Harry Harrison: The Repairman

Summary

This is one of Harry Harrison's marvelous early stories that were published in Galaxy Magazine. The Repairman (1958) is well written and a fun SF story of a man getting a job done when the situation seems stacked against him. As his boss tells him when he tries to wriggle out of working on this latest assignment “According to this document, you can’t quit. Ever. Therefore I have a little job I know you’ll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauri beacon has shut down. It’s a Mark III beacon.…”

“What kind of beacon?” I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beacons from one arm of the Galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked on every type or model made. But I had never heard of this kind.

“Mark III,” the Old Man repeated, practically chortling. “I never heard of it either until Records dug up the specs. They found them buried in the back of their oldest warehouse. This was the earliest type of beacon ever built—by Earth, no less. Considering its location on one of the Proxima Centauri planets, it might very well be the first beacon.”

Thus begins an exciting story of a man in the distant future with the frustrating but rewarding job of fixing big problems all over the galaxy. His ingenuity and ability to think out of the box enable him, usually with chewing gum, a piece of string and his ingenuity, to 'fix' almost anything.