The damage was remarkably light. A little welding, he thought, some swaging, and some work at the forge would fix it. Puzzled, he cautiously investigated further.
He found six small putty-like pieces of a plastic material concealed under the back part of the shield. Although there were no primers and no wiring attached to these innocent appearing little objects he needed no blueprint to tell him what they were. It was evident that the saboteur had not had time to wire more than one of his deadly little toys in the few minutes he had been alone. His intentions had certainly been to wreck the drive compartment — and kill whoever was unlucky enough to set off the trap.
With great care, sweating as he did so, he removed the chunks of explosive, then searched carefully for more. Satisfied, he slipped them into his shirt pocket and went outside. The scramble, hampered by his game leg, out of the door of the rocket, made him shaky; he felt like a human bomb. Then he limped to the corral fence and threw them as far as he could out into the already contaminated fields. He took the precaution of removing them all from his person before throwing the first one, as he wanted to be ready to fall flat. But there was no explosion; apparently the stuff was relatively insensitive to shock. Finished, he turned away, content to let sun and rain disintegrate the stuff.
He found Ross outside the cabin, turning his bandaged face to the morning sun. “That you, Doc?” the young man called out.
“Yes. Good morning, Ross.”
“Good morning, Doc.” Ross moved toward the scientist, feeling the ground with his feet. “Say, doc — I said some harsh things last night. I’m sorry. I was upset, I guess.”
“Forget it. We were all upset.” He found the boy’s groping hand and pressed it. “How are your eyes?”
Ross’s face brightened. “Coming along fine. I slipped a peek under the bandage when I got up. I can see-”
“Good!”
“I can see, but everything’s fuzzy and I see double, or maybe triple. But the light hurt my eyes so I put the bandage back.”
“It sounds as if you were going to be all right,” Cargraves ventured. “But take it easy.”
“Oh, I will. Say, Doc . . .”
“Yes, Ross ?”
“Nnnn . . . Oh, nothing. Never mind.”
“I think I know, Ross. I’ve changed my mind. I changed my mind last night before I got to sleep. We’re going through with it.”
“Good!”
“Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. I don’t know. But if that’s the way you fellows feel about it, I’m with you. We’ll go if we have to walk.”
Chapter 8: SKYWARD!
“THAT SOUNDS MORE LIKE you, Doc!”
“Thanks. Are the others up yet?”
“Not yet. They didn’t get much sleep.”
“I know. Let’s let them sleep. We’ll sit out in the car. Take my arm.”
When they had settled themselves Ross asked, “Doc, how much longer will it take to get ready?”
“Not long. Why?”
“Well, I think the key to our problems lies in how fast we can get away. If these attempts to stop us keep up, one of them is going to work. I wish we would leave today.”
“We can’t do that,” Cargraves answered, “but it shouldn’t be long. First I’ve got to install the drive, but it’s really just a matter of fitting the parts together. I had almost everything prepared before I ever laid eyes on you guys.”
“I wish my blinkers weren’t on the fritz.”
“It’s one job I’ll have to do myself. Not that I am trying to keep you out of it, Ross,” he added hastily, seeing the boy’s expression. “I’ve never explained it because I thought it would be easier when we had all the gear in front of us.”
“Well, how does it work?”
“You remember Heron’s turbine in elementary physics? Little boiler on the bottom and a whirligig like a lawn sprinkler on top? You heat the boiler, steam comes up through the whirligig, and makes it whirl around. Well, my drive works like that. Instead of fire, I use a thorium atomic power pile; instead of water, I use zinc. We boil the zinc, vaporize it, get zinc `steam.’ We let the `steam’ exhaust through the jet. That’s the works.”