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Mike hadn't checked to find out. Bessie and her relief operators were watching the prisoners through a video display on the Sacred Cow's console, and would report anything unusual that went on to Captain Andersen. Mike, Ishie, Millie, Paul and Tombu had completed the new Confusor drive units, and they were nearly installed.
And picking up the Security radio from the intercom bench, he turned it on and spoke into it. "Elbertson, this is Mike Blackhawk. You now have twenty minutes to surrender," and he cut off. Mike turned to Tombu. "Get me some plastic wrapping material. Preferably a plastic bag. I've got to make this stuff waterproof."
Heave a line over this way and let's get this ECM lathe aboard." Tombu's "last name" M'Numba had delighted Paul from the moment he'd heard the story of its origin. By the customs of his own country, Tombu had only a single name.
"How much of the machine do I have to take to power that milling-head?" he asked Tombu. "Oh, most of it's just control circuits. This box on the back is the power supply. Plugs right in to ship's power." "Hey!" Mike called over to Paul now busy constructing a bracket. "Make that bracket to hold this power supply, too. Oh, and round me up about sixty feet of extension cord, Tombu."
"I thought I'd just give our fate a little extra chance. Now drop what you're doing and light into this. "After that, if you've got a job for a mere biologist, I've got my lab readied up where it can last till I get back and I'm not bad with a soldering iron. Meantime, why don't you let Paul and Tombu go eat while you eat?" "Good idea," said Mike. "You two. You heard the lady.
However, when he had first enrolled as a student in England there had been a lack of comprehension between him and the rather flustered registrar and, when he had muttered something about "my number," the registrar had misunderstood and put him down as M'Numba. Tombu had let it stand.
Tombu himself, educated in the white man's schools to the white man's ways, and probing ever deeper into the white man's knowledge, was only vaguely aware of his ancestral origin. He counted his kingdom in negative terms, terms that were no longer applicable in a modern world.
Paul Chernov, fine-boned, blond, with an ancestral background of the Polish aristocracy, and his side-kick, Tombu, black, muscular giant from the Congo, were one of the strangest combinations of this international space lab crew.
"I got on the wheel, thought I'd stay for the ride I'd found a funny suit in which to hide But I went through a closet and I was outside! I'd went where I wasn't going!" Tombu and Mike joined happily in the chorus, bawling it out at the top of their lungs as they began the work that would make the big Confusor.
"Anyhow, that's what it does. There are two thousand separate little grids, each fed by its capillary jet, and each grid provides about ninety volts." Tombu took the opportunity to inquire, "Have you got that RF field-phase generator under control yet?" He pointed to still another section of the chassis. "Oh, yes." The physicist nodded.
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