Blog

But there were no more signals coming to the Cross. Food, once eaten, was gone for good. Recycled water was little more than enough to maintain life. Fire and thunder! thought Sver­dlov, I can smell myself two kilometers away. I might not sell out the Fellowship for a bottle of beer, but the Protector had better not offer me a case.

A

soft brroom-brroom-brroom pervaded his awareness, the engine talked to itself. Too loud somehow. The instru­ments read O.K., but Sverdlov did not think an engine with a good destiny would make so much noise. He glanced back at the viewscreens. The black sun was scarcely visible. It couldn’t be seen at all unless you knew just where to look. The haywired ugliness of the ion drive made a cage for stars. The faintest blue glow wavered down the rings. Shouldn’t be, of course. Inefficiency. St. Elmo’s fire danced near the after end of the assembly. “Engine room to pilot. How are we making out?”

“Satisfactory.” Nakamura’s voice sounded thin. It must be a strain, yes, he was doing a hundred things manually for which the ship lacked robots. But who could have anticipated—?

Sverdlov narrowed his eyes. “Take a look at the tail of this rig, Dave,” he said. “The rear negatron ring. See anything?”

“Well—” The boy’s eyes, dark-rimmed and bloodshot, went heavily after Sverdlov’s pointing finger. “Electrostatic dis­charge, that blue light—”

“See anything else?” Sverdlov glanced uneasily at the megameters. He did not have a steady current going down the accelerators, it fluctuated continually by several per cent. But

was the needle for the negatron side creeping ever so slowly downward?

“No. No, I can’t.”

“Should’a put a thermocouple in every ring. Might be a very weak deflection of ions, chewing at the end-most till all at once its focusing goes blooey and we’re in trouble.”

“But we tested every single—And the star’s magnetic field is attenuating with every centimeter we advance.”

“Vibration, my cub-shaped friend. It’d be easy to shake one of those jury-rigged magnetic coils just enough out of align­ment to—Hold it!”

The terminal starboard coil glowed red Blue electric fire squirted forth and ran up the lattice. The negative megameter dropped ten points and Sverdlov felt a little surge as the ship wallowed to one side from an unbalanced thrust.

“Engine room stopping blast!” he roared. His hand had al­ready gone crashing onto the main lever.

The noise whined away to a mumble. He felt himself pitched off a cliff as high as eternity.

“What’s the trouble?” barked Maclaren’s voice.

Sverdlov relieved himself of a few unrepeatable remarks. “Something’s gone sour out there. The last negatron accelera­tor began to glow and the current to drop. Didn’t you feel us yaw?”

“Oh, Lord, have mercy,” groaned Ryerson. He looked physi­cally sick. “Not again.”

“Ah, it needn’t be so bad,” said Sverdlov. “Me, I’m surprised the mucking thing held together this long. You can’t do much with baling wire and spit, you know.” Inwardly, he struggled with a wish to beat somebody’s face.

“I presume we are in a stable orbit,” said Nakamura. “But I would feel a good deal easier if the repair can be made soon. Do you want any help?”

“No. Dave and I can handle it. Stand by to give us a test blast.”

Sverdlov and Ryerson got into their spacesuits. “I swear this smells fouler every day,” said the Krasnan. “I didn’t believe I could be such a filth generator.” He slapped down his helmet and added into the radio: “So much for man the glorious star­conqueror.”

“No,” said Ryerson.

“What?”

“The stinks are only the body. That isn~ important. What counts is the soul inside.”

Sverdlov cocked his bullet head and stared at the other armored shape. “Do you actually believe that guff?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to preach or—”

“Never mind. I don’t feel like arguing either.” Sverdlov laughed roughly. “I’ll give you just one thing to mull over, though. If the body’s such a valueless piece of pork, and we’ll all meet each other in the sweet bye and bye, and so on, why’re you busting every gut you own to get back to your wife?”

He heard an outraged breath in his earphones. For a mo­ment he felt he had failed somehow. There was no room here for quarrels. Ah, shaft it, he told himself. If an Earthling don’t like to listen to a colonial, he can jing-bangle well stay out of space.