Bessie and her relief operators were watching the prisoners through a video display on the Sacred Cow's console, and would report anything unusual that went on to Captain Andersen.
Mike, Ishie, Millie, Paul and Tombu had completed the new Confusor drive units, and they were nearly installed.
More time would be taken arranging the engineering quarters so that the installation of her control panel and the units themselves would be completed.
This part, Mike didn't like too well. It meant re-arranging his already carefully arranged units, and considerable re-wiring without interfering with any of the basic functions of the wheel.
The new units had turned out to look very little like the original. Fourteen feet long by eighteen inches outside diameter, they looked very much like a group of stove-pipes arranged in a circular pattern around the engineering quarters, braced from wall to wall.
The control console itself, even though made rapidly, had the look of a carefully planned and well-made unit; something that might have turned up in one of Earth's better R&D labs, as part of a multi-million dollar project.
All together, the drive rods would provide something better than a tenth of a gee thrust for the combined mass of the wheel, Hot Rod, the pile and the other subsidiary units around them.
A tenth of a gee. Not enough to land on Earth; but with things down there the way they were now, who wanted to?
With these units, the whole storehouse of the solar system was at their disposal.
With these units they could reach the asteroids.