Sawtelle stiffened. "What's going on over there, Hilton?"
"I don't know; but let's let 'em go for a minute. I want to learn about these people and they've got me stopped cold."
"You aren't the only one. But if they wreck that Mayfield it'll cost you over twenty thousand dollars."
"Okay." The captain and director watched, wide eyed.
Two master mechanics had been getting ready to re-fit a tube—a job requiring both strength and skill. The tube was very heavy and made of superefract. The machine—the Mayfield—upon which the work was to be done, was extremely complex.
Two of the aliens had brushed the mechanics—very gently—aside and were doing their work for them. Ignoring the hoist, one native had picked the tube up and was holding it exactly in place on the Mayfield. The other, hands moving faster than the eye could follow, was locking it—micrometrically precise and immovably secure—into place.
"How about this?" one of the mechanics asked of his immediate superior. "If we throw 'em out, how do we do it?"
By a jerk of the head, the non-com passed the buck to a commissioned officer, who relayed it up the line to Sawtelle, who said, "Hilton, nobody can run a Mayfield without months of training. They'll wreck it and it'll cost you ... but I'm getting curious myself. Enough so to take half the damage. Let 'em go ahead."
"How about this, Mike?" one of the machinists asked of his fellow. "I'm going to like this, what?"
"Ya-as, my deah Chumley," the other drawled, affectedly. "My man relieves me of so much uncouth effort."