so that she could keep the heavily-armored
edge of their small section, which she had promptly christened "The
Forlorn Hope," between them and the grinding, clashing mass of wreckage,
and thus, if it should become necessary, protect the relatively frail
inner portions of their craft from damage.

"Keep an eye on things for a while, Nadia," he instructed, as soon as
she could handle the controls, "and don't use any more power than is
absolutely necessary. We'll need it all, and besides, they can probably
detect anything we can use. There's probably enough leakage from the
ruptured accumulator cells to mask quite a little emission, but don't
use much. I'm going to see what I can do about making this whole wedge
navigable."

"Why not just launch what's left of this lifeboat? It's space-worthy,
isn't it?"

"Yes, but it's too small. Two or three of the big dirigible projectors
of the lower band are on the rim of this piece-of-pie-shaped section
we're riding, I think. If so, and if enough batteries of accumulators
are left intact to give them anywhere nearly full power, we can get an
acceleration that will make a lifeboat look sick. Those main dirigibles,
you know, are able to swing the whole mass of the _Arcturus_, and what
they'll do to this one chunk of it--we've got only a few thousand tons
of mass in this piece--will be something pretty. Also, having the metal
may save us months of time in mining it."

He found the projectors, repaired or cut out the damaged accumulator
cells, and reconnected them through the controls of the lifeboat.
He moved into the "engine-room" the airtanks, stores, and equipment
from all the other fragments which, by means of a space-suit, he could
reach without too much difficulty. From the battery rooms of those
fragments--open shelves, after being sliced open by the shearing ray--he
helped himself to banks of accumulator cells from the enormous driving
batteries of the ill-fated _Arcturus_, bolting them down and connecting
them solidly until almost every compartment of their craft was one mass
of stored-up energy.

Days fled like hours, so furiously busy were they in preparing their
peculiar vessel for a cruise of indefinite duration. Stevens cut himself
short on sleep and snatched his meals in passing; and Nadia, when not
busy at her own tasks of observing, housekeeping, and doing what little
piloting was required, was rapidly learning to wield most effectively
the spanner and pliers of t