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free to oscillate. He poked it with a tentative forefinger and it wobbled. Somehow this motion was just not quite enough for it to foul the other rotors. Had it done so the mini-Mannschenn could have been, probably would have been, irreparably wrecked.
    There was a scattering of golden beads on the baseplate of the machine—the ball bearings. There was a scattering of gold beads and a little heap of curved, golden fragments. So he should have checked those bearings before lifting off from Port Muldoon, or hired one of the Port Captain’s technicians to do so.
    So he hadn’t.
    So what?
    He hoped that there were spares, and tools.
    There were.
    There was no instruction manual.
    There wouldn’t be, of course. Big Sister , the electronic brain of The Far Traveller, had needed no such literature. But, he remembered, she had transferred much of her knowledge to the pinnace’s computer.
    He went back to the main cabin, switched on the play-master.
    Tamara said, “This is no tune to watch some trashy operetta.”
    He ignored her, said to the instrument, “Information on mini-Mannschenn maintenance and repairs . . .”
    The diagrams and pictures succeeded each other on the screen. He said, “Hold it!” Then, “Play that sequence again.”
    While he watched he filled and lit his pipe.
    She said, “Did anybody ever tell you that a naked man smoking a pipe looks ludicrous?”
    “No,” he said. “And if they did, I shouldn’t believe them.”
    She asked, “And how long shall we be stuck here? The consignee of the mail paid Special Delivery rate—which means that the Post Office, my Post Office, is liable to a penalty for every day’s delay over the specified time.”
    He said, “Be quiet, please, and let me watch this sequence.”
    She shut up.
    It should be quite simple, thought Grimes. Once the proper number of bearings was in the channel, the race, the end of the spindle would lock automatically into place. Until this was done Little Sister would, of course still be proceeding in the right direction—but she would be going a long way in a very long time. Once the mini-Mannschenn was fixed she would be going a very long way in a short time.
    There was one snag, as Grimes realized after the passage of about three frustrating hours. The instructional film had shown the maintenance of a full-sized Mannschenn Drive unit—a job for a team of engineers. The maintenance of a mini-Mannschenn is a job for a watchmaker.
    And Grimes was even less of a watchmaker than he was an engineer.
    Somehow he had contrived to unseat four other spindles and the deck of the engine room-cum-galley was littered with golden ball bearings.
    But he worked on with dogged determination, wishing, now and again, that Tamara would get off her big, fat arse and do something to help. He was vaguely conscious of her pale form at the forward end of the pinnace, in the control cab, and supposed that she was either sulking or admiring the scenery.
    Or both.

Chapter 9

    SHE WAS TALKING TO HERSELF, he thought not very interestedly. He heard her voice but could not be bothered to try to make out the words; he was too engrossed in his ticklish, frustrating task. Then one of the little golden wheels, the spindle of which he had just pressed home into its mountings, sprang out again as soon as his hand was removed. It clattered to the deck and trundled forward through the main cabin. He ran after it, pounced on it just before it got as far as the control cab.
    She looked up and around at him.
    She said, “It’s all right, Grimes. We shall soon have some real engineers to put your time-twister together again.”
    “What?” he demanded.
    “You heard me.” She gestured with the golden microphone that she was holding. “I could see that we were liable to be stuck here, in the very middle of sweet damn all, for the next ten standard years, so I put out a call for assistance on the Carlotti . . .”
    “You did what?”
    “You heard me.”
    “By whose