The next few months were like a dream for Dr. Richter. Everything seemed to be happening around him in breathtaking fast-forward. People were hired and fired; scale models were built, scrapped, rebuilt, scrapped, rebuilt again; designs were drawn up, then revised, then finalised, then scrapped and started again; in short, it was chaos, albeit surprisingly productive chaos.
And yet Dr. Richter felt his contribution had been more or less negligible. He was, as far as he could tell, superfluous. The designers got on with their designing without him; the scientists were more specialised than he was; the engineers were annoyed at his constant interference; nobody needed him.
So why was he there? He felt he was in the way. Eradani felt she was in the way. And yet Tompkins was delighted with them both, reminding them constantly of how valuable they were, what an asset to his team they had turned out to be. Yet if he was honest, in the seven months he had been working for Tompkins, the only genuine contribution he had made was the name of the project: the Garden Wall. It was pointed out that this was a stupid name, but he pulled rank. He was the boss, he made the decisions (well, theoretically). The ship was going to be called the Garden Wall, and that was the end of it.
Interestingly, it turned out that this made a handy cover for the secret operation:
‘So, what do you do now, Dr. Richter?’
‘Oh, I design garden walls.’
Tompkins picked up on this immediately. He was always drilling into his staff how important secrecy was. He was genuinely worried about the media getting wind of the project. Most of the staff thought he was being over-cautious. After all, it wasn’t as if anybody would ever believe such a crazy tale anyway. The press would be unlikely to show much interest in the project, at most using it as fodder for back-page quirks sections. Nevertheless, Tompkins insisted on complete security, to the extent that he started up a small business to design and manufacture innovative, market-leading garden walls, just in case any journalists came snooping round. It was a shock to everyone involved in the Garden Wall project that this actually became a thriving little company, even winning an award for being the most successful new business venture in the country.
Eradani, meanwhile, had made even less of an impact than her old tutor. She had avoided the exposure that Dr. Richter sought, tending to shy away from the project and the associated mayhem that went along with it. She felt (admittedly without any evidence) that Tompkins was not being entirely on the level with them. He had made it clear that both she and Richter were unavoidably trapped in his grand scheme, but he hadn’t explained why. Richter may well be happy to blunder about the place telling people to work harder, but she was convinced that something else lay ahead that involved both of them.
But, the money was good. And so were the house, the cars, the clothes, the holidays, the little trinkets she could buy and the general life of luxury. So she made a point of turning up to the weekly progress meetings that Tompkins insisted upon holding, which had become known as the ‘barbecues’, where she invariably sat down next to Tompkins and Dr. Richter and failed to say a single word. Tompkins never asked her anything (although he demanded to have on-the-spot reports from all the others around the table) and never made any demands of her. He was surely aware of her less than stunning contribution to his beloved Garden Wall, but he was totally unconcerned about it. Ten thousand pounds a week he was paying her. For what? For her to laze about in bed all day, then go shopping in the afternoon? It didn’t make any sense.
And so the weeks rolled by. The project progressed daily. The final designs were completed and turned into final models, which were sent off to a major construction firm who began building a final Garden Wall (for a very hefty fee).
It had taken around about a year to get this far, from Dr. Richter’s less than elegant departure from the university to the beginning of the production stage. And completion estimates were currently running at about another nine months.
Under two years.
To build a revolutionary, history-making starship from scratch.
It was scarcely believable.
The hull of the ship was the first to enter production. The internal fittings and the engine were to be constructed later and installed shortly before launch. That way, each section could be tested independently and modified accordingly without having to disrupt the rest of the ship.
The hull design settled upon by Dr. Richter and the rest of the design team was a fairly unique one. It faintly resembled a standard space shuttle, similar in length but a lot broader at the back. The rear of the ship formed a fairly large rectangular ‘seat’ on which it rested. It then pointed directly upwards, much like a conventional rocket, but with wings. The idea was that the ship could take off vertically without the need for a lumbering great rocket strapped to its belly. The design team knew NASA had been testing similar prototypes for some while, but they figured they might as well rip their design off and then claim they had come up with it first (after all, they would have the first fully operational ship).
