"You'd be surprised," he grinned. "I'm not quite like Robin Hood—I've been known to miss a finger-thick wand at a hundred paces—but I'm not exactly a beginner."
"Oh, of course—I should have known by your language that you're an archer, otherwise you'd never have used such an old-fashioned word as 'pounds.' I shoot a thirty-five-pound bow ordinarily, but for game I should have the heaviest one I can hold accurately—about a forty-five, probably."
"All x. And as soon as I can I'll make us a couple of suits of fairly heavy steel armor, so that we'll have real protection if we should need it. You see, we don't know what we are apt to run up against out here. Then, with that much done, it'll be up to you to provide, since I'll have to work tooth and nail at the forges. You'll have to bring home the bacon, do the cooking and so on, and see what you can find along the line of edible roots, grains, fruits, and what-not. Sort of reverse the Indian idea—you be the hunter and I'll keep the home fires burning. Can do?"
"What it takes to do that, I've got," Nadia assured him, her eyes sparkling. "Have you your job planned out as well and as fittingly as you have mine?"
"And then some. We've got just two methods of getting away from here—one is to get in touch with Brandon, so that he'll come after us; the other is to recharge our accumulators and try to make it under our own power. Either course will need power and lots of it...."
"I never thought of going back in the 'Hope.' Suppose we could?"
"About as doubtful as the radio—I think that I could build a pair of matched-frequency auto-dirigible transmitter and receptor units, such as are necessary for space-ships fed by stationary power-plants, but after I got them built, they'd take us less than half way there. Then we'd have only what power we can carry, and I hate even to think of what probably would happen to us. We'd certainly have to drift for months before we could get close enough to any of our plants to radio for help, and we'd be taking awful chances. You see, we'd have to take a very peculiar orbit, and if we should miss connections passing the inner planets, what the sun would do to us at the closest point and where what's left of us would go on the back-swing, would be just too bad! Besides, if we can get hold of the Sirius, they'll come loaded for bear, and we may be able to do something about the rest of the folks out here."
"Oh!" breathed the girl. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could! I thought, of course, they'd all be...." her voice died away.
"Not necessarily—there's always a chance. That's why I'm trying the ultra-radio first. However, either course will take lots of power, so the first thing I've got to do is to build a power plant. I'm going to run a penstock up those falls, and put in a turbine, driving a high-tension alternator. Then, while I'm trying to build the ultra-radio, I'll be charging our accumulators, so that no time will be lost in case the radio fails. If it does fail—and remember I'm not counting on its working—of course I'll tackle the transmission and receptor units before we start out to drift it."
"You say it easy, Steve, but how can you build all those things, with nothing to work with?"