"Get the coffee, will you please, Morey? I have an idea that's bound to work," said Arcot looking fixedly at the machinery.
Morey turned and went to the galley.
Five minutes later they returned to the corridor, where Arcot stood still, looking fixedly at the engine room. They were carrying small plastic balloons with coffee in them.
They drank the coffee and returned to the control room, and sat about, the terrestrians smoking peacefully, the Ortolian and the Talsonian satisfying themselves with some form of mild narcotic from Ortol, which Zezdon Afthen introduced.
"Well, we have a lot more to do," Arcot said. "The air-apparatus stopped working a while back, and I don't want to sit around doing nothing while the air in the storage tanks is used up. Did you notice our friends, the enemy?" Through the great pilot's window the bulk of the Thessian ship's bow could be seen. It was cut across with an exactitude of mathematical certainty.
"Easy to guess what happened," Morey grinned. "They may have wrecked us, but we sure wrecked them. They got half in and half out of our space field. Result—the half that was in, stayed in. The half that was out stayed out. The two halves were instantaneously a billion miles apart, and that beautifully exact surface represents the point our space cut across.
"That being decided, the next question is how to fix this poor old wreck." Morey grinned a bit. "Better, how to get out of here, and down to old Neptune."
"Fix it!" replied Arcot. "Come on; you get in your space suit, take the portable telectroscope and set it up in space, motionless, in such a position that it views both our ship and the nose of the Thessian machine, will you, Wade? Tune it to—seven-seven-three." Morey rose with Arcot, and followed him, somewhat mystified, down the passage. At the airlock Wade put on his space suit, and the Ortolian helped him with it. In a moment the other three men appeared bearing the machine. It was practically weightless, though it would fall slowly if left to itself, for the mass of the Ancient Mariner and the front end of the Thessian ship made a considerable attractive field. But it was clumsy, and needed guiding here in the ship.
Wade took it into the airlock, and a moment later into space with him. His hand molecular-driving unit pulling him, he towed the machine into place, and with some difficulty got it practically motionless with respect of the two bodies, which were now lying against each other.
"Turn it a bit, Wade, so that the Ancient Mariner is just in its range," came Arcot's thoughts. Wade did so. "Come on back and watch the fun."