My boss leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and gave me Lecture Forty-four on Company Duty and My Troubles. "This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, when it really should be called trouble-shooting. Hyperspace beacons are made to last forever -- or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down, it is never an accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter of just plugging in a new part." He was telling me -- the guy who did the job while he sat back on his fat paycheck in an air-conditioned office.

Author Biography

Harry Max Harrison (1925 - 2012) was an American science fiction author, known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973). Harrison was (with Brian Aldiss) the co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.