“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’t 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.
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 behind while he pulled himself squinting-close to the accelerator.
“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 compensate 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.
“Hello, pilot. Give me a microamp. One second duration.”
Sverdlov moved out of the way. Even a millionth of an ampere blast should be avoided, if it was an anti-proton current.
Electric sparks crawled like ivy over the bones of the accelerator. 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.”
“Try shifting Number Two a few centimeters forward,” said Ryerson.
“You crazy?” snorted Sverdlov. Yes, I suppose we’re all a bit crazy by now. “Look, if the deflected stream strikes here, you’ll want to bend it down like so and—”
“Never mind.” Ryerson could not be seen to move, in the bulk of his armor, but Sverdlov imagined him turning away with a contemptuous shrug. It took several minutes of tinkering for the Krasnan to realize that the Earthling had visualized the interplay of forces correctly.
He swallowed. “You were right,” he emitted.
“Well, let’s get it reassembled,” said Ryerson coldly.
Very good, Earth snob, sir. Sverdlov attacked the coils for several more minutes. “Test blast.” Not quite. Try another setting. “Test blast. Repeat.” That seemed to be it. “Give me a milliamp this time… A full amp… hm-m-m.” The current had flowed too short a time to heat the ring, but needles wavered wildly.