"Are you _the_ J. J. Kelvin?"
"Yup. But I'd rather you didn't mention it when we get to Pluto."
Smith's jaw had slowly sagged during that conversation. Then he closed
his mouth with a snap. "You're Jayjay Kelvin?" he asked, opening his
mouth again.
"That's right."
"Then I apologize."
"Accepted," said Jayjay. He wished that Smith hadn't apologized.
"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Captain Al-Amin asked.
"Because I didn't want it known that I was going to Pluto," Kelvin
said. "And--after the accident happened--I kept quiet because I know
human nature."
Jeffry Hull, who had awakened during the argument, looked at Jayjay
and said: "What's human nature got to do with it, Mr. Kelvin?"
"Nothing, except that if I'd told everyone I was J. J. Kelvin, all of
you would have been sitting around waiting for me to solve the problem
instead of thinking about it yourselves."
Hull nodded thoughtfully. "It makes sense, Mr. Kelvin. If they'd known
that you were ... well ... Mister Spaceship Himself, they'd have let
you do all the thinking. And that would have left you high and dry,
wouldn't it?"
Jayjay put the deck of cards in his pocket. "You're a pretty good
sociologist, after all, Mr. Hull. You're right. Face any group with
Authority--with a capital _A_--and they quit thinking for themselves.
And if they do, then the poor slob of an Authority doesn't have
anything to tickle his own brains, so everybody loses."
"Well, _do_ you have an answer?" Captain Al-Amin asked.
Jayjay shook his head. "Not yet. I think I've got one coming up, but I
wish you two would go on talking while I think."
"I'll try," Smith said wryly.
* * * * *
The problem was both simple and complex. The female socket lacked one
single turn of thread to make a perfect connection. A few hundredths
of an inch separated success from disaster.
Five men, including the unconscious Vandenbosch, were only a fraction
of an inch away from death.
Jayjay Kelvin listened to Smith talk for another half hour, throwing
in objections when necessary, but offering no opinions.
"All we have to do," Smith said at last, "is get rid of that little
bit of metal beyond the thread in the female socket. But there's no
way to get it out. We can't use a chisel because the force would warp
the threads. Besides, we couldn't get a chisel in there."
"And we don't have a chisel," Captain Al-Amin added. "We don't have
any tools at all."
"Except," said Jayjay, "an electric hand drill and a quarter-inch
bit."
"Well, sure," said Smith. "But what good will that do us?"
"If we rigged a belt between the drill's motor and the sleeve of the
female socket, the sleeve would rotate as if it were on a lathe,
wouldn't it?"
Smith blinked. "Sure. Yeah! Hey!" His face brightened. Then it looked
sad again. "But what good would that do us?"
"You said that all we have between us and success is a fraction of an
inch of metal. If we can remove that fraction of an inch, we're
successful."
"But how can you put a thread into that socket?" Smith asked.
Jayjay beamed as though it were his birthday. "We don't have to put a
thread in there. All we have to do is give the thread on the male plug
room to move in. All we have to do is clear away that metal. So we'll
use the drill motor to turn the sleeve as if it were on a lathe."
Smith still didn't look enthusiastic. "All right. We have a lathe. But
what are we going to use for tools? What are we going to cut the metal
with?"