The engines, of course, took precedence. Opened seams had to be power-clamped, braised and welded, and then reground. The null-grav units had cracked open just enough to leak gyroscope lubricant all over the engine room. It took several hours of greasy work to get each unit resealed, and then tested out under full power. Tom handled the cable controls to hold the units down as each of the six gyros was tested individually; another hour of work was required to get all six into perfect timing so that the null-gravity was imperceptible to the human occupants in the ship, and so that resonance between the units did not develop with its steel-shattering vibration.
Tom and Ben worked, ate and slept in regular rotation, trying to plan work periods to take advantage of the asteroid’s brightside hours. Joyce undertook some wiring repair, but for the most part she just got meals and grew bored. After a few hours of clanging hammers, roaring drills and the brassy rattle of riveting guns going on all sides of her, she told the boys she was going to explore a bit between meals.
At Ben’s insistence the first reconnaissance was made by the three of them together, so that he could check the integrity of their pressure suits and see that Joyce got the hang of travel with magnetic boots on a virtually gravity-less surface. For Tom and Joyce it was a strange experience indeed to feel their boots grab the ragged terrain, to talk by pressing their helmets together when they got tired of using radio communication, and to walk the surface of a planetoid with the horizon just a stone’s throw away. The asteroid was a place of darkness and shadow even in full sunlight; its solitude and silence were unnerving at first. Ben watched his Earthling friends out of the corner of his eye for any evidence of the panic reaction that the most hardened Spacers sometimes experienced on asteroid landings, but the Barrons seemed to adjust to the strange landfall without difficulty.
After that Joyce was free to explore while Ben and Tom worked. But she found other things to do as well. She found the tape library an endless source of pleasure, with the microfilmed books from the Spacer archives on Asteroid Central, and the hundreds of music tapes Ben had stored over the years.
More than once he found her listening entranced to the recorded songs of the maukis… the chants and laments, the battle songs and lullabies that Ben had known since birth. Nothing seemed to relieve the loneliness and tension so quickly as music, but to the Barrons the mauki songs were subtly different from the songs and symphonies they had known at home on Earth.
“It’s such mournful singing,” Joyce said on one occasion when Ben found her listening. “Even the marches and victory songs give you a funny feeling.”
“Funny in what way?”
“Funny-peculiar. As if something were missing. I can’t put my finger on the right word.”
“Maybe you mean homesickness,” Ben said. “You don’t find it on the surface, but it’s there, buried in every song. Even in the victory songs. I guess the one thing all Spacers have always wanted to do was to go home.”
Joyce nodded. “Maybe that’s it,” she said. “After all, there hasn’t ever really been a Spacer victory, has there? But the singing is beautiful. Even in the laments there’s no hint of begging or self-pity.” She looked up at Ben. “Your people must be very proud.”
“Anyone who lives in space is proud,” Ben Trefon said. “We have a right to be. But we also have hope of someday going home again. That’s what the maukis are singing about, really. An exile can be proud and still hope to see the end of his exile.”
“But with the horrible things Earthmen believe about Spacers, it’s hard to see the end, even if this war were over,” Joyce said. “If there were only some way to tell people the truth… all of them, all at once.”
“Well, there isn’t any way, and that’s that. The truth has to be believed, to do any good. And the war isn’t over, and if our encounter at Outpost 5 is any guide, it won’t be over for a while. And we won’t be any help unless we get this tub back together again.” Ben paused. “Find anything interesting on your jaunts outside?”
“Not much, but I’ll keep poking around. It’s a fascinating place to explore, especially since we know goblins aren’t going to get us.”
Ben chuckled and went back to his work. Bit by bit the three of them had been forgetting their caution.
Since landfall there had been no sign of anything wrong about this planetoid… no ambush, no hidden ships, nothing. Ben’s initial uneasiness at having Joyce exploring the surface alone had given way to a certain satisfaction that she took to the discomforts of pressure suit confinement so well and seemed to enjoy her explorations. At least, he reflected, it gave her something to do while the tedious repair work went on. After each jaunt she had a new account of the nooks and crannies of the ragged surface she had investigated. Now even her brother was remarking half jokingly that she was taking to space like a born Spacer.
For Ben and Tom the work was exhausting and absorbing, as the damage to the ship was repaired bit by bit. With Joyce happy at other things, they both occasionally forgot meals. But the day that the final tests and timing adjustments on the main jets were done both boys worked halfway around the clock before they realized that Joyce had not been back for several hours.
“Probably down in one of her fool gullies,” Tom said sourly. “One of these times she’s going to get a foot caught and we’ll have to go haul her out.”
Ben nodded. “I suppose we’ll have to lay down the law,” he said. “We only have a couple of more days of work here. It’d be a pity to have her losing her bearings and getting lost, or breaking a leg or something.” He glanced at the chronometer. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Let’s find something to eat.” They fixed a meal and finished it in silence. Still Joyce didn’t appear. “Maybe we should signal her,” Tom said. “She wouldn’t have gone out of straight beam range.” Ben tapped out a signal that Joyce should pick up, but there was no response. They waited a while longer, growing more uneasy by the minute. Finally Ben said, “Well, I suppose we’d better go out and see what’s happened.”
“You don’t suppose she’s gotten hurt?”
“I don’t know how. But she must be gone for six hours now.” Together, they climbed into pressure suits, and dropped down to the ragged surface below the entry hatch. The sun was directly overhead now, so that the surface was visible from horizon to horizon. There was no sign of Joyce. But off to the right there was a promontory of rock affording a better view.
They had just started across toward the rock when the glint of a pressure suit helmet appeared over a rock ledge to the left of them, and Joyce came into view, scrambling through the rubble. But she was not returning at a normal, casual pace. She was running, or trying to run, fighting to disengage her magnetic boots and tripping over them in her haste. For a moment she stopped to look back over her shoulder, and then came stumbling and falling down the path toward them, catching herself on rocks and picking herself up again to hurry on. Ben’s earphones picked up the sound of gasping breathing mixed with frightened sobs; then she saw them, and was screaming for Tom in a voice filled with terror.