Needless to say, Tompkins insisted on painting the ship in his favourite shade of green, despite the protests of everybody else involved. He was convinced it would make the ship look elegant and sophisticated, and surprised his crew with a very tasteful paint job on one of the models - it was a sort of dark green/black marble effect, the sort of finish you find on some makes of drum kit.
The hangar where the ship was being built was over a hundred miles away from Tompkins’ house. It needed to be a particularly large building to house the ship and the construction machinery, and the only suitable places were aircraft production sites, of which there were none of a suitable scale in the local region. The distance to the hangar meant that visits to see the ship were very infrequent. Even Dr. Richter and Eradani didn’t get to see it until it was about half constructed. They took a day off to travel with Tompkins in one of his luxury limousines up to the old hangar to catch a glimpse of their baby.
<=> <=> <=>
Before them, cloaked in scaffolding, loomed their creation. Powerful searchlights highlighted those areas deemed to be of particular interest. The lesser areas were left to fade into the dust and gloom.
They were awed by it.
The custom models of the ship had been impressive. The ray-traced computer animations of it in flight had been stunning. But this was different: it wasn’t sitting on a desk, it wasn’t a pattern of phosphor dots on a monitor screen. It was real; it was there in front of them, towering over their heads.
‘The Garden Wall,’ said Tompkins proudly to his two colleagues. ‘See what you have created?’
‘I’m amazed,’ said Dr. Richter once he’d got his breath back. ‘I had no idea it would turn out like this. It’s just so... just...’ and then he sighed very deeply.
Tompkins waited for a moment or two, letting the sight wash over his friends. ‘Imagine the reaction come launch day,’ he continued eventually. ‘People clambered to see the Space Shuttle take off, and that was but a cheap taxicab compared to our elegant limousine.’
‘I agree totally,’ said Richter. ‘This is going to stun the world.’
Tompkins turned to him, looking very purposeful. ‘So now do you understand how great your achievement has been?’
Dr. Richter wasn’t sure how to answer this. ‘Er, well, I...’
‘You may take a holiday,’ said Tompkins suddenly.
‘A holiday?’
‘Yes. Take a week off. You’ve earned it.’
‘Oh, right. Well, thanks a lot,’ said Richter.
Eradani, who had been silent up until this point, rounded on Tompkins and burst out with something that Dr. Richter didn’t really want to hear her say. ‘A holiday? But we’ve done nothing! We haven’t done a shred of work since you hired us! What do you expect us to take a holiday from exactly?’
Dr. Richter stared at her open-mouthed. She had just said possibly the most stupid thing he’d ever heard anyone say. Well, to their boss, at any rate.
‘My dear Eradani,’ laughed Tompkins. ‘You two have been the backbone of the project. Don’t you see? Without you this wondrous machine would simply not exist. You aren’t just the beginning and the end of the Garden Wall, you are the Garden Wall.’
Eradani was still agitated, but could think of nothing to say. The man was a great pompous idiot!
‘What about the crew?’ she asked suddenly. It had been bothering her that they had constructed such a wondrous spacecraft and yet apparently had nobody to man it. To her surprise, Tompkins turned pale. A troubled expression crossed his face fleetingly, but he brushed that aside quickly.
‘That matter is being dealt with,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go.’ To Eradani’s astonishment, he turned and started towards the hangar door. ‘I’ll see you a week on Monday,’ he called out as he walked. ‘Enjoy your holiday.’
Eradani and Dr. Richter remained where they were, standing in the middle of the third largest building in the UK in terms of volume looking lost and lonely.
‘What do you suppose that was about then?’ asked Richter.
‘I don’t know,’ answered Eradani. ‘I really don’t. He’s acting stranger and stranger as time goes by.’
‘Maybe. I suppose we just have to accept his little eccentricities. Best just think of the money he’s paying us.’
‘Oh, I do. I do. Now, how do we get home?’