Nine Men in Time Read online

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  Nine Men In Time

  By NOEL LOOMIS

  [Transcriber note: This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyrighton this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: _The idea of sending a man back in time to re-do a job he'sbotched, so that a deadline can still be met--added to the thought ofduplicating a man so there'll be two doing the same work at the sametime--adds up to a production-manager's dream. But any dream cansuddenly shift into a nightmare...._]

  The receivers, two of them lawyers, had long faces when they sat downacross from my desk in the office of the Imperial Printing Company.

  "Frankly, Mr. Shane," said the older one, "it is a very grave questionin our minds whether we should try to continue to operate the businessor whether we should close the plant and liquidate the machinery andequipment the best we can."

  I was stunned. "I don't understand," I said helplessly. "We've beendoing a nice business--and at a profit--in the year I've been here." Itwas my first big job, and I wanted to make good. I thought I had madegood, but here they were jerking the floor out from under me, and Icouldn't make any sense out of it.

  "Well," said one, "the business isn't showing the profit we expected."

  "What you need is a used-car lot," I said pointedly.

  The elder man cleared his throat. "Now look, Mr. Shane, suppose we saythree months."

  "What do you mean--three months?"

  "We'll allow you to go ahead for three months. If the business doesn'tshow a distinct upturn by then--" He raised his eyebrows.

  I swallowed hard. So that was it, then.

  They even had the date set for the execution, and I knew they intendedto go through with it. Only a revolution would change that.

  I wanted that job; it was my chance to make a name for myself. If theyshould close the plant now, I'd have a black eye. You can't go aroundasking for a job and saying, "But I was making money for them." They'llwonder what else was wrong.

  I thought I knew why they were so willing to close the plant; it waspart of an estate, and the way things were, it took a lot of their timeeach month for not too big a fee. But if the estate should beliquidated--well, figure it out yourself. This business was all mixed upbetween an administratorship and a receivership, and the attorney's feesfor liquidation would be a percentage of a hundred-thousand-dollar shop.It could run to a nice sum. They'd sell out, collect their fee, andforget it. A nice clean deal for them. And no more worry.

  That is what I was up against, so perhaps it was inevitable that Ishould find Dr. Hudson--Lawrence Edward Hudson. That was 1983, reallyabout the beginning of the scientific age in industry, and I dug thisidea up out of the back of my head where it had been for some time. Dr.Hudson was the result. I did not label him efficiency-expert, forprinters have always been notoriously allergic to that title. I calledhim production-engineer.

  He was a small, thin-faced man with a face that seemed to all flow intoa point where his nose should have been, and he started talking thingsover with me before he got his coat off.

  "Printing," he said, "is really _the_ backward industry. There has beenno basic advance since the invention of the linecasting machine around1890, and possibly the development of offset printing."

  "That," I said, "is why you are here--to bring out something startling."

  "Well," he said, "you've heard the old one about the man who hadsomething to do with each hand, and if you'd give him a broom he couldsweep out the shop, too?" He leaned forward, his nose jutting at me, andsaid impressively, "Mr. Shane, we shall make that come literally true;we'll have men working in two places at once before we're through."

  "Okay."

  "In the meantime, there are certain old-fashioned fundamental principleson which we shall start. I shall be here at seven-thirty in themorning."

  I should have known. Man, being mass, possesses inertia, mentally aswell as physically, and therefore offers a certain amount of resistanceto being kicked around. That applies to printers as well as to people.But at that time I was too worried. I gave Dr. Hudson full authority.

  * * * * *

  He was there at seven-thirty the next morning, as he had said. At eight,the printers were standing around the time-clock, waiting for it toclick the hour. It clicked, but the man nearest it was smoking acigarette. He punched his card and then stood there, finishing thecigarette.

  Dr. Hudson stepped up. "Gentlemen," he said, "it is now four minutespast eight. Starting-time is eight o'clock." He looked at his watch andcompared it with the clock. "Please do your visiting and your smoking onyour own time," he said coldly.

  Well, it bothered me a little. I'd never handled them that way--andanyway, who cared about five minutes? The men would set just so muchtype, or do so much work. If they lost five minutes in one place, theygenerally made it up somewhere else. But this was Dr. Hudson's job.

  It was nice that there had been no insolence--only a couple of raisedeyebrows. Dr. Hudson's gesture had had its effect. They knew now who wasboss.

  For the next few days they kept their heads up. Production did notimprove much, but I personally had not expected it to do that. I thinkDr. Hudson had not expected it, either.

  It was about three days after Dr. Hudson arrived, that a big job camein from the Legal Publishing Company--a three-volume, four-thousand-pagerecord for the U. S. circuit court. They could not handle thetypesetting, so they farmed that part out to us.

  It had to be delivered exactly one week before the deadline that hadbeen set by the receivers for closing the plant. I very nearly turned itdown, but Dr. Hudson's eyes glittered when he saw it. "Just what weneed," he said.

  "That's almost two thousand galleys of type," I reminded him, "besidesour regular stuff." I was very dubious.

  But Dr. Hudson was enthusiastic. "We'll make history," he promised.

  Well, we did. Union or not, the men would have to learn to do things themodern way. That is what I told the chairman when he protested againsthaving the men go back in time to set a job over. That had been my firstidea, executed by Dr. Hudson.

  As I said, Dr. Hudson was an experimental physicist. He was, you mightsay, a super-physicist, because he had specialized in finding ways to doall the things which traditionally were impossible, like traveling intime.

  So when the Monotype casterman set a job in Caslon that should have beenset in Century, I turned him over to Dr. Hudson. The doctor took himinto the laboratory and sent him back two days in time and had him dothe job over--but right. The casterman didn't like it, but he didn'tknow what to do about it.

  There was plenty of buzzing that afternoon among the men, especiallywhen the job, re-set in the correct face--or rather, set in the correctface, because this now was the first time it had been set--was put onthe dump. I gave the boys five minutes to crowd around and look at theproof and then I broke it up. I was exultant. It didn't occur to me thenthat a man could be _too_ ambitious.

  That afternoon the chairman came in, and I was ready for him. "We arenot," I pointed out, "violating our union contract."

  "But you made the casterman set the job twice, and he doesn't get paidfor it."

  "We pay the casterman two dollars an hour for seven hours a day. Whenhe's here more than seven hours, he'll get time and a half," I saidtriumphantly.

  The chairman frowned, but I didn't relax; I was on top and I knew it."He set the job wrong in the first place," I pointed out, "and he gotpaid for that. Is there any reason why he shouldn't correct his ownmistake, if it doesn't take any of his time?"

/>   "It does take time," he insisted.

  "No. He's only re-living that four hours and doing the job right insteadof wrong; you can't find any fault with that."

  And he couldn't. I felt wonderful. I wanted to jump and shout, but Icompromised by taking Dr. Hudson down for a gleeful drink and planningour next tactic.

  We also settled a point of strategy. We decided to confuse them with afew minor things before springing our next real item--which would be, toput it mildly, revolutionary.

  Things looked pretty good. The only thing that bothered me was that wehadn't started the big job yet.

  * * * * *

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