"I don't know a thing."
Wiley explained it, and Dan said, "We'll have to take it nice and easy,
then. If that stuff gets loused up, I'm not going home."
Blair straightened, turning, and said, "Okay, Ricks, you can make
yourself useful. Go on up with Wiley and help him unrig his ship."
"Sure."
* * * * *
Blair waited by the meteor while the other two went back across the
spoke and up to the grid. Wiley said, "There's these two wires to
disengage. Wait till I'm in and set, and I'll give you the highsign."
"Okay."
Wiley clambered into the reep, sealing the dome shut and adjusting
the air pressure to fill the cabin. Then he turned off the suit's air
supply and opened his faceplate. Hands and feet ready on the controls,
he nodded to Ricks. Ricks released the moorings, and the reep drifted
out and to the left, falling slowly away from the spinning Station.
Its rear rocket flashed, and it moved away more rapidly, beyond the
Station's outer rim.
Ricks walked back to the rim. When he got there, Wiley's ship was in
place, two of the side rockets firing sporadically, keeping it still
in relation to the motion of the Station. The two side arms clung to
jagged tears in the rim metal, next to the meteor, while the top and
bottom arms, working to the pre-measurements of a small computer tape,
inched across the metal, cutting implements extended, scoring not deep
enough to cut completely through the hull. Just behind each cutting
edge, a small nozzle marked the line of the score with a thin line of
red.
Finished, Wiley retracted all four arms, and allowed the reep to drift
back away from the Station. The other reep came in closer.
Blair said, "Got something else for you to do, Ricks." He removed from
a clip on the waist of his suit what looked like a coiled length of
narrow cable. "You can hold the replacement panel," he said, "while Dan
clears the meteor out. Help me unsnarl this thing."
"Right."
Unwound, the coil proved to be four lengths of cable, about fifteen
feet long, joined together at one end and terminating at the other end
in broad curved clips. While Dan hovered as close as he dared, Blair
attached these clips to the edges of the panel, near the corners. Ricks
held the other end, where the cables met.
"It's going to want to drift to the left," said Blair. "Make sure it
doesn't. Keep all four cables taut. It's the same as flying a kite. If
you let it dip, it'll crash into the rim here. If it's crumpled, we
can't use it. And we don't have any spares handy."
"I'll keep it up," promised Ricks.
Dan backed the gripper reep until the cables stretched taut from
Ricks to the panel, and then released his hold on the panel, which
immediately drifted to the left, not maintaining the speed of the
Station's spin.
Holding the joined part of the cable tight in his gloved left hand,
Ricks tugged with his right at individual lines, trying to keep the
panel above him. Behind him, Blair and Dan were ignoring him, working
at their own part of the problem. Ricks could hear Blair instructing
Dan, guiding him as he came slowly in and fastened his four gripper
arms to the meteor. Two of the reep's auxiliary rocket exhausts fired
briefly, and then again, as Dan tugged tentatively at the meteor.
Ricks wanted to turn and watch the operation, but he couldn't. The
eight-by-eight replacement panel swayed above him with maddening
slowness, inching away from him, curving down toward the Station.
Trying to move too quickly, he pulled on the wrong cable, and the panel
dipped sharply, the uppermost cable falling slack, threatening to snarl
the others.
* * * * *
Stepping back quickly, almost losing his boot-grip on the hull, Ricks
yanked desperately at the slack cable. The panel shuddered, stopped
perpendicular to the hull and scarcely two feet above its surface. Then
the force of Ricks' yank took over, and it sailed slowly toward him,
curving up and over him, moving now in the direction of the Station's
spin but somewhat faster. When it was directly above him, Ricks tried
to stop it, but it curved on, angling down now directly toward the
meteor and the arms of the gripper reep.
This time, Ricks managed to tug the cables properly, reversing the
drift without too much trouble. He was beginning to catch on to the
method, now. It was impossible to keep the panel stationary above him.
All he could do was keep sawing it back and forth, forcing its own
sluggish motion to follow his commands. Once he had the right idea, it
wasn't too difficult to keep the thing under control, but it didn't
take long at all for his arms to feel the strain. He didn't dare relax,
not for a second. His arms and shoulders twinged at every movement, and
his neck and back ached from the necessity of his looking constantly
directly above him.
From time to time, he chanced a quick look at the progress of the other
two. Blair was standing now at the very edge of the scored section,
guiding Dan both with words and with arm and body movements. Dan was
tugging slowly, first to the left and then to the right, and gradually
the meteor was being inched outward. At one point, Blair glanced over
at Ricks and said, "How's it going, Ricks?"
"Just dandy," said Ricks, grunting with effort. "Just fine. Almost as
good as you."
Blair frowned, then turned his attention back to the meteor. Half a
dozen times since they'd come out here, he'd been at the point of
telling Ricks to go back inside, to have Mendel send out a crewman
instead. He wasn't sure what had stopped him. It wasn't the way Ricks
saw it; he wasn't looking for a whipping boy, to take the blame for him
if he lost the cargo. Glenn Blair didn't pass the buck, he never had
and he never would. He'd been given this job in the first place because
he was a man who could handle responsibility, whose pride lay in his
ability to complete his own jobs, not in any ability to oversee the
work of others.
He had, he knew, lost the dispassionate approach necessary in his work.
Ricks and the cargo for QB had both become too important to him, though
in far different ways. With Ricks, he seemed somehow to have become
ensnarled in some idiotic sort of contest, in which only Ricks knew the
rules and the scoring, in which only Ricks could know or care who had
won and who had lost. Ricks had kept him off-balance, thinking with
his emotions rather than his brains. In so doing, he'd underestimated
Ricks' own concern with the contest. He'd agreed to let Ricks come out
here partly out of a desire to throw the guy into a situation where
he would lose his own contest under his own rules, and partly out
of a desire to call Ricks' bluff. It had turned out to be no bluff,
and Blair, thinking with his emotions, had been unable to withdraw the
agreement.
And the fight with Mendel had only served to harden the cement. Mendel
had been instantly and loudly opposed to Ricks going outside, and Blair
had responded just as quickly and just as loudly. Mendel's opposition
had finally only intensified Blair's determination to go through with
it.
Outside, he had had no choice but to put Ricks to work. There were only
the two of them out there, and both were needed. He'd kept for himself
the intricate job of guiding the removal of the meteor--the reep pilot
was too far back and too involved with the operation of his ship's
controls to be able to do the job by himself--but that had left for
Ricks the scarcely-less intricate job of holding onto the replacement
panel. Blair had kept an eye on him throughout, ready to step in if
it looked as though Ricks would lose control, but Ricks had done
surprisingly well, after bobbling the ball a bit to begin with.
Now, as Blair kept up a steady drone of low-voiced directions, Dan
gradually eased the meteor out of the jagged hole it had made in the
hull. The whole scored segment was now bulged outward slightly, and
the saw-tooth edges of the hole were scraping out and back, with the
motion of the meteor.
Then, all at once, the reep jerked backward, as the meteor rasped
loose. The hull vibrated beneath Blair's feet, and then quieted.
Blair waited, cautiously watching the jagged tear, but after the
second's vibration, there was nothing more. They'd managed it, working
and tugging and twisting the meteor in such a way that the remaining
air in Section Five was released slowly enough to be of no danger.