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"We might be able to fix up the engines and get the boat in the air again, after the wind drops." Monnahan said. "I'll take a look at them and see how badly they've been banged up." "With the whole stern open?" Hans Cronje asked. "We'd freeze stiffer than a gun barrel before we went a hundred miles." "Then we can pack the stern full of wet snow and let it freeze, instead of us," I suggested.
Everybody in the boat was listening, so I continued: "How much do you know about this fellow Devis, who strained his back at the last moment?" "Engine room's where he could have planted something," Joe Kivelson said. "He was in there by himself for a while, the morning after the meeting," Abdullah Monnahan added.
Joe Kivelson's arm was, as he suspected, broken, another man had a fractured wrist, and Abdullah Monnahan thought a couple of ribs were broken. The rest of us were in one piece, but all of us were cut and bruised. I felt sore all over. We also found a nuclear-electric heater that would work, and got it on.
By this time, other Javelin men came drifting over Ramón Llewellyn, the mate, and Abdullah Monnahan, the engineer, and Abe Clifford, the navigator, and some others. I talked with some of them, and then drifted off in the direction of the bar, where I found another hunter captain, Mohandas Gandhi Feinberg, whom everybody simply called the Mahatma. He didn't resemble his namesake.
This'll do it, I thought, and I wondered how long it would take Dad to find out what had happened to us. Cesário had started praying again, and so had Abdullah Monnahan, who had just remembered that he had been brought up a Moslem. I hoped he wasn't trying to pray in the direction of Mecca, even allowing that he knew which way Mecca was from Fenris generally.
"We're getting a pickup," I told him. "Vehicle from the Times." I thought it would save arguments if I didn't mention who was bringing it. Before we left the lighted elevator car, we took a quick nose count. Besides the Kivelsons, there were five Javelin men Ramón Llewellyn, Abdullah Monnahan, Abe Clifford, Cesário Vieira, and a whitebeard named Piet Dumont.
"We could stow the wax, if we didn't get too much, but if we stay out, we'll have to wait out the wind and by then it'll be pretty cold." "The longer we stay out, the more the cruise'll cost," Abdullah Monnahan, the engineer, said, "and the expenses'll cut into the shares." "Tell the truth, I'm sort of antsy to get back," Joe Kivelson said. "I want to see what's going on in Port Sandor."
We gathered everything that was loose and made it fast, and checked the fastenings of everything else. Then Abdullah Monnahan pointed the nose of the boat straight up and gave her everything the engines could put out. Just as we were starting upward, I heard Cesário saying: "If anybody wants to see me in the next reincarnation, I can tell you one thing; I won't reincarnate again on Fenris!"
She let down into the ravine, after some maneuvering around, and Mohandas Feinberg and half a dozen of his crew got off with an improvised stretcher on a lifter and a lot of blankets. We got our broken-leg case aboard, and Abdullah Monnahan, and the man with the broken wrist. There were more ships coming, so the rest of us waited.
Then we could distinguish words. "Come on in! We made contact!" We pushed into the hut, where everybody was crowded around the underhatch of the boat, which was now the side door. Abe shoved through, and I shoved in after him. Newsman's conditioned reflex; get to where the story is. I even caught myself saying, "Press," as I shoved past Abdullah Monnahan. "What happened?"
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