But I was; I had to keep the idea alive, for myself as well as completion of the original mission.
Several million hands pulled me out; several million more patted away the dust. Motionless, I'd just seen the driver of the cat. Seen him--and was sorry.
He stood tall but hunched over; gaunt, with pasty skin, vapid eyes, and a kind of yellow-nondescript hair.
It wasn't the physical characteristics, very similar to mine, that bothered me--once after an incomplete pass, I'd been told by a young lady that I was a "thin, sallow lecher." I was swept by waves of impending trouble, more frightened of him than of the opposition in toto. Then, relieved, I realized the man wasn't the one I was expecting.
Back in my office, I wasn't