Tentatively, cautiously, he reversed the lever. There was no blue flash this time, but neither did the dials quiver. He swore. Something had burned out in the radio controls. He couldn't reverse the tug.
He punched the general alarm button viciously, and the raucous clangor of the bell sounded through the confines of the ship. One by one, the other crew members popped up to the control deck from below.
He turned the controls over to Qoqol.
"Take readings on that damn tug," Jonner ordered. "I think our cable broke. T'an, let's go take a look."
When they got outside, they found about a foot of the one-inch cable still attached to the ship. The rest of it, drawn away by the tug before Jonner could cut acceleration, was out of sight.
"Can it be welded, T'an?"
"It can, but it'll take a while," replied the engineer slowly. "First, we'll have to reverse that tug and get the other end of that break."
"Damn, and the radio control's burned out. I tried to reverse it before I sounded the alarm. T'an, how fast can you get those controls repaired?"
"Great space!" exclaimed T'an softly. "Without seeing it, I'd say at least two days, Jonner. Those controls are complicated as hell."
They re-entered the ship. Qoqol was working at his diagrams, and Serj was looking over his shoulder. Jonner took a heat-gun quietly from the rack and pointed it at Serj.