“Can’t be done, sir.”
“It will be done!” snarled Krogson and broke the connection.
The temperature needle in the little scout was now pointing to a hundred and fifteen.
“I don’t think we can hold on that long,” said Ozaki.
“Nonsense!” said the commander and the screen went blank.
Ozaki slumped into the pilot chair and buried his face in his hands. Suddenly he felt a blast of cold air on his neck. “There’s no use in prolonging our misery,” he said without looking up. “Those spare batteries won’t last five minutes under this load.”
“I knew that,” said Kurt cheerfully, “so while you were doing all the talking, I went ahead and fixed the converter. You sure have mighty hot summers out here!” he continued, mopping his brow.
“You what?” yelled the pilot, jumping half out of his seat. “You couldn’t even if you did have the know-how. It takes half a day to get the shielding off so you can get at the thing!”
“Didn’t need to take the shielding off for a simple job like that,” said Kurt. He pointed to a tiny inspection port about four inches in diameter. “I worked through there.”
“That’s impossible!” interjected the pilot. “You can’t even see the injector through that, let alone get to it to work on!”