"Less than a half percent."
"Jeepers. That is a new low in gravitics. Can we think our way out of this one?"
"Why?"
"As much as I dislike seeing Drake, I'd not force her to live on an alien planet. I'd feel better at marooning her for a couple of years if I knew we could go in and get her."
McBride laughed. "Got to have the last laugh, hey?"
"Meaning?"
"Marooning her wouldn't be half so much fun if it is impossible to get her out. Marooning her when we have the means to get her out puts it strictly in our own lap. Right?"
"I suppose so. We could laugh at her honestly then."
"She's strictly a stinker," agreed McBride. "I get that cod-liver-oil smell now. All that soft soap and palaver she was handing out about our being the boys with the brains. We were the guys who would be responsible for lifting a struggling civilization up from the primordial slime by our brain and our genius. Baloney!"
"I get it," growled Hammond. "She's stuck. God knows how she landed—probably emergency and shot her load of battery juice. Anyway, she could land under emergency battery, but taking off is a megawatt of another color, battery-wise. They aren't equipped to make a take-off. Idea being the old one—don't start if you can't stop."