Exploiter's End

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 four arms flickering over the instrument panel, installing studs, tightening screws, its antennae glowing with the lambent yellow that denoted an agony of effort.
See? Harvey's freckled face was smug. He rates an easy hundred and ten. 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 a strange planet ninety light-years from home, you don't tell your boss he's cockeyed.
The Term hurried. Its faceted termite eyes were expressionless diamonds, but the antennae gleamed a desperate saffron. If bugs could sweat , I thought wryly. Now the quartz panel installation. Those four arms moved in 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, and down the ramp. Harvey followed sullenly. The conveyor groaned on, bringing up the next unit, a sleek little cruiser. The Term seized a fifty-pound air wrench, fled up the ramp to the airlock.
A dozen feet back to the operation, I pointed out. After the next job he'll have to return forty feet. Then sixty. He's in the hole.
Harvey looked at his shoes. John Barry, the trim superintendent, came puffing 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.