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 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 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 ship 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 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?"

"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."

"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 tinker-ing for the Krasnan to realize that the Earthling had visual-ized the interplay of forces correctly.

He swallowed. "You were right," he emitted.

"Well, let's get it rea.s.sembled," said Ryerson coldly.

Very good, Earth sn.o.b, 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 cur-rent had flowed too short a time to heat the ring, but needles wavered wildly.

"We're still getting some deflection," said Sverdlov. "Matter of velocity distribution. A certain small percentage of the par-ticles have abnormal velocities and-" He realized he was crouched under Ryerson's hidden eyes babbling the obvious. "I'll try sliding this one a wee bit more aside. Gimme that vernier wrench-So. One amp test blast, please."

There was no further response from the instruments. Ryer-son let out a whistling sigh. "We seem to have done it," he said.

We?thought Sverdlov.Well, you handed me a few tools!

Aloud: "We won't know for sure till full thrust is applied."

"Of course." Ryerson spoke hesitantly. Sverdlov recognized the tone, it was trying to be warm. Ryerson was over his fit of temper.

Well, I'm not!

"There isn't anything to be done about that except to try it and see, is there?" went on the Earthling.

"And if we still get significant deflection, drag on our suits and crawl back here-maybe a dozen times?

No!"

"Why, that was how we did it before."

"I'm getting awfully hungry," said Sverdlov. Suddenly it flared out of him. "I'm sick of it! I'm sick of being cooped up in my own stink, and yours, I'm sick of the same stupid faces and the same stupid remarks, yes, the same stars even! I've had enough! Get on back inside. I'll stay here and watch under acceleration. If anything goes wrong, I'll be right on the spot to fix it."

"But-"

Nakamura's voice crackled above the mutter of stars. "What are you thinking of, Engineer Sverdlov?

Two gravities would pull you off the ship! And we're not maneuverable enough to rescue you."

"This life line is tested for two thousand kilos," said the Krasnan. "It's standard procedure to make direct high-acceler-ation checks on the blast."

"By automatic instruments."

"Which we haven't got. Do youknow the system is fully adjusted? Are you so sure there isn't some small c.u.mulative effect, so the thing will quit on you one day when you need it the most?"

Maclaren's tone joined in, dry and somehow remote: "This is a curious time to think about that."

"I am the engineer," said Sverdlov stiffly. "Read the ship's articles again."

"Well," said Nakamura. "Well, but-"

"It would save time," said Ryerson. "Maybe even a few days' worth of time, if the coils really are badly maladjusted."

"Thanks, Dave," said Sverdlov clumsily.

"Well," said Nakamura, "you have the authority, of course. But I ask you again-"

"All I ask ofyou is two gravities' worth of oof for a few seconds," interrupted Sverdlov. "When I'm satisfied this ring will function properly, so we won't have to be forever making stops like this, I'll come inside."

He hooked his legs about the framework and began reset-ting the instruments clamped onto it. "Get on back, Dave," he said.

"Why . . . I thought I would-"

"No need to."

"But there is! You can't read every dial simultaneously, and if there's work to be done you'll need help."

"I'll call you if I want you. Give me your tool belt." Sverdlov took it from reluctant hands and buckled it around himself. "There is a certain amount of hazard involved, Dave. If I should be unlucky, you're the closest approximation to an en-gineer the ship will have. She can't spare both of us."

"But why take any risk at all?"

"Because I'm sick of being here! Because I've got to fight back at that black coal or start howling! Now get inside!"

AS he watched the other blocky shape depart him, Sver-dlov thought:I am actually not being very rational, am I now? But who could expect it, a hundred light-years from the sun?

As he made ready, he puzzled over what had driven him. There was the need to wrestle something tangible; and surely to balance on this skeleton of metal, under twice his normal weight, was a challenge.

Beyond that, less important really, was the logic of it: the reasons he had given were sound enough as far as they went, and you could starve to death while proceeding at the pace of caution.

And below it all, he thought, was a dark wish he did not understand. Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits. You didn't have to accept Dave's Calvinism-though its unmerciful G.o.d seemed very near this dead star-to swallow the truth that some things were more important than survival. Than even the survival of a cause.

Maybe I'm trying to find out what those things are,he thought confusedly.

He crawled "up" till his feet were braced on a cross-member, with the terminal accelerator ring by his right ankle but the electroprober dial conveniently near his faceplate. His right hand gripped a vernier wrench, his left drew taut the life line. "Stand by for blast," he said into his radio. "Build up to two gees over a one-minute period, then hold it till I say cut."

Nothing happened for a while except the crawling of the constellations as gyros brought the ship around.

Good boy, Seiichi! He'd get some escape distance out of even a test blast. "Stand by," it said in Sverdlov's earphones. And his weight came back to him, until he felt an exultant straining in the muscles of shoulder and arm and leg and belly; until his heart thudded loud enough to drown out the thin crackling talk of the stars.

The hull was above him now, a giant sphere upheld on twin derricks. Down the middle of each derrick guttered a ghostly blue light, and sparks writhed and fountained at junction points. The constellations shone chill through the electric dis-charge.

Inefficient,thought Sverdlov.The result of reconstruction without adequate instruments. But it's pretty. Like festival fire-works. He remembered a pyrotechnic display once, when he was small. His mother had taken him. They sat on a hired catamaran and watched wonder explode softly above the lake.