"Something like that."
"We'd have to send a pretty rare kind of a repair man, Mike," he said, coming back to sit on the corner of his desk and glower down at me. That was about his kindest expression.
"Yes," I agreed. "You need somebody who can test and diagnose, and then make a repair."
"And who is an astronaut, too," he said. "I wonder if there is such a thing?"
"Make one," I suggested.
He scowled a little more fiercely. "Explain that," he ordered.
"I figure you could take one of our men from my laboratory, who knows how to test the gate, and a man who is handy enough with miniature components to cut out the one that failed and replace it, and teach him how to get around in a spacesuit. That would surer than hell be quicker than taking one of these hot-shot astronauts and teaching him solid-state physics."
"Yes," he agreed, looking down his fingers. "That was a pretty sneaky way to get out from between Fred Stone and me, young man."
I couldn't resist it: "That's what took most of the three days," I said, just a little too smugly.
"I liked you better in the middle," Cleary grumped. "Well, you have a thought, and it calls for a conference." He took his coat off again, hung it on the clothes tree, came back to his desk and got on the phone.