That thought was all the bracer he needed. As by a miracle, his fatigue dropped away from him, and by a few terse words he managed to convey to Benton and his helpers somethings of the same fiery spirit that animated him. To a man, they knew that excuses would have no value — they must deliver.
It was an interested group of spectators who thronged about the grounded cruiser. By common consent the rules had been relaxed to the extent that the "dead" could look on and converse, provided only they did not interfere. From the deceased Polliwogs came words of cheer — the whole crew was rooting for them, while now and then a Castor Bean would relieve himself of some wisecrack at the expense of the toiling repair men. The admiral, for all his magnanimity, was fretful and impatient. He had a dinner date with the Governor of Callisto for the following evening and it annoyed him to think he might not be there. The Castorians, too, were anxious to get back to the yard. They yearned to get aboard their own vessel, for in the last few hours they had learned there was much to do to that fine ship. Her inspection — by the Polliwogs — was set for the following week.
Bullard doggedly disregarded them all. He had opened a cargo hatch along the keelson and from the nether hold his men had dragged five huge cylinders. Using heavy tackles, they ranged them alongside the Pollux in the wan sunlight of the Jovian System. Farther aft, heavy tripods had been set up and diamond-pointed drills were biting into the native iron of the little satellite. Other men were high up on the sternpost, driving portable reamers into the ragged tunnels of the tube housings. Chinnery and Roswell, chief engineers respectfully of the Pollux and Castor, stood by, watching.
Chinnery evinced no joy at seeing this young officer from the gunnery department making bold with his spare stores, nor did he take pains to conceal his contempt for this latest effort.
"Spare bushings for the old-style tubes," he explained to Roswell. "I forgot I had a set. But they won't do him any good. They're over-sized. We carry 'em because they are too big forgings to pick up anywhere, but it takes a well-equipped yard to put 'em in — they have to be pressed in, you know, to a tight fit."
Roswell nodded. As a rival, he was quite willing to see the job miscarry. Up until then, the Pollux had parried every one of his devastating casualties. He was hoping they would muff this real one.
But Bullard neither knew nor cared what they were saying. He and Benton were on top one of the huge tubes, manipulating a gigantic pair of calipers. They already knew they were oversize, and their plans for pressing them in were at that very moment in the process of execution. Astern of the ship a group of holes had been drilled into the iron, and now the men had substituted fat taps for the drills. Those who had originally brought the tubes out of the storeroom were back within the ship, rousing out hundreds of fathoms of high tensile chain — carried for the rare emergency of a heavy tow.
The men up in the tubes reported their job completed, but Bullard frowned when he read the finished diameter. It was too little. He wished ardently for a giant lathe so he could take a cut off the massive tubes. But there was no such lathe nearer than Ursapolis. He would have to reduce the outer diameter of the bushings some other way.
He bled air from the ship through outlets on its shady side, and collected the liquefied gas in buckets and doused the tubes with the cold liquid air, but even when they had shrunk to their minimum size, they were still too large. It was a disappointment, for he had little time to spare for the actual work ahead and none at all for experimentation. The tapping of the holes was done, and now men were already setting the heavy eyebolts and reeving the chains through, ready to hold the ship against the thrust of the great hydraulic jack he had placed astern of her. But still the tubes were too fat. If the ram was strong enough to force them in, the chains would part, he must reduce the resistance, but he saw no way to do it now except to heat the tubes, and that he was reluctant to do, for his tank soundings showed he was already dangerously short of fuel. They had expended it lavishly in their escape from Jupiter. There was barely enough liquid hydrogen to get them off the satellite and on their way to port, with a small margin over for the landing.
Benton shook his head when questioned as to possible sources of substitute fuel. All the uranium had been lost overboard when the feed pipes were broken with full pressure still behind the fuel supply. That had been necessary at the time, and it was fruitless to waste regrets on it now.
Bullard sat down and explored the ship mentally, checking off one by one, the contents of the storerooms. There was nothing he could use that did not have some drawback. Ammonal there was plenty of, but he had doubts as to its safety. Then, suddenly, the solution hit him.
"Go ahead and set your first tube," he directed; "No. 1. Then send all the men you can spare into the nose blister — break out a couple of tons of that steel wool. That's what we will use."
It made a pretty blaze, that tube housing stuffed with steel wool saturated in liquid air, and a short one. Under the terrific outpouring of heat, the tube reddened and swelled, and the ready nose of the first of the bushings was jockeyed into the mouth of the tube and the great jack set in motion. Upward it drove, the ship straining against her leashes, but the pad-eyes set in the hard, planetary iron held, and the quivering Pollux had to receive her bushing. There was no evading the thrust of the ram.
One by one the other bushings were run in and rammed light, and as the surrounding housing cooled, its contraction crushed the liner to as tight a fit as any yard in the Solar System could have achieved with all their fine equipment. Bullard had no misgivings as to their reliability. They would stay in place.
He was an hour ahead of schedule when the last tool was back on board and the warning howlers announced the imminent take-off. The Pollux spouted flame — old-fashioned flame, such as the Asia still used — then roared upward on her homeward flight.
"Send this, please," the admiral crisply commanded the tired but contented acting captain of the Pollux. Bullard looked at him in surprise. The radio had been repaired, but why did he want to send a signal? No one needed a tug now. They would be in in an hour — long before any tug could be warmed up. But he took the signal, since the admiral had offered it, and read. It was addressed to all ships and stations and began, "I have this day inspected the cruiser Pollux and find her ready in all respects for any contingency of the service — "
The first casualty of the trip really to hit Bullard occurred at that point. Something went wrong with his eyes, and for a moment the message in his fingers was just a blur. He saw the words "special commendation," and a mention of a Commander Bullard, and by then he had reached the familiar signature — Abercrombie. He did notice that the ship's score was a flat four-o, and at the moment that was all he cared about. She had made the grade.
WHITE MUTINY
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст