Then he switched to hover.
"We're not going back again, sir, are we?"
"Of course," Hartley grinned. "After all, I made the same mistake you did. Twice I've let the temperature of the specimen box dekelvinise!"
Despite his continuing sense of well-being, Cramer felt uneasy, but there was nothing he could put his finger on so he didn't protest. Anyway, he could see Hartley would not be swayed now from whatever was his strange purpose.
A few hours later they settled back on the asteroid and the Captain went out once more. Cramer tried to watch what he was doing but Hartley was too huddled over the fault he was working for much to be seen. An hour later he came back in, and made some fix notations in his log book as soon as his suit decompressed.
They took off immediately. "This time the box stays locked," he said, pointing at the lid dial which showed the tiny atomic power unit inside was keeping the core's contents at Kelvin 90. Then he radioed the mother ship for a directional beam and locked the craft on automatic pilot. He glanced thoughtfully at his assistant. "When we come in I'll make the report."
"But I know that's standard, Captain, I learned it the first month at the academy."
"Just wanted to make sure you remembered. How do you feel, Will?"
"Perfect."
"No after effects! Same with me!" He thumped Cramer's back in a hail-fellow-well-met spirit and Cramer thought, Not such a bad guy sometimes.