"Nonsense. I'd scream like a stuck pig if any man decided that I couldn't take care of myself. But I have enough sense to realize that all of the courtesies that men offer me are tokens of their affection and not gestures toward someone who cannot get in out of the rain without help. As for the weak, what would you say to a man who slugged a woman and then ran off and left her to suffer?" "He's a rat!" "How about the dame who does the same to a man?" "That's--" "Be careful, Sandra Drake. The girl I'm speaking of is you!" "Well--" Sandra let the sentence die in midstream. "Think it over, lady wrestler. And when you make up your mind, come on in and help." Enid left Sandra standing in the room. She went to the improvised hospital and began to work. Her touch was gentle, but within her, Enid burned. To Enid, Sandra Drake was as representative of the female sex as poison ivy is representative of the plant family. * * * * * John McBride faced the men in his office. "Give it to me in rotation," he said. "Starting with Station 1." "We're down to the ruined relays and a few hundred feet of burned cable. A half hour with help." "Two is running O.K. on test power. She can stand a little sprucing, but that can wait." "Three is ready for test power, or will be within the next ten minutes or so." "Four will be O.K. as soon as we get the space-warp generator tuned. We managed to repair the input circuits." "Five is running on test power." "Six is ditto." "Seven is still cleaning up some of the mess, but can go on test power as soon as the time is ripe." "Eight is O.K. except for some burned cable and some messiness. We never were in really bad shape." "We're still cleaning relay contacts with files. Take another hour at least, and we've got so much help that the boys on the upper panels are standing on the shoulders of the men working on the lower panels. Also, they're so close together that they need a hortator to beat time so their elbows won't clash. That's how we stand on 9." "Ten's in shape for test." "Eleven needs a new alphatron, which is being hooked into place right now." "Twelve is ready to go on test, according to Ben, who called just before you came." McBride smiled wearily. "That's the fore element," he said. "They tell me that the rear element is all ready and waiting. So all we need now is Carlson. Give orders to have the propulsion operators start aligning their stations. And get me Doc Caldwell." The phone rang and McBride picked it up. "This is Doc," said the man on the other end. "Look, Mac, can you come over to my office?" "Sure," answered McBride. To the men in the room, he said: "Fight it out among you. Give help to any station that still needs it. We're going back in service as soon as we can--in an hour, I'd estimate. That's if Carlson is capable of handling his end." McBride went to Doc's office. Caldwell smiled bleakly. "He's conscious. He insists on talking to you."