"They tried to kill you!" she cried fiercely. "They were hiding! They'd have murdered you—"
He put down his bars of allotropic graphite. He reached out to take her in his arms. But—
"Damn these space suits!" he said furiously. "You'll have to wait to be kissed until this job's finished!"
He tore up the flooring hatch above the little ship's drive. He jerked off the housing.
"Keep watch!" he called to the control room. "At least one of the machines must be waiting behind the dunes, hoping for a break!"
He worked with frantic haste, shedding his space suit by convulsive movements. This should have been the most finicky of fine-fitting jobs. To repair a Bowdoin-Hall drive unit by replacing its graphite bars for maximum efficiency is a matter for micrometric precision. But efficiency was not what he wanted, now, but speed. And these bars almost fitted. They were vastly unlike the five-hundred-pound monsters for the grid slabs. These should at least move the ship, and if the ship could be moved—
He had two of them in place and six more to go when the speaker in the control room blared triumphantly.
"Stan Buckley! Tune in! I'm right above your ship! Tune in!"
Stan swore in a sick disgust. Two out of eight was not enough. He was helpless for lack, now, of time. And the corrosive hatred that comes of helplessness filled him. He went into the control room and said drearily to Esther:
"Sorry, my dear. Another twenty minutes and you'd have been safe. I think we lose."