"Be quiet, lunatic!" he barked every time I protested. He spent hours filing on that bar, putting on the helmet and testing, then filing some more. And there was absolutely nothing I could do. He had so much air pressure in my cushions I couldn't even squirm. At last he tested once more, and this time snapped the set off almost at once with a smile of satisfaction. Next he started tracing the secondary power circuits, but he didn't get very far. Every time the Professor had come up with a new idea we had rewired the _Banshee_, running new leads through the bulkheads but leaving the old circuits in place. The original wiring diagrams were nothing but propaganda by now, with the up-to-date dope all in my head and Bill's. I must have been getting hysterical from being pinned there so helplessly with a lunatic at large, for when he got into the metal rat's nest behind the meter panel I laughed. Then I wished I hadn't. "Swede," he said earnestly. "I want to double the voltage and step up the amperage by eight on the direct current. I want the frequency of the AC boosted to at least 850 cycles, and I need at least two thousand ehrenhafts on the magnetic flux leads." I blinked at those figures. "Now Mike," I said, trying to be calm. "Let me out of here and we'll talk this over." I had my eye on a heavy wrench I hoped I could grab in time. "Oh no, Swede. You're insane. I couldn't possibly let you loose." He chuckled at his own stupid joke. "Tell me how to rig it," he demanded. "No soap. That much overload would probably blow the packs and the whole ship with it." "That's a chance we'll have to take. For all Earth's sake," he said, really serious this time. "There's no other way. Now tell me." I shook my head. Instead of arguing he got out a soldering iron and started it heating. "You scared of me?" he asked ominously. "No, Mike. Of course not. We're shipmates." But it was a lie, a damned big lie. He knew it and I knew it, and I knew that he knew it. He touched a wet forefinger to the iron. It sizzled. "My!" he said, sounding like the smooth menace from some telaudio spooky-show. "What a nice red nose you're going to have--if you don't start talking!" "Mike!" I begged. "You can't do that to me! We're old friends! Remember?" But he did it. The tip of the iron on the tip of my nose, and it hurt. I yowled, mostly in utter panic rather than pain. My phobia was working overtime. "Enough?" he asked. "I'll keep it up if I have to." I thought it over. Crazy as he was, he might throw a dead short across the secondaries. Fission packs won't stand that without exploding. So I talked. Once I tried to give him a bum steer that would cut down the current, but he sensed it and waved the soldering iron at me again. When he had all the dope he needed he took time out to smear ointment on my nose. It made me look cross-eyed and I still wanted to touch the burn, but he refused to reduce the pressure even enough for me to work one arm loose.