"Boat mates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at a time. The only exception to this is that if two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the helmet. Get to work!"
Twice the name of Kinnison came out together with that of another skilled in astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it came out paired with VanBuskirk, to the manifest joy of the giant policeman and to the approval of the crowd as well.
"That was a break for me, chief!" the sergeant called over the cheers of his fellows. "I'm dead sure of getting back now!"
"Pretty strong talk, I'm afraid, but I don't know of any one I'd rather have at my back than you," Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.
The pairings were made; DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment were checked and tested; the spools of tape were sealed in their corrosionproof containers and distributed; and Kinnison sat talking with the chief technician.
"So they've solved the problem of the really efficient reception and conversion of cosmic radiation!" Kinnison whistled softly through his teeth. "And a sun—even a small one—radiates the energy given off by the annihilation of one-to-several million tons of matter per second! Some power!"
"That's the story, skip, and it explains completely why their ships have been so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster drives even than the Brittania's. They probably will, now that it has become necessary. Also, if the bus bars in that receptor-converter had been a few square centimeters larger in cross section, they could have held their wall shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what? They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution."
"They have atomic motors, the same as ours, just as big and just as efficient," Kinnison cogitated. "But those motors are all we have got, while they use them, and at full power, too, simply as first-stage exciters for the cosmic-energy screens. Blinding blue blazes, what power! Some of us have to get back, Verne. If we don't, Boskone's got the whole galaxy by the tail, and civilization is sunk without a trace."
"I'll say so; but also I'll say this for those of us who don't get back—it won't be for lack of trying. Well, I'd better go check up on my boat. If I don't see you again, Kim old man, clear ether!"