"I'll be ready." Hans escorted Mike to the door, then growled at the recruits: "Come along. I'll show you your quarters. You won't need them much; we work sixteen hour shifts here ... and I mean work!"
Frank spent the next month in a fever of toil. Hans was a slavedriver who enforced discipline on Shots and Incors alike, even though he had to break heads to do so. All life in the spacious undersea laboratory revolved around the thousand-foot-long, comb-shaped vessel which rested on its cradle beneath a dome reaching almost to the surface of the ocean. Within her silver skin lay the crooked aspirations of Wildoatia.
"Look at her," the leader crooned on one occasion. (Frank had been given a clean bill by Security and was being taken on an inspection trip.) "She'll reach Far Centaurus some day ... but I won't be on her." He caressed the bulging stern plates. "In here is a standard set of peroxide jets to take her through atmosphere. I hate the clumsy things. Wish I had time left to solve that problem of radiating heat from a compact pile when it's not operating in space.... Look up there!" They craned their necks, as at a skyscraper. "That battery of rockets projecting from what is now her side uses the new fuel. She travels broadside on after blast-off."
They took an elevator to the control room amidships.
"Designed the equipment myself." Hans beamed at the banks of quadrants, verniers and sky-encompassing viewplates. "Five years of hard work it took ... to pay off United Stars for this burn!"
They toured the engine room where a compact, heavily shielded pile stood ready to change tall stacks of pig iron ingots into unlimited power. Then they inspected the comfortable crew's quarters.
"What about armament, sir," Frank probed at last.
"There are guided missiles which can seek and find targets thousands of miles away. They can be equipped with either fission or disintegrating war heads. Both go dead after a certain period; can't have a disintegrator bumping into some planet and blowing it sky high. For really high speed operations, guided missiles won't be much good, of course, except in a stern chance. Then we'll depend mainly on the mine fields we spread behind us. Come on. Might as well show you the stuff." He started down an odd companionway which had steps both on one wall and on the floor. Then he staggered and leaned heavily against a bulkhead.
"Better go get that cursed nurse," he panted. "This burn...."