Part 6 (1/2)

The engine which had accelerated theCross to half light speed could not lift her straight away from this sun. Nor could her men have endured a couple of hundred gravities, even for a short time. She moved out at two gees, her gyros holding the blast toward the ma.s.s she was escaping, so that her elliptical orbit became a spiral. It would take hours to reach a point where the gravitational field had dropped so far that a hyper-bolic path would be practicable.

Sverdlov crouched in his harness, glaring at screens and indicators. That cinder wasn't going to let them escape this easily! He had stared too long at its ashen face to imagine that. There would be some new trick, and he would have to be ready. G.o.d, he was thirsty! The s.h.i.+p did have a water-regenerating unit, merely because astronautical regulations at the time she was built insisted on it. Odd, owing your life to some bureau-crat with two hundred years of dust on his own filing cabinets. But the regenerator was inadequate and hadn't been used in all that time. No need for it: waste material went into the matterbank, and was reborn as water or food or anything else, according to a signal sent from the Lunar station with every change of watch.

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

A softbrroom-brroom-brroom pervaded his awareness, the engine talked to itself. Too loud somehow.

The instru-ments 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 a.s.sembly. ”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 s.h.i.+p lacked robots. But who could have antic.i.p.ated-?

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 dis-charge, 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 align-mentto-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 s.h.i.+p wallowed to one side from an unbalanced thrust.

”Engine room stopping blast!” he roared. His hand had al-ready gone cras.h.i.+ng 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 accelera-tor began to glow and the current to drop. Didn't you feel us yaw?”

”Oh, Lord, have mercy,” groaned Ryerson. He looked physi-cally 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 s.p.a.cesuits. ”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 star-conqueror.”

”No,” said Ryerson.

”What?”

”The stinks are only the body. That isn't important. What counts is the soul inside.”

Sverdlov c.o.c.ked 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 mo-ment 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 s.p.a.ce.

They gathered tools and instruments in a silence that smoldered. When they left the air lock, they had the usual trouble in seeing. Then their pupils expanded and their minds switched over to the alien gestalt. A raw blaze leaped forth and struck them.

Feeling his way aft along the lattice, Sverdlov sensed his anger bleed away. The boy was right-it did no good to curse dead matter. Save your rage for those who needed it, tyrants and knaves and their sycophants. And you might even wonder-it was horrible to think-if they were worth it either. He stood with ten thousand bitter suns around him; but none was Sol or Tau Ceti. 0 Polaris, death's lodestar, are we as little as all that?

He reached the end of the framework, clipped his life line on, and squirted a light-diffusing fog at the ring. Not too close, he didn't want it to interfere with his ion stream, but it gave him three-dimensional illumination. He let his body float out be-hind while he pulled himself squinting-close to the accelera-tor.

”Hm-m-m, yes, it's been pitted,” he said. ”Naturally it would be the negatron side which went wrong.

Protons do a lot less harm, striking terrene matter. Hand me that counter, will you?”

Ryerson, wordless and faceless, gave him the instrument. Sverdlov checked for radioactivity. ”Not enough to matter,” he decided. 'We won't have to replace this ring, we stopped the process in time. By readjusting the magnetic coils we can com-pensate for the change in the electric focusing field caused by its gnawed-up shape. I hope.”

Ryerson said nothing.Good grief, thought Sverdlov,did I offend him that much? Hitherto they had talked a little when working outside, not real conversation but a trivial remark now and then, a grunt for response . . . just enough to drown out the hissing of the stars.

”h.e.l.lo, pilot. Give me a microamp. One second duration.”

Sverdlov moved out of the way. Even a millionth of an am-pere blast should be avoided, if it was an anti-proton current.

Electric sparks crawled like ivy over the bones of the accel-erator. Sverdlov, studying the instruments he had planted along the ion path, nodded. ”What's the potentiometer say, Dave?” he asked. ”If it's saying anything fit to print, I mean.”

”Standard,” snapped Ryerson.

Maybe I should apologize,thought Sverdlov. And then, in a geyser:Judas, no! If he's so thin-skinned as all that, he can rot before I do.

The stars swarmed just out of reach. Sometimes changes in the eyeball made them seem to move. Like flies. A million burning flies. Sverdlov swatted, unthinkingly, and snarled to himself.

After a while it occurred to him that Ryerson's nerves must also be rubbed pretty thin. You shouldn't expect the kid to act absolutely sensibly.I lost my own head at the very start of this affair, thought Sverdlov. The memory thickened his temples with blood. He began unbolting the Number One magnetic coil as if it were an enemy he must destroy as savagely as possible.

”O.K., gimme another microamp one-second test.”