"That I'll do," said McBride. "And now that cab!"
The Haywire Queen stood above McBride as he met Steve Hammond. "What's your trouble, John?" asked Hammond.
McBride explained. Then he asked: "What's yours?"
Hammond smiled wryly. "That's a long, sad tale. We've been trying to increase the efficiency of the drive, you know. We've been hunting up and down the electrogravitic spectrum for a more efficient operating point. We found what we knew already; that we were using the most efficient part of the E-grav range. We went all the way from down low, where the stuff is just beginning to make itself detectable to up high where the equipment is slightly fragile and extremely experimental in construction. Then we took a run at the mec-grav, with absolutely no success other than to ruin a whole bank of relays; the mechanogravitic warp extended farther than we anticipated when we hit the mechanogravitic resonance of the drive bar, and hell sort of flew all over in great hunks. One of the interesting items was the closing of the E-grav field controls, and the resulting power drain over-loaded the alphatron. We limped in using a jury-rigged line from the lifeship's alphatron and made a something-slightly-less than a crash landing here on Pluto.
"So now we're either stuck here until we get the new alphatron we ordered, or you can give us a few hints on household repairs."
"What's your lifeship's output?" asked McBride, following Hammond into the spacelock.
"About eleven hundred alphons."
"You'll need about fourteen hundred to take off from Pluto," said John. "How's the big one?"
"Deader than the proverbial dodo, whatever that was."