The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jack of No Trades, by Charles Cottrell

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Title: Jack of No Trades

Author: Charles Cottrell

Release Date: January 11, 2010 [EBook #30927]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 we
discovered Willy himself. Then we data-researched, and
postulated a theory. Everything was easy, until it came to
the question of proof._

[Illustration]

* * * * *

This thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon under
observation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speed
in order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At times
like that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreet
distance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find out
what he was up to.

Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unit
out of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words to
the effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. And
Archie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellow
he is.

Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothing
more than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on the
high side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This was
so no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and get
curious. Tuning any of the vehicle receivers to that particular
transmitter frequency was a simple matter. Then he had taken the
transmitter out among the asteroids and hunted around until he had
found one abo