well, Sol or Centauri or . . . or any of the stations, even another spaceship . . . resonates—”
“Are you related to a Professor Broussard of Lomonosov Academy?” interrupted the other man.
“Why, no. What—”
“You lecture just like he used to. I am not interested in the theory and practice of mattercasting. I want to know, can we get home?”
Ryerson clenched a fist. He was glad that helmets and darkness hid their two faces. “Yes,” he said. “If all goes well. And if we can find four kilos of germanium.”
“What do you want that for?” Sverdlov asked.
“Do you see those thick junction points in the web? They are, uh, you might call them giant transistors. Half the lattice is gone: there, the germanium was simply whiffed away. I do know the crystallo-chemical structure involved. And we can get the other elements needed by cannibalizing, and there is an alloying unit aboard which could be adapted to manufacture the transistors themselves. But we don’t have four spare kilos of germanium aboard.”
Sverdlov’s tone grew heavy with skepticism: “And that bal
loon head Maclaren means to find a planet? And mine the stuff?”
“I don’t know—” Ryerson wet his lips. “I don’t know what else we can do.”
“But this star went supernova!”
“It was a big star. It would have had many planets. Some of the outermost ones . . . if they were large to start with .
may have survived.”
“Ha! And you’d hunt around on a lump of fused nickel-iron, without even a sun in the sky, for germanium ore?”
“We have an isotope separator. It could be adapted to . . . I haven’t figured it out yet, but—For God’s sake!” Ryerson found himself screaming. “What else can we do?”
“Shut up!” rapped Sverdlov. “When I want my earphones broken I’ll use a hammer.”
He stood in a swirl of golden fog, and the gray-rimmed black eye of the dead star marched behind him. Ryerson crouched back, hooked into the framework and waiting. At last Sverdlov said: “It’s one long string of ifs. But a transistor doesn’t do anything a vacuum tube can’t.” He barked a laugh. “And we’ve got all the vacuum we’ll ever want. Why not design and make the equivalent electronic elements? Ought to be a lot easier than—repairing the accelerators, and scouring space for a planet.”
“ ESIGN them?” cried Ryerson “And test them, and redesign them, and—Do you realize that on half rations we
have not quite six months’ food supply?”
“I do,” said Sverdlov. “I feel it in my belly right now.” He muttered a few obscenities. “All right, then. I’ll go along with the plan. Though if that clotbrain of a Nakamura hadn’t—”
“He did the only thing possible! Did you want to crash us?”
“There are worse chances to take,” said Sverdlov. “Now what have we got, but six months of beating our hearts out and then another month or two to die?” He made a harsh noise in the radiophone, as if wanting to spit. “I’ve met Sarai settlers before. They’re worse than Earthlings for cowardice, and nearly as stupid.”
“Now, wait—” began Ryerson. “Wait, let’s not quarrel—”
“Afraid of what might happen?” jeered Sverdlov. “You don’t know your friend Maclaren’s dirty-fighting tricks, do you?”
The ship whirled through a darkness that grew noisy with Ryerson’s uneven breathing. He raised his hands against the bulky robot shape confronting him. “Please,” he stammered. “Now wait, wait, Engineer Sverdlov.” Tears stung his eyes. “We’re all in this together, you know.”
“I wondered just when you’d be coming up with that cliché,” snorted the Krasnan. “Having decided it would be oh, so amusing to tell your society friends, how you spent maybe a whole month in deep space, you got me yanked off the job I really want to do, and tossed me into a situation you’d never once stopped to think about, and wrecked us all—and now you tell me, We’re all in this together!’ “Suddenly he roared his words:
“You mangy son of a muckeating cockroach, I’ll get you back— not for your sake, nor for your wife’s—for my own planet, d’you hear? They need me there!”