Wiley’s calm voice broke into his awe and wonder, crackling tinnily from the helmet radio: “We’ll go on down and take a look at the damage first. It’s the section just to the right of that spoke.”
Blair’s voice, oddly depersonalized by the radio, said, “Right. You lead off.”
Wiley, calm and sure-footed in his magnet-soled boots, stepped off the grid onto the curving side of the cone. He marched down it, looking to Ricks like a man walking calmly down a wall, and thence across the bulge of the central ball to the spoke. Blair followed him, moving just as easily and effortlessly, and Ricks came last.
There was no gravity out here. The Station spun beneath them with what seemed lazy slowness against the distant backdrop of the stars, and the only gravitic force was the centrifugal action of the Station, trying lazily to spin them off and out into space. Above them, the gripper reep arced by in its orbit; the pilot waved.
Ricks gritted his teeth and followed the other two, imitating their actions. The magnetic boots were tricky things; you had to step high, or all at once the boot would click back against the Station with a step only half-completed. And it took a sliding knee-bending movement to release the boot for another step.
The three men moved in slow Indian file across the rounded bulk of the spoke, up across the first inner bulge of the rim, and then out on the rim’s top. They stepped carefully over the metal ridge that marked where, inside the Station, Section Six was separated from Section Five. Then there was a four-foot drop to the curve of the outer surface of the rim. If the rim of the Station had been an automobile tire, they would now have been standing on its side, out on the edge where the tread begins. The meteor was imbedded in the tread-area itself, below the curve.
Wiley and Blair stood close to the meteor; Ricks hung back a step, watching them, moving only when and as they moved. No one had spoken since they left the grid. Then, over the earphones came an unfamiliar voice: “How’s it look, Ed?”
“Not sure yet, Dan. We’re just beginning to look it over.”
Ricks looked around, baffled, then realized that Dan was the pilot in the gripper reep, now hovering a little ways off, circling as the Station circled, keeping approximately even with the meteor break, the replacement part awkward in its long arms.
“Here it is, here,” said Blair suddenly. He squatted carefully, keeping both boots firmly in contact with the Station metal, and pointed to a spot at the jagged intersection of rough meteor rock and frayed bent metal.
Ricks moved in closer, to see what Blair was pointing at. Sunlight glinted momentarily from whatever it was.
Wiley crouched down beside Blair, cutting off Ricks’ view, as Dan asked, “What is it?”
It was Wiley who answered. “Little bit of ice here. We’ve got a slow leakage. Looks like there’s probably a small puncture of the inner hull, with the meteor itself plugging it most of the way. Little bit of air gets out, dissipates between the hulls, and a smidgen of it gets out through here and freezes solid.”
Blair’s voice sounded, saying, “Does Dan know what’s in this section?”
“I don’t know a thing.”
Wiley explained it, and Dan said, “We’ll have to take it nice and easy, then. If that stuff gets loused up, I’m not going home.” Blair straightened, turning, and said, “Okay, Ricks, you can make yourself useful. Go on up with Wiley and help him unrig his ship.”
“Sure.”
Blair waited by the meteor while the other two went back across the spoke and up to the grid. Wiley said, “There’s these two wires to disengage. Wait till I’m in and set, and I’ll give you the high-sign.”
“Okay.”
Wiley clambered into the reep, sealing the dome shut and adjusting the air pressure to fill the cabin. Then he turned off the suit’s air supply and opened his faceplate. Hands and feet ready on the controls, he nodded to Ricks. Ricks released the moorings, and the reep drifted out and to the left, falling slowly away from the spinning Station. Its rear rocket flashed, and it moved away more rapidly, beyond the Station’s outer rim.
Ricks walked back to the rim. When he got there, Wiley’s ship was in place, two of the side rockets firing sporadically, keeping it still in relation to the motion of the Station. The two side arms clung to jagged tears in the rim metal, next to the meteor, while the top and bottom arms, working to the pre-measurements of a small computer tape, inched across the metal, cutting implements extended, scoring not deep enough to cut completely through the hull. Just behind each cutting edge, a small nozzle marked the line of the score with a thin line of red.
Finished, Wiley retracted all four arms, and allowed the reep to drift back away from the Station. The other reep came in closer.
Blair said, “Got something else for you to do, Ricks.” He removed from a clip on the waist of his suit what looked like a coiled length of narrow cable. “You can hold the replacement panel,” he said, “while Dan clears the meteor out. Help me unsnarl this thing.”
“Right.”
Unwound, the coil proved to be four lengths of cable, about fifteen feet long, joined together at one end and terminating at the other end in broad curved clips. While Dan hovered as close as he dared, Blair attached these clips to the edges of the panel, near the corners. Ricks held the other end, where the cables met.
“It’s going to want to drift to the left,” said Blair. “Make sure it doesn’t. Keep all four cables taut. It’s the same as flying a kite. If you let it dip, it’ll crash into the rim here. If it’s crumpled, we can’t use it. And we don’t have any spares handy.”
“I’ll keep it up,” promised Ricks.
Dan backed the gripper reep until the cables stretched taut from Ricks to the panel, and then released his hold on the panel, which immediately drifted to the left, not maintaining the speed of the Station’s spin.
Holding the joined part of the cable tight in his gloved left hand, Ricks tugged with his right at individual lines, trying to keep the panel above him. Behind him, Blair and Dan were ignoring him, working at their own part of the problem. Ricks could hear Blair instructing Dan, guiding him as he came slowly in and fastened his four gripper arms to the meteor. Two of the reep’s auxiliary rocket exhausts fired briefly, and then again, as Dan tugged tentatively at the meteor.
Ricks wanted to turn and watch the operation, but he couldn’t. The eight-by-eight replacement panel swayed above him with maddening slowness, inching away from him, curving down toward the Station. Trying to move too quickly, he pulled on the wrong cable, and the panel dipped sharply, the uppermost cable falling slack, threatening to snarl the others.
Stepping back quickly, almost losing his boot-grip on the hull, Ricks yanked desperately at the slack cable. The panel shuddered, stopped perpendicular to the hull and scarcely two feet above its surface. Then the force of Ricks’ yank took over, and it sailed slowly toward him, curving up and over him, moving now in the direction of the Station’s spin but somewhat faster. When it was directly above him, Ricks tried to stop it, but it curved on, angling down now directly toward the meteor and the arms of the gripper reep.
This time, Ricks managed to tug the cables properly, reversing the drift without too much trouble. He was beginning to catch on to the method, now. It was impossible to keep the panel stationery above him. All he could do was keep sawing it back and forth, forcing its own sluggish motion to follow his commands. Once he had the right idea, it wasn’t too difficult to keep the thing under control, but it didn’t take long at all for his arms to feel the strain. He didn’t dare relax, not for a second. His arms and shoulders twinged at every movement, and his neck and back ached from the necessity of his looking constantly directly above him.