"Right. And now for some kind of safety factor? Supposing something goes blooey?" asked Pete. "And how do we maintain the relationship between the drive's power and the counter-drive's attraction?"
"Weight-driven power controls for the counter-drive. Inertia switches for safety. Interlocking circuits for every factor so that either the drive failure will knock out the counter-drive, or vice versa. We'll build this like an electric lock, so that the whole shebang must be right on the button before she'll move. Then the failure of any part to perform will stop all parts simultaneously. It'll probably be jerky at first, but the prime function is to get Mac to Station 1, and from there on in we can tinker with this thing until hell freezes over. O.K., let's hustle the mech-grav into the nose."
Installing the mech-grav generator in the nose of the ship was not a difficult job, since it weighed exactly nothing with the ship in an orbit about Pluto. But the intricate job of hooking the equipment together was to be more difficult.
They rammed holes in the bulk-heads to pass cables. They tore out whole sections of unimportant wiring circuits to get wire for the interlocking circuits—and when the terminals were there, the relays and inertia switches had to be made or converted from existing equipment.
Sandra Drake was of little help. She could make the ship perform to within a thousandth of an inch of its design, and perhaps add a few items that the designers hadn't included, but her knowledge of the works was small. She hadn't thought it necessary or desirable to understand, beyond the rudiments, how the drive worked.
In fact, up to the present time she had scorned the knowledge of any higher intricacies; her idea had always been that men were paid to think these things out and she was in a position to pay them for their knowledge. Let them do it, and give them hell if it was not right. Her hiring them automatically gave her the right to order them around like slaves, and since the laws that govern space travel are such that a ship's pilot or owner may demand attention to the ship, Sandra demanded such attention, needed or not.
But this was the second time in less than a year that she had seen men working with equipment. Before, it had been her fault, and she had sniffed at their labors in a scornful attitude, gaining their hatred as she had gained the dislike of so many others.
This time it was slightly different. She had been sandbagged into this job and now it seemed as though her own life depended upon the clearness of the minds of the men who worked over the equipment.
So she entered this strange world of nuts and bolts and small tools strewn around in profusion, and stood amazed at the order that was being worked out of chaos. It was apparent to her that some semblance to order must be present, since they knew where to turn to pick up the right tool, and because the right part was always less than a foot from their ready hands.