"Meaning?"
"Marooning her wouldn't be half so much fun if it is impossible to get
her out. Marooning her when we have the means to get her out puts it
strictly in our own lap. Right?"
"I suppose so. We could laugh at her honestly then."
"She's strictly a stinker," agreed McBride. "I get that cod-liver-oil
smell now. All that soft soap and palaver she was handing out about
our being the boys with the brains. We were the guys who would
be responsible for lifting a struggling civilization up from the
primordial slime by our brain and our genius. Baloney!"
"I get it," growled Hammond. "She's stuck. God knows how she
landed--probably emergency and shot her load of battery juice. Anyway,
she could land under emergency battery, but taking off is a megawatt of
another color, battery-wise. They aren't equipped to make a take-off.
Idea being the old one--don't start if you can't stop."
"She's a bright girl in her own stinking way," said McBride. "She's
been around this gang long enough to know that if a way is possible,
we'll think of it. Oh, sure, that's a brag but we've done pretty well
so far. So inveigle us into the same trap she's in and then ride out
with us. She'd roast in the brimstone of the nether regions before
she'd wail for help honestly. But if we get stuck with her she's got
two outs. One, we may be able to think our way out. Two, at least we
are Terrans like she is."
"Meaning?" asked Hammond darkly.
"Frankly, Sandra Drake is an awful lot of woman, and she knows it.
She'd make a plaster saint turn to whistle at her if she turned on the
old charm. And with no competition, we'd be fighting one another for
the privilege of polishing her shoes."
"Fine future."
"No thanks."
"I'll have a bit of that, too. Well, how can we slip her the old
triple-cross?"
"Steve, you'd throw a woman to the lions?"
"With that woman, I'd hate to do it. The S.P.C.A, would haul me in
to court for subjecting poor, dumb, defenseless lions to cruelty and
inhuman tortures. You're darned right I'd heave her into the drink. But
I want to do it in such a way that Sandra Drake will know that it was
far from purely coincidental."
"O.K., Steve. We're with you. Larry, throw the _Haywire Queen_ into an
orbit around Telfu just outside of the danger zone and slap another
recorder on the drive. Make it a high velocity orbit, powered all the
way. We should be able to circle Telfu in about fifteen minutes with
the super drive. Check?"
"Sure. Here we go."
"Meanwhile, Steve, we'll check a few items on the drive itself. I'm
beginning to suspect a huge and celestial soak-up of gravitic power in
the region of Telfu."
"We can set up the small, experimental drive-model complete with power
recorders, spring balances, and torque measuring devices and work on
that."
"Swell. That's the ticket. Let's go."
Hammond hauled the model from the cabinet and plugged in a complex
cable from the master control panel. He juggled the dials until the
gadget started to work, and then they began to check the efficiency of
the device.