By the time the station was over Denver, where he could contact headquarters on his tightest beam, most of the rumors had died, and the men were discussing the situation without much excitement.
Surprisingly, headquarters took his report and switched him directly to a human, instead of the tape receiver he usually had to deal with. He gave the basic facts, and reported precisely on the fact that he had been forced to inform the crew of the station.
The voice from below sighed wearily across the thousand miles of space. "Quite right, Blane. Panic would be the worst thing you could have. Forget about the violation—we all have to cut that at times. Now, in regard to your basic situation, I'm going to do the best I can for you. But I wouldn't worry about your boiler trouble yet. It will be at least three days before repairs are really necessary, and before then Devlin will be back with you. He has a full grasp of what must be done. And good luck."
The voice cut off.
Blane sat staring at the wall. Three days—it could only mean that there were three days still to go before the runaway radiation inside the casings built up too high for something to be done—whether to dump the bombs or what, he couldn't guess. But that was shaving it pretty thin.
And how sure could he be that they knew what was going on? They had only his coded figures to go by. Yet he had to trust them. For once, he'd be glad when Devlin was back.
He called Manners and Peal in. "Seal off the bomb bay," he told them. "Just stick up a sign making it off limits and spread the word that nobody's to go in until Devlin gets back here—which will be in a couple of days." He grinned at their protests, and shook his head. "And that means off limits to you, too. Earth says we're safe until Devlin gets here, and he'll have orders. Until then, we can't do anything, so forget the warheads."
It would be a lot easier for the crew of the station to accept than would the sight of Peal and Manners going in and out in constant efforts to check. And there was nothing that their tests could show, anyhow; nobody here knew enough to interpret what the readings meant.
For a change, a sort of lucky accident helped him. One of the pipes in the circulating system got clogged with something that should never have reached the water and burst. It made a mess of most of one deck, and took a full day's cleaning and repairing. That type of misfortune was something the Goddard had long since grown used to, and the sight of great scientists working with cooks and power men was always a relief from the routine. Maybe stations should be built to fail in minor ways. If ever a ship was built to cross the vast gulf to another star, it should be as imperfect as safety permitted.
On the surface, everything was routine by the time Devlin's ship came up the next day. Devlin must have more pull on Earth, Blane decided; something had boosted his stock. The ship had taken off from Cape Canaveral—the same ship that had taken him down—in a tricky but successful maneuver. Edwards, of course, had been called in for the job.