"Nothing, except that if I'd told everyone I was J. J. Kelvin, all of you would have been sitting around waiting for me to solve the problem instead of thinking about it yourselves." Hull nodded thoughtfully. "It makes sense, Mr. Kelvin. If they'd known that you were ... well ... Mister Spaceship Himself, they'd have let you do all the thinking. And that would have left you high and dry, wouldn't it?" Jayjay put the deck of cards in his pocket. "You're a pretty good sociologist, after all, Mr. Hull. You're right. Face any group with Authority--with a capital _A_--and they quit thinking for themselves. And if they do, then the poor slob of an Authority doesn't have anything to tickle his own brains, so everybody loses." "Well, _do_ you have an answer?" Captain Al-Amin asked. Jayjay shook his head. "Not yet. I think I've got one coming up, but I wish you two would go on talking while I think." "I'll try," Smith said wryly. * * * * * The problem was both simple and complex. The female socket lacked one single turn of thread to make a perfect connection. A few hundredths of an inch separated success from disaster. Five men, including the unconscious Vandenbosch, were only a fraction of an inch away from death. Jayjay Kelvin listened to Smith talk for another half hour, throwing in objections when necessary, but offering no opinions. "All we have to do," Smith said at last, "is get rid of that little bit of metal beyond the thread in the female socket. But there's no way to get it out. We can't use a chisel because the force would warp the threads. Besides, we couldn't get a chisel in there." "And we don't have a chisel," Captain Al-Amin added. "We don't have any tools at all." "Except," said Jayjay, "an electric hand drill and a quarter-inch bit." "Well, sure," said Smith. "But what good will that do us?" "If we rigged a belt between the drill's motor and the sleeve of the female socket, the sleeve would rotate as if it were on a lathe, wouldn't it?" Smith blinked. "Sure. Yeah! Hey!" His face brightened. Then it looked sad again. "But what good would that do us?" "You said that all we have between us and success is a fraction of an inch of metal. If we can remove that fraction of an inch, we're successful." "But how can you put a thread into that socket?" Smith asked. Jayjay beamed as though it were his birthday. "We don't have to put a thread in there. All we have to do is give the thread on the male plug room to move in. All we have to do is clear away that metal. So we'll use the drill motor to turn the sleeve as if it were on a lathe." Smith still didn't look enthusiastic. "All right. We have a lathe. But what are we going to use for tools? What are we going to cut the metal with?" Jayjay's smile became broader. "Carbon steel. What else?" "Oh?" said Smith. "And where do we get these tools, Mr. Kelvin? From the circumambient ether?" "Not at all," said Jayjay. "Did you ever chip flint?"