Naturally, after admonishing the crew to use ear plugs, he had neglected to use his. While his eardrums still throbbed with the sharp compression, he fought for clear vision. The hull mockup illuminated, he searched for the point of impact on the electronic three-dimensional damage guide. No wonder all the rough stuff; it turned out to be a good-sized crater above the control compartment. Perhaps it hadn't been as bad elsewhere. There was no penetration, but after that wallop he wasn't looking forward to any. "Check in!" he announced. Dutifully the crew responded, their voices sounding heavy with affected steadiness. "That landed on the front above control. The party's livening up, so stand by." Hiller noticed with concern the starfield drifting by the ports. The positional dial showed 17.6 but falling. "What's with the gyros, Art?" he asked. "Impact shifted the ship position," he answered. "I'm resetting." The commander bit his lip, suppressing the pun crossing his mind that this was a new angle. He hadn't figured that much kinetic energy affecting the ship position. As long as the impact came near center, fine; but with a strike near the extremities of the ship, naturally the effect was to spin it, like a top without a molecule of friction. Oversight Number One. Hell, why count 'em? This one in itself could be fatal. The gyros were never meant to counteract that kind of gyration. Maybe a couple of impacts, yes. After that, they could burn out. * * * * * Somebody opened the door of a boiler factory and shut it in a millisecond. The reverberation surprisingly proved slight. The commander peered closely at the damage guide. A short dark line near the stern: it had taken him a second inspection to find it. He had been looking for a crater. "Crease over the firing chambers," he reported, then shifted his attention to the indicator. The needle faltered at 18 as the gyros kicked in harder and fell toward 16 again. "What's the condition of the gyro motors, Art?" Hiller asked. "Warming up," was the answer, "They're going to have to run full to do any good at all." "How about using the jets once in a while," Hiller suggested. "Too hard on the fuel?" "Once in a while, it wouldn't be," the engineer replied. "Constantly steadying a spinning ship this big with the guide jets would take more fuel than we could spare." Hiller swiftly considered the few possibilities there were. Burning out the gyros was a risk he could not take. Going over the fuel margin was out of the question. And the alternative to these--spinning until they left the Belt. Spinning provided the only choice. It wasn't necessarily fatal, but it increased the chances for perpendicular strikes. Actually, with such conditions, Bleck's sneering odds held more merit. _Bleck!_ The shadow behind him, only a vague outline on the control panel, moved. Hiller fell sideways from the seat, twisting around one of the arms.