"Come now," Wyckoff said reproachfully, "we are not children!"
A nervous giggle sounded from another quarter.
Wyckoff continued more forcefully. "Dr. Marquith, Carey and I are going down to the pilot-room to find out what we can for you, so keep your shirts (I mean costumes) on, and don't forget to make Captain Daneshaw's recovery celebration a gay as well as a memorable one." He patted Tim's shoulder familiarly, beckoned to the two others to precede him across the floor.
At the door, he saw the tray of glasses and turned. "You fellows better bring another round of drinks. I could stand one myself." He stooped, lifted a glass, drank, and followed the others out.
Men rose automatically from the groups, collecting empty and half-ful glasses alike, and headed in a mass for the door; but the first few attempts to revive conversation sounded so loud that when the room finally filled with sound, it was the rustle and sibilance of whispering.
The self-appointed investigating committee of three stood in the pilot-room door.
El Avery's crisp voice was snapping at White the new equation to be set into the B calculator, rattling out the key for the data Powell handed him to be fed to C by North in the intervals of rest while A calculator assimilated and digested. The floor of the computation area was littered with the yards of coils of paper ribbon Avery had ripped from the roll of gyro record to find the original deviation (minus the bits which Carruthers, Fifth Astrogator, had taken to the enlargement room for micro-measurements). At the accepted break for complete clearing of the A calculator banks, Avery's precision broke to a growl.
"Damned earthbound whelps!" he muttered. "Don't even bother to discover major factors like light pressure in their measly little tubs!" He jerked to a stand, stripped off his braidjac and flung it into the midst of the insubstantial paper snake. He sat down with a thump and bent back over the calculator keyboard. "Those babies don't care what they lose or how!"
He set to work again with White's eighth set of solutions forming them into factors of equations of his own. Powell, passing around the welter of paper, was the first to notice the observers and yelled at them, "You boys round up the engine room crew, quick. Get them into the boom room and tell 'em to stand by for intermittent rocket and main tube fire! Beat it!"