Still, the ship was an almost perfect machine. Certainly it saved Malenson's life. Only one small meteor penetrated the deflectors and crashed through the hull. Malenson flung himself to the deck instinctively as the tiny missile streaked hotly through the oxygen rich air of the control room. Immediately the self sealing insulation stopped all loss of pressure in the ship, and a repair unit set to work mending the break in the hull plates. But the meteor itself careened through the control room and ripped into the center panel with a smashing of glass and tearing of metal.
Malenson picked himself up and ran to the panel, panic-stricken. He inspected the damage carefully and heaved a sigh of relief. Nothing vital was destroyed. Only the master-chronometer and some lesser indicators were hit.
Then Malenson frowned. Without the master timepiece no clock on board would run, since they were all only terminals of the master system. He hurried to his stateroom and checked the wall clock. It smelled of burnt insulation. He pried the face loose and peered at its vitals. They were a mess of fused cogs and wires. A quick check throughout the ship showed that every clock was in the same useless condition. Even if he had been mechanic enough to repair them ... which he was not ... they were each and every one a hopeless tangle of burnt out innards. The meteor had short circuited the entire timekeeping system of the ship.
The master-chronometer was a mess of fused cogs and wires.
He returned to the control room with some misgivings. The loss of the clocks was no death blow to his kind of trial and error navigation. But it did promise to be a serious inconvenience in the regulation of his life in the timelessness of deep space. He still had his wristwatch, of course, but it was a very delicate ornamental sort of thing, not intended for hard usage.
Still, he reflected brightening somewhat, since his exile was to be measured in years and not minutes and hours, the wristwatch would serve. The star-charts and stellar analyzers that could identify any star would do for navigation. He might become misplaced, but to lose himself completely was impossible. He relied mightily on the fact that his ship was, in fact, fool-proof.
He kept the nose pointed at Taurus and cut in the second order drive again. The rest of the day, he spent in the library, laying out the reading he planned to do for the next few months.