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Keku had spread his hands and said: "I gave him the usual formula about not being positive of my data, then I told him that you were known as Mike the Angel and were well known in the power field." Multhaus reported that Snookums had wanted to know what their destination was. The chief's only possible answer, of course, had been: "I don't have that data, Snookums." Dr.
He beetled it toward the Power Section. Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus was probably the only man in the crew who came close to being as big as Mike the Angel. Multhaus was two inches shorter than Mike's six-seven, but he weighed in at two-ninety.
"No way of telling, sir," said Mike, without taking his eyes off the meter bank. "Check A-77," he muttered in an aside to Multhaus. "Can you give me a prognosis?" persisted Quill. Mike frowned. This wasn't like Black Bart. He knew what the prognosis was as well as Mike did. "Actually, sir, there's no way of knowing.
Finally, it dropped suddenly to a low of point-oh-five cycles, hovered there for a moment, then vanished altogether. "By the beard of my sainted maiden aunt," said Chief Multhaus in awe. "A three-tube offbeat solved in less than half an hour! If that isn't a record, I'll dye my uniform black and join the Chaplains' Corps."
Multhaus plugged in an emergency board and began to compensate by hand while the others searched frantically for the trouble. Hand compensation of feeder-valve oscillation is pure intuition; if you wait until the meters show that damping is necessary, it may be too late you have to second-guess the machine and figure out what's coming before it happens and compensate then.
We may never be able to get off the planet with this ship again, but we aren't supposed to anyway. "Come on, Multhaus, don't worry about it. I know you hate to burn up a ship, but this one is supposed to be expendable. You may never have another chance like this." Multhaus tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn't. "Awright, Commander. You have appealed to my baser instincts.
It was easier to cool the helium bath of the brain if it only had to be lowered 175 degrees or so. It was a great place for cold-work labs, but not worth anything for colonization. Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus looked gloomily at the figures on the landing sheet. Mike the Angel watched the expression on the chief's face and said: "What's the matter, Multhaus? No like?" Multhaus grimaced.
The beam from the chief's hand torch gleamed on the metallic body of the little robot as it headed toward him. "Snookums! Stop!" Mike ordered. Snookums paid no attention. He swerved adroitly around the astonished Multhaus, spun around the corner, and was gone into the darkness. "What was all that, sir?" Multhaus asked, looking more than somewhat confused.
"Someone's going to get galloping claustrophobia before it's over, anyway," said Multhaus morosely as he followed Mike down the hallway in the direction from which Snookums had come. "Darkness and stuffy air touch off that sort of thing." "Who's Officer of the Watch tonight?" Mike wanted to know. "Ensign Vaneski, I think. His name was on the roster, as I remember."
Then, from out of the darkness, came something that moved on a whir of caterpillar treads. Something hard and metallic slammed against Mike's shoulder, spinning him against the wall. At that moment, Multhaus came around the corner, and Mike could see Snookums scurrying on down the corridor toward the approaching Powerman's Mate. "Multhaus! Look out!" Mike yelled.
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