"They're all the same. Once you have the feel of it," he rippled his fingers as though working a bank of firing keys, "it works anyplace. I run the Lorelei just like I used to run my liners. I can cut it a bit finer than I could a big ship, but elsewise it doesn't make any difference how big they come. I could stand that liner on her butt and write my name clean across that field." He jerked his head at the four-mile-wide Venusport, and glared at Joe and the radar man. "And cross the 't's' and dot the 'i's'!" * * * * * It was an hour later, while they were sitting around drinking Venusian wine, that the call came through. You always expect a distress call to be weak and difficult to understand, but this one wasn't. It was as clear as though the transmitter were in the next room. "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! All-Planetary Liner Twelve calling Venusport! Over!" At the first sound of the universal distress call, Joe and the radar man went into action. Joe hit a red stud that alerted all the units at the Port, and cut in the speakers in the other control sections, while the radar man got a rough bearing on the liner, and switched up the amplification until he had the ship located within a foot, and its speed and course plotted to five decimal places. All this in the time it took the first call to come through. Joe flipped the transmitting stud. "Venusport to All-Planetary Twelve. All other units clear the air immediately. Come in." The voice cut in sharply through the space static again, sounding a little frightened and tense. "All-Planetary Twelve calling Venusport. Something went wrong with the radar deflectors. We took a meteor through the control room. Luckily it just clipped us, but it put a ten foot hole in the side. The man on duty got out okay, but we lost all the air in that section. We can't bring her in with that hole in her. We have to have air in the control room, or all the switches arc out. Over." Outside, the control tower ships were being moved out of the way, back into the hangars and into the pits. Blinker lights and radio landing beams were flickering out "Stay Clear!" warnings to all ships in that segment of space. Joe flipped the stud again. "Is the hole too big for a plastic patch? Over." "It's a good ten feet across. We haven't got any patches that big, and even if we did have, they wouldn't do any good. Once we pumped the air back in, the pressure would boot the patch out into space. The only thing that will work is a welding job. Over." Joe shook his head glumly and flipped the stud. "We've got enough monalloy here to fix it, but we haven't got a portable welding outfit that could handle the job. Down here we could have it fixed in half an hour. Over." There was a pause before the voice came back. "That's a lot of help. Over." * * * * *