Clay shook his head vigorously. “I—I don’t think so.”
Rob hastened to the engine room, some impulse telling him that the misbehaving rocket chamber might be behind the trouble. He found Mort in front of an opening in the floor, a frantic look on his face.
“The rocket cylinder that was heating up has blown a leak!” he shouted above a deafening swooshing sound from below.
“Can you repair it?” Rob asked. “The ship is practically out of control!”
“Tell Lieutenant Fox to cut all jets and keep her even,” the mechanic said. “I’ll have to go down into the hold to plug the break-through so it’ll last until we reach Titan.”
Rob leaned over the hold and felt hot air rushing up at him. It was dark and crowded with machinery down there. “I don’t see how you can work down there in all that heat.”
Mort shrugged. “I’ll have to, or we may never land. If I’d checked it when I had that tangle with Cadet Gerard I might have saved the blowout.”
Rob sensed someone behind him and turned to see Clay, who had followed him into the engine room. Rob saw a stark look on the cadet’s face as though the grave significance of his clash with Mort were suddenly made startlingly real to him.
“Can I help?” Clay asked.
“If you can, we’ll let you know,” Rob told him as he hurried from the room toward the pilot’s nest forward.