The faint sound from the device that had slid off the chair rose to a howl the instant Connely touched the drawer handle. The lights on the device all flashed yellow. A thing like a miniature gun popped out of a turret, and gave a high-pitched whistle with a weird variation that riveted Connely’s attention. Then bubbles seemed to be bursting in the air all around him. He was conscious of a faint sweetish odor, and of a sensation that he was falling in a long, long, seemingly endless fall.
* * *
Connely opened his eyes, to see before him the control board of his ship. Glancing around, he saw a number of changes. On a bulkhead to his left, the meteor-warning gong had been ripped out, and a new panel installed. The panel was covered with toggle switches and pink, green, and flashing yellow lights. Hanging from one of the switches near the bottom of the panel was a note:
Con:
Sorry you got into a disagreement with one of our new items of equipment. But that’s life.
As you’ll notice, I’ve re-equipped your ship from end to end. You’ve even been outfitted with our new reflex helmet and clothing. The instructions for everything but the clothing are attached to the pieces of equipment they refer to. Knowing your violent temper, I’ve decided to put the instructions for the clothing where you won’t be likely to tear them up in an outburst of rage. Check the other equipment, and you’ll find the instructions for your garments, too.
You’ll notice that your course has been all taped and set up in the new-type course control. Keep your eyes open, make the best use of your new equipment, and perhaps you’ll succeed where the men before you failed.
As for your mail—you couldn’t read it while you were here, and you’d be distracted if you read it out there—so I will hold it against your return.
All the best,
Mac
Connely stared at the note, then nodded sourly. Mac had done it again. Now it would be Connely’s job to stay alive in a ship crammed with new equipment just one jump out of the experimental stage. Connely bent, raised an edge of his non-regulation gray carpet, and dropped the note underneath for future reference. He scowled at the new panel with its colored lights, and saw a slim brown envelope hanging beside the cabinet and marked, “Instructions.”
Connely took down the envelope, glanced over several sheets of instructions and diagrams, and found that the panel was a supplementary control box for various new devices installed all over the ship—such of them as were not purely automatic. From this panel, Connely worked his way slowly toward the rear of the ship. He found numerous changes. The already strong frame had been reinforced by heavy cross-members that angled through the ship, half-blocking the corridors. Everything metal had a peculiar gloss that refused to dent under the roughest treatment Connely dared to give it.
A variety of new weapons had been installed, including one whose thick instruction manual asserted that it fired “holes.” Each piece of equipment had its own weighty instruction manual, and the combined mass of information presented in these manuals made Connely feel dizzy.
After he’d glanced through an unusually complicated manual, Connely paused to scratch his head. He immediately felt as if someone had placed a hand on top of his head and given a sharp twist. There was a low whir, his vision cut off, and something gave his hand a painful whack.
Then something spun across his face, and Connely’s vision returned.
Cautiously, he raised his hand and felt the slick glossy surface of some kind of helmet. As long as he felt along the surface of the helmet, nothing happened. As soon as he tried to touch his face, however, the helmet spun around, giving his head a sharp twist in the process, and knocked his hand out of the way. This, Connely realized, must be the “reflex helmet” MacIntyre had mentioned in his note. Connely tried to get hold of the edge of the helmet to take it off, but whenever his hand approached the edge, the helmet swiveled rapidly, to knock his hand away.
This, Connely conceded, might be a very fine defense if someone was trying to smash his face in with a club. But how did he get out of the thing, anyway?
A few minutes of neck-wrenching experiments convinced him that the quickest way would be to locate the instructions. But he had by now worked his way back almost to the drive unit, and he had seen nothing of the instructions so far. He pulled open the door of the drive chamber, looked inside, and swallowed hard. The old drive was gone, and in its place sat a monstrous unit of such dimensions that special handholds had been installed to make it possible to climb back around it. Gradually it dawned on Connely that the new drive unit took up so much space that it actually projected forward into the place formerly occupied by the fuel tanks. In order to fit the drive unit in, the fuel tanks had been ripped out. Connely blinked, and glanced all around. Where was the fuel?
He climbed into the drive chamber, looked around, climbed up and around past a number of blocky projections, and eventually located a container not much bigger than a foot-locker, that was surrounded by big coils and a complicated arrangement of braces, wires, and tubes. This was such a formidable-looking thing that Connely was careful not to even touch it. He crouched in the narrow space between the tank—if that was what it was—and a projecting bulge on the drive unit. He reached carefully in without touching the maze of wires and tubes and got the instruction manual dangling behind it. Sure enough, the manual was labeled, “Fuel Tank M81-x, Service and Operating Instructions.”
Scowling, Connely flipped back past diagrams and data tables, and was relieved to find a summary at the end. He skimmed it rapidly, then slowed as he came to a section that read:
” . . . the tank, therefore, ‘contains’ only the head end of each keyed chain of packed fuel molecules. The remainder of each chain is selectively distorted into subspace. This allows for a very great reduction in the size of the fuel tank. It is, however, MOST IMPORTANT that no interruption in the action of the subspace-control unit be permitted to take place. Should such interruption occur, the normal volume of the molecules, no longer distorted into subspace, will attempt to fill the tank. The tank, of course, cannot possibly contain this volume of fuel. It will, therefore, burst. The outsurge of fuel, no longer molecularly oriented, and removed from contact with the negative catalyst layers of tank and fuel lines, will explode. As no part of the ship can possibly survive the release of such quantities of energy, it is strongly recommended that the preventive maintenance procedures in this manual be thoroughly understood BEFORE the tank is filled.”
Connely swallowed, shut the manual, and started to get up. The back of his head bumped the bulge on the drive unit. He slouched a little to avoid banging into the drive unit again, and as he did so he came close to one of a number of copper-colored tubes that angled up from the tank to the drive unit. There was a whir, a twist at the top of his head, and his vision cut off. Alarmed, he tried to ease himself back to a sitting position. There was another sharp twist, as the helmet spun around again. He had a momentary glimpse of blurred light, then Bang!—the edge of the helmet hit the drive unit and knocked his head forward. Immediately there was another whir and another twist.
Whack! Bang!
Bathed in sweat, Connely dropped to a sitting position on the metal deck, and sat as motionless as he could. The helmet came to a stop. He drew in a shaking breath and looked around. Everything seemed to be all right. He edged carefully out from under the bulge of the drive unit and got to his feet, still clutching the instruction manual. Gradually he relaxed, and began to breathe easily again. He grabbed a nearby handhold to climb back into the forward part of the ship, and cast a last glance back at the fuel tank.
A glittering drop of liquid fell from a bend in the coppery fuel line, hit the top of tank, and disappeared.
* * *
Connely, frozen into a state of paralysis, watched the dripping fuel for some time. With unvarying regularity, each drop appeared at the same point on the tube, fell in the same way through a maze of wires and supports, and hit the top of the tank, to vanish without a trace. A new drop then formed, to fall in exactly the same way.