The Best of Bova: Volume 1 Read Online Free

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    Sure, call a conference, Tom thought. How much more work is there to be done? About twenty-four hours, he said. Another day. And another full night. Another night, this time with no heat. And maybe no oxygen, either. The heaters must have been working tonight until I pushed them up to full power. Something must have blown out. Maybe it’s just a broken wire. I could fix that if they tell me how. But if it’s not . . . no heat tomorrow night, no heat at all.
    Then Arnoldsson’s voice floated up through the radio speaker: soft, friendly, calm, soothing.
    The next thing Tom knew he was putting on his helmet. Sunlight was lancing through the tinted observation port and the ship was noticeably warmer.
    “What happened?” he mumbled through the dissolving haze of hypnosis.
    “It’s all right, Tom.” Ruth’s voice. “Dr. Arnoldsson put you under and had you check the ship’s wiring. Now he and Jason and the engineers are figuring out what to do. They said it’s nothing to worry about . . . they’ll have everything figured out in a couple of hours.”
    “And I’m to work on the satellite until they’re ready?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “It’s all right, Tom. Don’t worry.”
    “Sure, Ruth, I’m not worried.” That makes us both liars.
    He worked mechanically, handling the unfamiliar machinery with the engineers’ knowledge through Arnoldsson’s hypnotic communication.
    Just like the pictures they used to show of nuclear engineers handling radioactive materials with remotely-controlled mechanical hands from behind a concrete wall. I’m only a pair of hands, a couple of opposed thumbs, a fortunate mutation of a self-conscious simian . . . but, God, why don’t they call? She said it wasn’t anything big. Just the wiring, probably. Then why don’t they call?
    He tried to work without thinking about anything, but he couldn’t force his mind into stillness.
    Even if I can fix the heaters, even f 1 don’t freeze to death, I might run out of oxygen. And how am I going to land the ship? The takeoff was automatic, but even Jason and Arnoldsson can’t make a pilot out of me .
    “Tom?” Jason’s voice.
    “Yes!” He jerked to attention and floated free of the satellite.
    “We’ve . . . eh, checked what you told us about the ship’s electrical system while Arnoldsson had you under the hypnotic trance.”
    “And?”
    “Well . . . it, eh, looks as though one of the batteries gave out. The batteries feed all the ship’s lights, heat, and electrical power . . . with one of them out, you don’t have enough power to run the heaters.”
    “There’s no way to fix it?”
    “Not unless you cut out something else. And you need everything else . . . the radio, the controls, the oxygen pumps . . .”
    “What about the lights? I don’t need them, I’ve got the lamp on my suit helmet.”
    “They don’t take as much power as the heaters do. It wouldn’t help at all.”
    Tom twisted weightlessly and stared back at Earth. “Well, just what the hell am I supposed to do?”
    “Don’t get excited,” Jason’s voice grated in his earphones. “We’ve calculated it all out. According to our figures, your suit will store enough heat during the day to last the night . . .”
    “I nearly froze to death last night and the ship was heated most of the time!”
    “It will get cold,” Jason’s voice answered calmly, “but you should be able to make it. Your own body warmth will be stored by the suit’s insulation, and that will help somewhat. But you must not open the suit all night, not even to take off your helmet.”
    “And the oxygen?”
    “You can take all the replacement cylinders from the ship and keep them at the satellite. The time you save by not having to go back and forth to the ship for fresh oxygen will give you about an hour’s extra margin. You should be able to make it.”
    Tom nodded. “And of course I’m expected to work