EXPLOITER'S END
by James Causey
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
PEOPLE OR TERMITES, IT'S ALL THE SAME.
THERE'S A LIMIT TO HOW FAR YOU CAN DRIVE THEM!
We time-studied the Term. It moved with a pliant, liquid grace, its fourarms flickering over the instrument panel, installing studs, tighteningscrews, its antennae glowing with the lambent yellow that denoted anagony of effort.
"See?" Harvey's freckled face was smug. "He rates an easy hundred andten. Whoever took that first study—"
"I took it," I said, squinting at the stop watch.
You could hear him bite his lip. After only two weeks on the job, on astrange planet ninety light-years from home, you don't tell your bosshe's cockeyed.
The Term hurried. Its faceted termite eyes were expressionless diamonds,but the antennae gleamed a desperate saffron. If bugs could sweat, Ithought wryly. Now the quartz panel installation. Those four arms movedin a blinding frenzy.
But the stop watch was faster. The second hand caught up with the Term.It passed him. Rating: Seventy-four per cent.
I tucked the clipboard under my arm, squeezed through the airlock, anddown the ramp. Harvey followed sullenly. The conveyor groaned on,bringing up the next unit, a sleek little cruiser. The Term seized afifty-pound air wrench, fled up the ramp to the airlock.
"A dozen feet back to the operation," I pointed out. "After the next jobhe'll have to return forty feet. Then sixty. He's in the hole."
Harvey looked at his shoes. John Barry, the trim superintendent, camepuffing down the line, his jowled face anxious about direct labor cost,the way every good super should be. "Anything wrong, Jake?"
"He can't cut it," I said.
Barry frowned up through the airlock at the Term. Those antennae nowshone the soft sad purple of despair.
We walked past the body jigs. The air was a haze of blue smoke,punctuated with yellow splashes of flame from the electronic weldingguns. Terms scuttled like gigantic spiders over the great silver hulls,their antennae glowing in a pattern of swift bright harmony, right onstandard, good cost. Harvey's face was rapt as he watched them. I saidharshly:
"Give me your third Production Axiom."
Harvey's shoulders squared. He said stiffly: "Beauty is functional. Thequintessence of grace is the clean, soaring beauty of a spaceship'shull—"
"Extrapolate, Harvey."
His lips were tight. "What I see is ugly. Terms must be taughtindividuality. What I see is a fascinating, deadly beauty—deadlybecause it's useless. We must sublimate it, grind it down, hammer it outinto a useful pattern. Waste motion is a sin...."
"Excellent."
We turned into the administration lift, leaving the iron roar behind us,and on the way up Harvey didn't say a word. I listened for the tinkle ofshattering ideals, and said patiently, "You're here to build spaceships.To build them better and cheaper than Consolidated or Solar. Hell, we'veeven set up a village for the Terms! Electricity, plumbing, luxuriesthey wouldn't normally enjoy for the next million years—"
"Will they fire him?" Harvey's voice was flat.
My temper was shredding. "Four-day layoff. His third this month. Termskick in most of their salary for village maintenance. They c