He snapped switches that added power to Driver 3. Gradually the gyro-compass changed from a complex rotation-progression to a simpler pattern, and eventually the simple pattern died, leaving but one freedom of rotation. "I'm sort of stumped," grinned Darlange. "We're now hopping along, but rotating on our long axis. How we stop axial rotation with drivers set parallel to that axis I'll never guess." "Is there a lifeship in working order?" asked Hadley. "Sure." "Tom, turn it against the rotation and apply the drivers on that until we tell you to stop." An hour later the ship had ceased to turn. Then Darlange jockeyed the big ship around so that the bottom was along the line of flight. Then he set the power for a half-G, and everyone relaxed. Ten minutes later Captain Johannson came in. "You've done a fine job," he told Hadley. "And now I declare an hour off for dinner. Dr. MacLain has got a working medical center with the aid of a few people who understand how such things work, and the percentage of broken bones, though terrific in number, is being taken care of. The passengers were pretty restive at first, but the coming of light seemed to work wonders. This first glimmer of power is another. About nine or ten who were able to do so were having severe cases of skysickness." He smiled ruefully. "I'm not too sure that I like no-weight myself." "Have you been in the observation dome?" asked Don. "Yes. It's pierced, you know." "Did the meteor hit the telescope?" "No, why?" "Because I'm going to have to get a sight on Venus Equilateral before we can do anything. We'll have to beam them something, but I don't know what right now." "Can we discuss that over a dinner?" asked the captain. "I'm starved, and I think that the rest of this gang is also." "You're a man after my own heart," laughed Channing. "The bunch out at the Station wouldn't believe me if I claimed to have done anything without drawing it up on a tablecloth." * * * * * "Now," said Channing over his coffee. "What have we in the way of electronic equipment?" "One X-ray machine, a standard set of communicating equipment, one beam receiver with 'type machine for collecting stuff from your Station, and so on." "You wouldn't have a betatron in the place somewhere?" asked Don hopefully. "Nope. Could we make one?" "Sure. Have you got about ten pounds of No. 18 wire?" "No." "Then we can't." "Couldn't you use a driver? Isn't that some kind of beam?" "Some kind," admitted Channing. "But it emits something that we've never been able to detect except in an atmosphere where it ionizes the air into a dull red glow." "You should have been wrecked on the _Sorcerer's Apprentice_," laughed Hadley. "They're the guys who have all that kind of stuff." "Have they?" asked Johannson. "The last time I heard, they were using a large hunk of their upper hull for a VanDerGraf generator."