He thrust aside the small-men. He tried, himself, to get the front-plate clear for removal, He broke his fingernails in the utterly futile effort, He was sure, with a bitter certainty, that the yacht had been thrown into overdrive solely to verify that it could be done, It had probably been intended to make the briefest of overdrive hops, It was wholly unlikely that a particular line of drive had been chosen. But the Marintha was surely driving away from the unnamed planet of the booby trap on which the others of her crew had been left. With every second it became less likely that she would ever find her way back to it again. And there was unquestionably a squadron or a fleet of fighting slug-ships on the way to that green world now, More, and worse, the Marintha had been detected in overdrive in the first place, and she was subject to detection in overdrive now, and when she broke out of overdrive—as she must, and quickly—there would probably be the consequences of detection by implacable enemies to be faced.
Howell felt trapped, tearing futilely at the instrument-board because the yacht was in overdrive and would not break out, But then he saw the small-men staring hopefully at him, and he was ashamed.
“The devil!” he said disgustedly. “I could have had it off by now!”
He got a screwdriver and with suddenly steady hands removed the polished black plate which was the instrument-board between rows of dials and switches. He peered at the exposed maze of wires and relays and amplifiers. The breakout switch was frozen. When the overdrive field went on, there’d been a surge of current of such extra violence that an arc had formed across a spot on the relay-contacts. The metal surfaces that should have slid past each other to cause breakout were brazed together for a space of perhaps an eighth of an inch. It was the most trivial of operational failures. Only a screwdriver and a hammer were needed. He had the screwdriver in his hand. The hammer was immediately available. He tapped on the screwdriver, cutting through the eighth-inch welded—melted—spot. The relay flipped clear. There was giddiness, there was nausea, there was the feel of a horrible spiral fall through nothingness. Then he was staring at the vision-screens.
Multitudes of stars glowed all about the Marintha. They were, of course, totally unfamiliar. There was a sun of vivid green, seemingly near enough to have a disk if one squinted at it, but it was actually only a pinpoint of brilliance. There was the Milky way, distinctly not itself as seen from Earth. There was an anonymous star-cluster between the Marintha and it. This was what the starboard vision-screens showed. To port there were fewer suns.
Howell threw on all detection-instruments, including the all-wave receiver. He hastily restored it to maximum sensitivity, whether or not it would resonate. He set the, nearest-object radar spinning, outside the hull, to warn him of anything within light-minutes.
The small-men beamed at him, admiring his quick response to the emergency, which was serious enough to produce another emergency even more serious.
“I wish,” said Howell grimly, “that I could talk your language to give you the dressing-down you deserve! Let’s see—”
The small-men continued to regard him with confidence and with admiration. They got out of his way with alacrity. They plainly waited to see what he would do, or what he would want them to do. He surveyed the situation. In part his emotions were purest, unadulterated fury. In part they were pessimistic to the edge of despair.
The Marintha was lost from the world of the booby trap and the small-men’s gypsy encampment and the balance of her proper ship’s company. By past experience, she might expect to be challenged at any instant by a slug-ship which would have followed in overdrive from the instant it detected her. Such a slug-ship might break out beyond the effective range even of its ball-lightning weapon, but it need not, and—
As of the moment, the detector-system announced that space was empty of active enemies. Howell ran his eyes over the small-men. The whiskered expert on space-drives was not among them. He was probably back at the globe-ships, feverishly trying to use the knowledge Howell had given him to make another unit of garbage-disposal equipment.
It was very likely that one of these present luridly-clothed small-men was the engineer or the astrogator of one of the two globe-ships. The very best of the small-race’s qualified pilots might be aboard the Marintha now. It wasn’t likely that the yacht had been lifted off and put into overdrive by incompetents. But none offered to take charge. Each one looked at him blandly and trustfully. He was awake; therefore he was in command of the yacht. Therefore they waited for him to give them orders. They would be intensely interested. They would be helpful to the best of their ability. But above all they would be wholly confident of the wisdom of whatever he chose to do. Because he could make a device to dispose of garbage!
He suddenly realized that he seemed to be alone save for the small-men. None of his companions was visible. They’d allowed the yacht to be lifted off by small-men. They hadn’t insisted that he be consulted. Not one of them—not even Karen—had waked him to tell him of the intended test of the overdrive-field generator. They’d let him be lifted off with the Marintha.
He went to Breen’s cabin. Empty. Ketch’s. Empty. He touched the knob of Karen’s door—and it turned in his hand. The door opened and Karen was staring at him.
“What the dev—” he stopped. “Do you know what’s happened?”
She shook her head. Then she moistened her lips and nodded. “I—think so,” she said in a queer tone. “It was a mistake, I suppose. My mistake.”
He waited.
“You—worked most of the night,” she told him uneasily. “You were—making a garbage thing for the small people. You finished it. You were worn out. You went to sleep while they worked on the overdrive. I was—nervous. I didn’t sleep. But early this morning they’d gone and—there were other small-people outside. My father went out to them. Ketch followed. I heard him talking. They couldn’t understand him, of course, but he talked like—like someone making a speech. Enthusiastic. We were going to do wonderful things for them, he said. Show them how to kill slug-creatures and destroy their ships. Wonderful things. They—listened. But of course they didn’t understand.”
“He’s an idiot,” said Howell coldly. “He thinks he’s in a drama-tape, cast in the role of a great national leader carrying his nation to triumph. Well?”
“He came in and got a rifle,” said Karen. “He went off, I suppose to show them in miniature what we’ll teach them to make in giant size. My father went off in another direction, probably about plants of some sort. I—waited. I thought you’d wake up presently and—I could give you breakfast.”
Howell made an instinctive gesture, and then checked himself.
“Go on.”
“Presently there were even more small-folk about. I heard Ketch’s voice again, but I didn’t hear what he said. Then some of the small people came into the yacht. I assumed he’d told them to. We’ve had no reason to keep them out. But I heard the exit-port close. That was when I made my mistake. I—I didn’t go out to see what they were doing. They must have lifted off and out of the atmosphere. I couldn’t tell, of course, because the artificial gravity adjusts for such things. And then—we went into overdrive and I heard you rush for the control room. I should have found out what they were going to do in the yacht. But I thought Ketch had told them—”
“He probably did,” said Howell grimly. “He’d make a grand gesture authorizing anything without knowing what it was.”