Free Tramp Royale by Robert A. Heinlein Page A

for A-bombs is to unload everything, take a screwdriver and open every crate . . . a process equivalent in itself to closing the Canal to traffic.
    I am disclosing no secrets. You may be sure that Mr. Malenkov's assistants have given thoughtful consideration to these matters and that our government has been equally thoughtful. If I knew of an answer I would be in Washington right now.
    In the meantime the locks of the Panama Canal remain the most satisfying gadgets I have experienced since the time Santa Claus brought me a toy steam shovel that actually worked. The ship slides slowly and quietly into the first of the Atlantic side or Gatun Locks, towed into place by miniature cog railway engines known as electric mules. The gates close ponderously and magically behind her, untouched by human hands; a guard chain rises to protect the gates. The ship is enclosed in a box; all one can see is the concrete walls.
    Water boils up from the bottom of the lock and high, high up she rises! The ship lifts gradually up and up until the sightseers on her decks can again see over the sides of the lock the tailored, tropical surroundings. The gates ahead open, again by magic, and the ship is gently urged into the channel ahead. Three times the ship goes through a water elevator, lifted each time about thirty feet, then she is let free into Gatun Lake.
    The lake was made by damming the Chagres River, which supplies the water to work the locks. Here and there, outside the dredged channel, dead trunks of trees still thrust up through the water, melancholy monuments to progress. The extremely broken shore line and the numerous islets, both characteristic of newly-flooded river valleys, form and re-form deep three-dimensional vistas, all in glorious Technicolor. The place seems unreal, as if one had fallen into a Disney musical.
    I have heard it said that Gatun Lake is the "dull" part of the Panama Canal. I don't know what to say to such people. They are unquestionably right, since it is all a matter of taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the pig. I once ran across a woman from France who had just finished a tour of the western part of the United States. In her opinion she had seen nothing west of the Mississippi worth looking at-including the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, and so forth. As the booking agent said to the man who was flying by flapping his arms: "So you can imitate birds. But what can you do that's novel? "
    You may not share my enthusiasm for Gatun Lake and, after all, it is just another lake. The whole world is loaded with beautiful scenery; Gatun Lake is one of thousands. But I have been in it at every time of day and in every season and I myself have never grown bored with it. The lights and colors are always changing; the motion of the ship combines with the twisted shore lines to form backdrop after backdrop into mysterious depths. Perhaps it is "dull"-but I am a Missouri country boy with black mud between my toes; I still stare at the Empire State Building whenever I get a chance.
    The entire experience of the Panama Canal has always seemed pleasantly unreal to me, as if it all had been constructed by a Hollywood miniature set designer-the blazing sunlight, the quick rain storms, the little electric engines crawling slowly up beautifully curving concrete walls, the locks themselves and the lavish engineering structures around them, the endlessly changing depth on depth of lake and cut and jungle. It was designed more than half a century ago, back when ladies had "limbs" and the shout of "Get a horse!" at an "automobilist" was real wit. Yet it looks like a set for a major production scene in a Hollywood fantasy of the future.
    After the lake the ship enters the Cut-"Gaillard Cut" on the maps, "Culebra Cut" in the mouths of most people. This is the part that almost broke the hearts of the builders. This is where hairy engineers in field boots stared through surveying instruments at mountains and