"Yes," said Atef Al-Amin absently. "It isn't connected to the
emergency circuits. Wastes too much energy. What do you find, Mr.
Kelvin?"
After a second's silence, Jayjay said: "Let me check once more." He
was running the tip of the toothpick across the threads in the female
plug, counting as he did so. "Uh-huh," he said finally, "just as I
thought. There's one less thread in the female plug. The male plug is
stopped before it can make contact. There's a gap of about a tenth of
an inch when the coupling is screwed up tight."
"Let me see," Smith said. He took the toothpick and went through the
same operation. "You're right," he said ruefully, "the female plug is
faulty. We'll have to use one of the other screamers."
"Right," said Jayjay.
Wrong, said Fate. Or the Powers That Be, or the Fallibility of Man,
whatever you want to call it.
Every screamer unit suffered from the same defect.
* * * * *
"I don't understand it!" A pause. "It's impossible! Those units were
tested!"
For the first time in his life, Captain Atef Abdullah Al-Amin allowed
his voice to betray him.
Arabic is normally spoken about half an octave above the normal tone
used for English. And, unlike American English, it tends to waver up
and down the scale. Usually, the captain spoke English in the flat,
un-accented tones of the Midwest American accent, and spoke Arabic in
the ululating tones of the Egyptian.
But now he was speaking English with an Egyptian waver, not realizing
that he was doing it.
"How could it happen? It's ridiculous!"
The captain, his maintenance officer, and Jeffry Hull were clustered
around the screamer unit in the lounge. Off to one side, Jayjay Kelvin
held a deck of cards in his hands and played a game of patience called
"transportation solitaire." His eyes didn't miss a play, just as his
ears didn't miss a word.
He pulled an ace from the back of the deck and flipped it to the
front.
"You said the screamers had been checked," Jeffry Hull said
accusingly. "How come they _weren't_ checked?"
"They _were_!" Al-Amin said sharply.
"Sure they were," Smith added. "I watched the check-off. There was
nothing wrong then."
"Meanwhile," Hull said, the acid bite of fear in his voice, "we have
to sit here and wait for the Interplanetary Police to find us by pure
luck."
The captain should have let Hull cling to the idea that the IP could
find the _Persephone_, even if no signal was sent. But the captain was
almost as angry and flustered as Hull was.
[Illustration]
"Find us?" he snapped. "Don't be ridiculous! We won't even be missed
until we're due at Styx, on Pluto, nine days from now. By that time,
we'll be close to two billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. We'll
never be found if we wait 'til then. Something has to be done _now_!"
He looked at his Maintenance Officer. "Smith, isn't there some way to
make contact between those two plugs?"
"Sure," Smith said bitterly. "If we had the tools, it would be duck
soup. All we'd have to do is trim down the male plug to fit the
female, and we'd have it. But we don't have the tools. We've got a
couple of files and a quarter-horsepower electric drill with one bit.
Everything else was in the tool compartment--which is long gone, with
the engine room."
"Can't you ... uh, what do you call it? Uh ... jury-something--"
Hull's voice sounded as though he were forcing it to be calm.
"Jury-rig?" Smith said. "Yeah? With what? Dammit, we haven't got any
tools, and we haven't got any materials to work with!"
"Can't you just use a wrench to tighten them more?" Hull asked
helplessly.
Smith said a dirty word and pushed himself away from the screamer unit
to glower at an unresisting wall.
"No, Mr. Hull, we couldn't," said Captain Al-Amin with restrained
patience. "That would strip the threads. If the electrical contact
were made at the same time, the high-pressure oxygen-hydrogen flow
would spark off, and we'd get a big explosion that would wreck
everything--including us." Then he muttered to himself: "I still don't
see how it could happen."
Jayjay Kelvin pulled a nine of spades from the back of the deck to the
front. It matched the four of spades that had come three cards
before. Jayjay discarded the two cards between the spades. "You
don't?" he asked. "Didn't you ever hear that the total is greater than
the sum of its parts?"
"What?" Captain Al-Amin sounded as though he'd been insulted--in
Arabic. "What are you talking about, Mr. Kelvin?"
"I'm talking about the idiocy of the checking system," Jayjay said
flatly. "Don't you see what they did? Don't you see what happened?
Each part of a screamer has to be checked separately, right?"
Al-Amin nodded.
"Why? Because the things burn out if you check them as a complete
unit. It's like checking a .50 caliber cartridge. The only way you can
check a cartridge is to shoot it in a gun. If it works, then you know
it works. Period. The only trouble is that you've wasted the
cartridge. You know that _that_ one is good, but you've ruined it.
"Same way with a screamer. If you test it as a unit, you'll ruin it.
So you test it a part at a time. All the parts check out nicely
because the test mechanisms are built to check each part."
Smith squinted. "Well, sure. If you check out the whole screamer,
you'll ruin it. So what?"
"So suppose you were going to check out a cartridge," Jayjay said.
"You don't fire it; you check each part separately. You check the
brass case. It's all right; the tests show that it won't burst under
firing pressure. You check the primer; the tests show that it will
explode when hit by the gun's hammer. You check the powder; the tests
show that the powder will burn nicely when the flame from the primer
hits it. You check the bullet; the tests show that the slug will be
expelled at the proper velocity when the powder is ignited.
"So you assume that the cartridge will function when fired.
"But will it?"
"Why wouldn't it?" Smith asked.
"Because the flame from the exploding primer can't reach the powder,
that's why!" Jayjay snapped. "Some jerk has redesigned the primer so
that the flame misses the propellant!"
"How could that happen?" Hull asked blankly.
"How? Because Designer _A_ decided that the male plug on the screamer
should have one more turn on its threads, but he forgot to tell
Designer _B_, who designs the female plug, that the two should match.
The testing equipment is designed to test each part, so each part
tests out fine. The only trouble is that the thing doesn't test out as
a whole."
* * * * *
Captain Al-Amin nodded slowly. "That's right. The test showed that the
oxyhydrogen section worked fine. It showed that the starter worked
fine. It showed that the radiowave broadcaster worked fine. But it
didn't show that they'd work together."
Smith said a short, five-letter word. It was French; the Anglo-Saxon
equivalent has only four letters. "What good does all this theorizing
do us?" he added. "The question is: How do we fix the thing?"
"Well, can't you put another turn on the thread?" Hull asked.
"Oh, sure," Smith said sarcastically. "You give me a lathe and the
proper tools, and I'll make you all the connections you want. Hell, if
I had the proper tools, I could turn us out a new spaceship, and we
could all go home in comfort."
"Couldn't you drill out the metal with that drill?" Hull asked
plaintively.
"No!" Smith said harshly. "How do you expect me to get a quarter-inch
bit into a space less than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter?"