* * * * *
It took me an awfully long time to wake up. When I made it, I found out
why.
I'd only been asleep an hour.
"I knew it was too good to last," I said. "What blew up?"
"'Dozer brakes jammed," she said. "Something wrong with the towbar."
That was fine. Perfect operation for twelve days; twenty-six hundred
miles covered. Then it had to give trouble.
I rolled out of the bunk. "Well, I didn't think we'd even get this far.
Any leaks?"
She shook her head.
Fine. That bar was a nightmare of pressure-actuated hydraulics. Very
small, very light, and _very_ precision. I wouldn't dare go into it
very deeply.
Helene moved quietly to the other end of the compartment while I
struggled into my suit. It had been that way ever since we started.
We'd never tried to go through the motions after that one ineffectual
attempt. So far, it hadn't mattered. Driving required all our
attention, and after ten hours "up front" there wasn't much problem
involved in sleeping, no matter what we had on our minds.
Now it would matter. That bar could take a long time to fix, even if I
didn't go in very far. Helene would be just sitting around watching.
If she was my wife it wouldn't have mattered....
She waited until I was through the lock before she followed.
There were normal tread-marks for a hundred feet or so behind the
'dozer, then several hundred feet of shallow ruts. She'd disconnected
the 'dozer brakes and then moved forward and stopped slowly--using the
brakes on the tractor itself--to see whether the trouble was in the bar
or in the actuators on the 'dozer. I checked the actuators, brushed out
some dirt and sand, and reconnected, then tried to drive away.
The brakes were still jammed.
"So?" she inquired.
"So we take the bar apart."
"The tech orders were in Ed's head."
"Don't I know it!"
"I didn't think you knew anything about this stuff. Anything specific,
I mean."
"I don't."
"But you think you can fix it?"
"No, but I can't make it any worse."