The conflict ended almost before it had begun, with a meaty slap of Mike's fist connecting with the man's jaw, right below the ear. It hadn't been a clean punch, Mike thought, but then he wasn't really used to fighting in this gravity. Anyhow, the man was out.
And now came the question of what to do with him, but Mike left that to Ish.
He turned back to the precession panel a bit more convinced that perhaps the captain had been right—perhaps there were enemies aboard.
The precession controls, though operational, had not to date been required. Carefully, Mike switched the sequence that would put them into active condition but not operate. That was left to the Cow.
Turning to the vocoder panel, he directed the Cow to take over control of the now active precession equipment; to use the sun as a referrant for the axis of precession, and to move the pole ninety degrees in a clockwise direction around that axis of precession.
Under these directions, the big wheel began to turn, not as it had been turning, but sideways. The operation would take ten minutes, and the axis of this new turn would be aligned directly on Sol by the computer.
The Cow's help in such a maneuver was required, because the precession could only be accomplished by switching valves between the tanks of the rim in such a manner that water was switched north on one side of the wheel, and south on the opposite side of the wheel, and the points of this switching between the tanks must remain in a stable position relative to the spin of the wheel. The valves that accomplished this, seventy-two of them, were spaced at intervals of five degrees around the rim, but only two out of the seventy-two could be active at any time; and these must be selected by the computer's controls so that always the precessive force was properly aligned to produce the required precession.
When the precession was finished, the rim of the wheel would be aligned, still with the sun, but also with Project Hot Rod which had been to their south.
As a third thought, Mike switched off the Confuser.
Having set up the necessary factors, Mike turned back to the problem of the Security guard, or saboteur, whichever he might be, but found this problem had already been well taken care of. Not satisfied with simply tying the man up, Ishie had bound him with wire to somewhat the resemblance of an Egyptian mummy, and then for added good measure, given him two sleepy shots with his own needle gun; put electrician tape across his mouth; and taken from him everything he could possibly use either as a method of communication or as a weapon.