II
Glass 5 showed that the forepeak and secondary chamber had been ripped open. Glass 5 also showed that bulkhead doors there had automatically closed. For the rest, excluding the motors, everything seemed in order.
The oxygen suppliers were functioning smoothly on auxiliary batteries. Likewise the heat units, one for each level, showed normal operation. All lights were lit.
Standish glanced out the port. Whatever the ship had struck, it was out of his vision range now. Propelled by the forward surge of the dying motors, the ship must have advanced a great distance since the fatal crash.
Now the ship was drifting. Drifting without steerageway.
"Derelict," Standish said slowly. "It looks like I've got a one-way ticket to eternity."
He took the elevator down to the lower level again and made his way along the grating to the engine room. Carefully he examined the six ato-turbines with an experienced eye.
Standish had grown up with atomic motors. He had served an apprenticeship at his father's solar plant at Sun City, and he had graduated from the New York School of Technology. As a boy of sixteen, he had built his first minature atom smasher during vacation days.
Now he moved along the narrow catwalk between the motors, touching a wire here, an armature there. The two port engines, he found, were wrecked completely. Likewise the two starboard. Two forward machines remained, and of these he saw one had an inch-wide crack in its combustion chamber. But the other....
Standish drew in a breath of satisfaction. The last motor was disabled but not beyond repair. Without further ado, he peeled off his coat, seized a Stillson wrench and fell to work.