Ross gritted his teeth and doggedly started all over again with the computations for Earth. Then he did a slow double-take.
“Helena,” he whispered. “What experience did you have?”
“Why, just the same as now! Don’t you remember, Ross? When you and Bernie were in jail and I had to come rescue you?”
“What happened?” Ross shouted.
“My goodness, Ross don’t yell at me! There was that silly light flashing all the time. It was driving me out of my mind. Well, I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t going to get anywhere if it was going to act like that, so I just——”
Ross, eyes glazed, robotlike, lifted the cover off the main Wesley unit. Down at the socket of the alarm signal, shorting out two delicately machined helices that were a basic part of the Wesley drive, wedged between an eccentric vernier screw and a curious crystalline lattice, was—the hairpin.
He picked it out and stared at it unbelievingly. He marveled, “It says in the manual, ‘On no account should any alterations be made in any part of the Wesley driving assembly by any technician under a C-Twelve rating.’ She didn’t like the alarm going off. So she fixed it. With a hairpin.”
Helena giggled and appealed to Bernie. “Doesn’t he kill you?” she asked.
Ross’s eyes were glazed and his hands worked convulsively. “Kill,” he muttered, advancing on Helena. “Kill, kill, kill——”
“Help!” she screamed.