"I'll keep it up," promised Ricks.
Dan backed the gripper reep until the cables stretched taut from Ricks to the panel, and then released his hold on the panel, which immediately drifted to the left, not maintaining the speed of the Station's spin.
Holding the joined part of the cable tight in his gloved left hand, Ricks tugged with his right at individual lines, trying to keep the panel above him. Behind him, Blair and Dan were ignoring him, working at their own part of the problem. Ricks could hear Blair instructing Dan, guiding him as he came slowly in and fastened his four gripper arms to the meteor. Two of the reep's auxiliary rocket exhausts fired briefly, and then again, as Dan tugged tentatively at the meteor.
Ricks wanted to turn and watch the operation, but he couldn't. The eight-by-eight replacement panel swayed above him with maddening slowness, inching away from him, curving down toward the Station. Trying to move too quickly, he pulled on the wrong cable, and the panel dipped sharply, the uppermost cable falling slack, threatening to snarl the others.
Stepping back quickly, almost losing his boot-grip on the hull, Ricks yanked desperately at the slack cable. The panel shuddered, stopped perpendicular to the hull and scarcely two feet above its surface. Then the force of Ricks' yank took over, and it sailed slowly toward him, curving up and over him, moving now in the direction of the Station's spin but somewhat faster. When it was directly above him, Ricks tried to stop it, but it curved on, angling down now directly toward the meteor and the arms of the gripper reep.
This time, Ricks managed to tug the cables properly, reversing the drift without too much trouble. He was beginning to catch on to the method, now. It was impossible to keep the panel stationary above him. All he could do was keep sawing it back and forth, forcing its own sluggish motion to follow his commands. Once he had the right idea, it wasn't too difficult to keep the thing under control, but it didn't take long at all for his arms to feel the strain. He didn't dare relax, not for a second. His arms and shoulders twinged at every movement, and his neck and back ached from the necessity of his looking constantly directly above him.
From time to time, he chanced a quick look at the progress of the other two. Blair was standing now at the very edge of the scored section, guiding Dan both with words and with arm and body movements. Dan was tugging slowly, first to the left and then to the right, and gradually the meteor was being inched outward. At one point, Blair glanced over at Ricks and said, "How's it going, Ricks?"
"Just dandy," said Ricks, grunting with effort. "Just fine. Almost as good as you."
Blair frowned, then turned his attention back to the meteor. Half a dozen times since they'd come out here, he'd been at the point of telling Ricks to go back inside, to have Mendel send out a crewman instead. He wasn't sure what had stopped him. It wasn't the way Ricks saw it; he wasn't looking for a whipping boy, to take the blame for him if he lost the cargo. Glenn Blair didn't pass the buck, he never had and he never would. He'd been given this job in the first place because he was a man who could handle responsibility, whose pride lay in his ability to complete his own jobs, not in any ability to oversee the work of others.