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And the lattice grew. And finally it tested sound, and Sver-dlov told Nakamura they could depart.
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 mass 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. God, he was thirsty! The ship 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 Fellowship 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
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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 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 ship wallowed to one side
from an unbalanced thrust.
"Engine room stopping blast!" he roared. His hand had al-ready 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 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?"
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"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:
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