"Stokely will remain there," said Captain Rogan. "Archer will take the controls. We are withdrawing the contact rods, and will retard our fall, giving you enough clearance to align ship and test the power. If everything functions normally, the four of you will proceed to company base on Faria. Dr. Grimwood will exercise his judgment as to whether to remove your pressure-suits. Archer, as pilot, will take command."
Dr. Grimwood and Evans had removed the dead man from the control seat when Archer returned. The controls were fewer and less specialized, and in place of the all-seeing projection screen was a televiewer plate with fixed scanners, whose field was limited to the tailward sector of the heavens. Other observation was necessarily direct, through the several ports.
The televiewer became activated at the flip of the switch and revealed that Captain Rogan had withdrawn his ship to a safe distance.
Will Archer depressed a key which had the effect of applying a magnetic brake in the stabilizer unit to one of a pair of oppositely rotating flywheels, or "gyrotors," whose axis was athwartship. As the considerable speed of the gyrotor diminished, the ship began to turn with it in a slow somersault. Archer eased up on the key, and after some hundred and twenty degrees, released it. The gyrotor came up to speed again, stopping the spin nicely.
Archer paused with his hand on the power control. "Hang on, boys," he said. "There's going to be a floor."
The others got as close to it as they could, and Archer "raised" the thrust-control lever a few notches. Immediately, there was the welcome feeling of weight. This, as a dubious tribute to the adaptability of human flesh, became oppressive before the accelerometer showed one G.
"We're going to have to pour it on," said Archer. "Three G's for a safe margin. Since there's only one other chair here, maybe Evans had better go down with Stokely. There are two chairs there. And by the way, I think our two silent partners would be better off in the main storage compartment."
"Particularly," agreed Dr. Grimwood, "as they appear to have been dead two or three days. That would be one reason for keeping our suits on for a while." Gingerly, he picked up the hypodermic syringe from beside the sprawling corpse.
"It would be interesting to know what was in this. Maybe—" The doctor stooped again quickly. "But what's this?"