John McBride was met at the space lock of Station 1 by one of the lesser casualties from 3, Douglas Whitlock. McBride said: "How's the arm, Doug?"
"Broken, but on the mend. Doc will put a stader on it in a couple of days and I'll be able to use it again."
"How's 3?"
"Not too bad. But, brother, there's a million miles of loose wire floating around the place. Tonk and Harry are rewinding the alphatron leader-coils which developed a shorted turn down near the core."
"How are they doing that?" asked McBride.
"It was tricky, all right. And this'll slay you. They're using the nine-inch lathe!"
"Huh?" McBride was thunder-struck.
"Well, as Tonky said, it was an emergency. So they used the acetylene torch to cut the lathe bed off right before the headstock. They moved the rest of the bed back about twelve feet and welded it to one wall of the room. Now, there's room to get that big core in the lathe. The lathe is ruined, of course, or rather the bed is, but the alphatron will be ticking them off in another couple of hours." Whitlock looked at the girl and asked McBride: "Where did you find her?"
"This," said McBride, "is Miss Sandra Drake."
"Oh yes," said Whitlock brightly, "Drake, the human cannon ball ... or is it screwball?"