All heads turned toward Jayjay.
"What does that mean?" Smith asked.
"Just what I said." Jayjay turned another card. "A screamer is
supposed to call for help, isn't it? It's only used in a dire
emergency. Then the only test of the whole unit comes when the
occupants of the spaceship are in danger--as we are. If the things
don't work, how could there be any complaint? If we can't get ours to
work, will we complain? To whom?
"How many ships have been reported missing in the past year or so? All
of them presumed lost because of meteor strikes, eh? If a ship is lost
and doesn't signal, we presume that it was totally destroyed. If it
wasn't, they'd have signaled. As _Mister_ Smith says: See?"
There was a long silence.
Jayjay Kelvin turned the last card, saw that he had lost, and began
shuffling the deck.
* * * * *
"I think I've got it," Smith said excitedly, several hours later.
Captain Al-Amin glanced around. Hull was dozing fitfully a few inches
above the couch. Jayjay Kelvin was still methodically playing
solitaire.
"Keep your voice down," the captain ordered. "No use giving our
passengers false hopes. What do you mean, you've got it?"
"Simple. Real simple. All we have to do is file off the last thread of
the male plug. Then it will fit into the female." Smith's voice was a
hoarse whisper.
"Won't work," said Jayjay Kelvin from across the room.
Smith blew up. "How do you know?" he roared. "You sit over there
making wiseacre remarks and do nothing! Play cards, that's all! What
do you know about things like this, _Mister_ Joseph Kelvin? What does
a businessman know about mechanical equipment?"
"Enough," Jayjay said quietly. "Enough to know that, if you try to
file off the final thread of the male plug, you'll do an uneven job.
And that will mean leakage."
"What do you mean, an uneven job?" Smith was still furious.
"Trimming off the end of the male plug would have to be done on a
lathe," Jayjay said, without looking up from his cards. "Otherwise,
the fit would be wrong, and the gases would mix. And we would all go
_phfft!_ when the mixture blew."
Smith started to say something, but Jayjay went right on talking.
"Even if we had a lathe, the male plug doesn't turn, so you'd be out
of luck all the way. You can't take the screamers apart without
wrecking them--not without a machine shop. You're going to have to
work on that female connection. She's got a sleeve on her that will
turn. Now, if--" Jayjay's voice faded off into silence, and his
manipulations of the cards became purely mechanical.
"Huh!" Smith said softly. "Just because he's related to Kelvin
Associates, he thinks he's hot--" He said the French word again.
"Is he right?" Captain Al-Amin asked sharply.
"Well--" Smith rubbed his nose with a forefinger. "Well, yes. I was
wrong. We can't do it with a file. It would have to be turned on a
lathe, and we don't have a lathe. And we don't have any measuring
instruments, either. This is a precision job, as I said. And we don't
have a common ruler aboard, much less a micrometer. Any makeshift job
will be a failure."
Captain Al-Amin brooded over that for a moment. Then he looked at
Jayjay again. "Mr. Kelvin."
"Yes, captain?" Jayjay didn't look up from the cards in his hands.
"_Are_ you related to Kelvin Associates?"
"In a way."
Al-Amin bit at his lower lip. "Mr. Kelvin, you registered aboard this
ship as Joseph Kelvin. May I ask if your middle name is James?"