Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Amazing Stories August 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Jack Of No Trades
By CHARLES COTTRELL
First we discovered the Willy Maloon category. Then wediscovered Willy himself. Then we data-researched, andpostulated a theory. Everything was easy, until it came tothe question of proof.
his thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon underobservation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speedin order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At timeslike that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreetdistance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find outwhat he was up to.
Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unitout of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words tothe effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. AndArchie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellowhe is.
Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothingmore than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on thehigh side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This wasso no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and getcurious. Tuning any of the vehicle receivers to that particulartransmitter frequency was a simple matter. Then he had taken thetransmitter out among the asteroids and hunted around until he hadfound one about two miles or thereabouts in diameter, only it couldn'tbe said to have a diameter because it was quite irregular in shape.But to Willy it must have been as fascinating as a jewel. So heplanted the homer on it so that he could find it again when he wantedto. Of course, he hadn't yet thought of a reason for wanting anasteroid, but he would. He usually found reasons for the strangethings he did.
And he did. It must have been just after Ollie Hadaway lost control ofhis tug. It had been headed in the direction of a rather largeasteroid. Ollie had tried to unjumble the steering jets, but hecouldn't, so he bailed out and was picked up a little later. The tugwent on and shattered on the surface of the asteroid. Then later,Willy, at my directions, investigated the accident, examined the tug,and wrote up an accident report on it. And the inspection part of itmust have gone something like this:
When Willy arrived to examine the shattered tug on the surface of theasteroid, he must have been pleasantly surprised to note that the hullwas a battered mess, but miraculously some of the innards were intact.He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escapeddestruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorseof a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or neededin a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, thiswas a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use needplenty of power.
And that must have been when Willy decided on a reason for having hisown private asteroid. He would add the drive unit to it and make itmobile. He must have sparkled with the idea for the rest of the day. Irecall his accident report saying the tug was a total loss. Of course,no one checked Willy's de