guided North to the head of the table and sat him
down. She pushed a food tray in front of him that was still
warm, and put a fork in his hand. "Emergency rations," she announced.
"Just shut up and eat! There's a container of juice by your right hand."
29 North emptied the tray and the bottle as the rest of the Officers
came in and sat down. As the Doctor took the tray and bottle North
asked for a roll call, and everybody sounded off. "O.k.," sighed North,
"let's hear it, Engineer! How bad are we hurt?"
30 "Sir," he began, "if all my readings are right, we've had it! Most
of the plates in our star drive engines are fractured. Even if I pulled
them all, I only have enough to re-line one engine, just one! This
vessel will not function under star drive with less than two. We
cannot leap with a single engine, nor, can we use our star drive.
31 Plus that, all our system engines are finished and there's no way we
can rebuild them. They're a sealed unit, and once used become hot and
stay hot for thousands of years. They're not like the star drive
engines.
32 Our planetary engines are in pretty good shape. Once in orbit we'll
be able to maintain it o.k., and have plenty of power. We've got plenty
of food and water until I can get the processing units working again.
Air is no problem, either. It's just once we're there, sir, there's
little chance we'll be going anywhere."
33 "Excuse me, Engineer," put in I.S., "could we not trim some of the
plates? Even if we had to use thirty-two instead of sixteen, and had to
run on only three-quarter power, the combined effort would give us leap
capability."
34 "If the fractures were running the length of the liners," the
Engineer agreed, "we could do that. But some of them are cracked
across, sometimes in two or three places. It's just no good , and even
if we get