Part 3 (1/2)

”I been listening to it get louder for the past three hours,” Altman hinted.

Then Brad's ears picked it up--an erratic, excited _clackety-clack-clackety-clack_. He gasped.

Altman laughed. ”That counter's setting up quite a sing-song, ain't it?

I sorta think that pile might go _boom_ in a few hours. But I'm hoping I can get your cargo aboard before then. You can come too if you want.”

Brad swung swiftly and lurched for the pa.s.sageway aft.

”Wish I was there to help you with the cad rod insertions,” the laughing voice raced after him.

The dial on the forward side of the s.h.i.+elded bulkhead read Oh-Oh-point-Oh-Two-Four. He applied the figure to the adjacent graph and learned he could remain in the engine compartment for one minute and fourteen seconds, with a safety factor of ten per cent. In that period of time, he rationalized, he ought to be able to insert a sufficient number of cadmium control rods to bring the pile under control.

The counter clicked gratingly overhead as he undogged the hatch, swung it open and lunged into the steam-tormented acrid compartment.

He broke open the first locker and jerked the remaining three cad rods from their racks. Coughing and waving smoke from in front of his face, he swung open the door of the first reserve compartment.

It was empty!

The second reserve compartment was empty too, as were the two emergency compartments. Only three cadmium rods when he needed at least three dozen!

In a rapid dash around the pile block, he inserted the rods at s.p.a.ced intervals in their slots. At least they would mean a few hours' grace.

As he slid the last rod in he cursed himself and swore that if he ever commanded another s.h.i.+p he would not leave it unmanned at the dock--specifically if there was somebody like Altman berthed anywhere at the same s.p.a.ceport.

The ruptured hypertube jacket, he wondered suddenly, not losing his count of seconds. It seemed unlikely now that it had let go as a result of defective material. He stepped to the f.l.a.n.g.e that connected it with the stern bulkhead.

The tube, inactivated immediately after the blowout, was cold. He looked where his suspicions directed.... The aperture control valve had been readjusted! It had been displaced a full fifteen degrees on the topside of optimum power! A cunning setting--one that would trap and concentrate enough residual di-ions at normal power output to cut loose somewhere between the fifth and tenth jump.

He thought, too, of his transmitter that hadn't been powerful enough to reach farther than a couple of jumps since he had left s.p.a.ceport. When, he asked himself, had Altman's radioman worked on it?

After he slammed the hatch and dogged it, he leaned against the thick metal for a long while. The _clack-clack_ overhead was somewhat pacified. But it wouldn't remain that way long. He quelled the fear sensations that were racing through him and tried to think.

How long? How long had it been since Jim left? He was three jumps away a few hours ago--or was it longer than that?--and he still had seven to go or was it six? Had it been just a few hours ago, or was it days? He had slept some--twice, he believed--since then. But for how long? And if the tow s.h.i.+ps did make it back in time, would they have spare rods?

He gave it up as a hopeless speculation and started back up the pa.s.sageway, shoulders drooping.

_Karoom!_

The new sound reverberated through the agonized vessel and the bulkheads of the pa.s.sageway shuddered in fanatic sympathy with it.

The deck s.h.i.+fted crazily beneath his feet and a port beam--the bulkhead and the rest of the s.h.i.+p following it--swung over to crash into his shoulder.

A stabbing pain shot up his arm as he slid down the tilting wall and landed in the right angle between the deck and the bulkhead.

Ma.s.saging the torn ligament in his arm, he sat up and swayed dizzily in resonance with the pendulum-like motion of the vessel. Then he struggled to his feet and stood upright--one foot planted at an angle against the deck and the other against the port bulkhead. Overhead was the corresponding juncture made by the ceiling plate and the starboard bulkhead.

Nausea welled as he tried to adjust to the new, perverted up and down references. He didn't have to wonder what had happened. The starboard gray coil that ran under the overheated converter, he knew, had finally shorted out. The port coil was still operating normally. He considered turning it off, but conceded it was better to struggle around in an apparently listing s.h.i.+p than to be wracked by the nausea of weightlessness.

Straddling the deck and port bulkhead, he waddled back to the hatchway, threw a leg over its edge and lifted himself into the control compartment, sliding down the floor to the port side. He worked his way to the control seat, readjusted its tilt and crawled in it.