Read The Broken Cycle for Free Online Page B

communicating, is bust. We do carry, of course, a Catalogue of Carlotti Beacons—but in these circumstances it's quite useless."

    "Especially so," she pointed out, "when we don't even know if there are any Carlotti Beacons in this space-time. So, lover boy, what are you doing about it?"

    Grimes' prominent ears flushed angrily. She was being unfair. She shared the responsibility for getting them into this mess. She, the bomb-disposal expert, should have warned him of the possible consequences of using a Carlotti transmitter in close proximity to the derelict. He rose from the table haughtily. It was no hardship for him to leave his unfinished meal. He stalked, insofar as this was possible when wearing only magnetic sandals in Free Fall, to the forward end of the boat. He stared out through the control cabin viewports at the interstellar immensities. There was no star that he could identify, no constellation. Had he been made a welcome visitor in Skink's control room he would have known how the stars should look in this sector of Space. As it was . . . . He shrugged. All that he could be sure of was that they were in a universe, not necessarily the universe. At least the boat hadn't fallen down some dark crack in the continuum.

    He turned away from the port, looked aft. He saw that Una Freeman had taken the broken, battered Carlotti transceiver from the locker in which it had been stowed, was picking up and looking at the pieces intently. Nude with Moebius Strip, he thought sardonically.

    She waved the twisted antenna at him. "Are you sure you can't do anything with this lot?" she demanded.

    "Quite sure. I'm not a radio technician."

    "Then you can't be sure that it is a complete write-off." Her wide, fun mouth was capable of quite spectacular sneering. "Get the lead out of your pants, lover boy—not that you're wearing any. You've been having a marvelous holiday for the last three weeks; it's high time that you started work again."

    "Mphm?"

    "I thought, in my girlish innocence . . . ."

    "Ha, ha."

    She glared at him. "I thought, in my girlish innocence that all you spacefaring types were men of infinite resource and sagacity, able to make repairs, light years from the nearest yard, with chewing gum and old string. I'd like to see some proof of it."

    He said, "I might be able to straighten out the antenna and get it remounted. But the printed circuits are a mess."

    She said, "There're soldering irons in the workshop."

    "I know. But have you had a good look at those trays?"

    "Of course. Trays of circuitry. Since simple soldering seems to be beyond your capabilities . . . ."

    "And yours."

    "I'm not the skilled, trained, qualified spaceman, lover boy. You are. But let me finish. As a Sky Marshal I had to do quite a few courses on general spacemanship, including Deep Space communications. One of the things I learned was that quite a few circuit trays are interchangeable between NST and Carlotti transceivers. Since it's obvious now that we shall not be needing the NST transceiver—we cannibalize. After that's been done, lover boy, all we have to do is home on the Lindisfarne Beacon."

    "And how many years will it take us?" he asked sarcastically.

    "Oh, I forgot. After you've fixed the Carlotti set you fix the mini-Mannschenn."

Chapter 9

    There was a Radio Technician's Manual in the boat's book locker. Grimes got it out. Unluckily the writer of it had assumed that anybody reading it would possess at least a smattering of knowledge concerning Deep Space radio. Grimes was not such a person. He knew that the Carlotti equipment propagated signals which, somehow, ignored the normal three dimensions of Space and, by taking a shortcut of some kind, arrived at the receiving station, no matter how many light years distant, practically instantaneously. In any ship that he had been in the thing had worked. There had always been fully qualified officers to see that it worked. Had the complete boarding party been in