Upon awakening, the man's first care was to instruct the girl in the operation of the projectors, so that she could keep the heavily-armored edge of their small section, which she had promptly christened "The Forlorn Hope," between them and the grinding, clashing mass of wreckage, and thus, if it should become necessary, protect the relatively frail inner portions of their craft from damage. "Keep an eye on things for a while, Nadia," he instructed, as soon as she could handle the controls, "and don't use any more power than is absolutely necessary. We'll need it all, and besides, they can probably detect anything we can use. There's probably enough leakage from the ruptured accumulator cells to mask quite a little emission, but don't use much. I'm going to see what I can do about making this whole wedge navigable." "Why not just launch what's left of this lifeboat? It's space-worthy, isn't it?" "Yes, but it's too small. Two or three of the big dirigible projectors of the lower band are on the rim of this piece-of-pie-shaped section we're riding, I think. If so, and if enough batteries of accumulators are left intact to give them anywhere nearly full power, we can get an acceleration that will make a lifeboat look sick. Those main dirigibles, you know, are able to swing the whole mass of the _Arcturus_, and what they'll do to this one chunk of it--we've got only a few thousand tons of mass in this piece--will be something pretty. Also, having the metal may save us months of time in mining it." He found the projectors, repaired or cut out the damaged accumulator cells, and reconnected them through the controls of the lifeboat. He moved into the "engine-room" the airtanks, stores, and equipment from all the other fragments which, by means of a space-suit, he could reach without too much difficulty. From the battery rooms of those fragments--open shelves, after being sliced open by the shearing ray--he helped himself to banks of accumulator cells from the enormous driving batteries of the ill-fated _Arcturus_, bolting them down and connecting them solidly until almost every compartment of their craft was one mass of stored-up energy. Days fled like hours, so furiously busy were they in preparing their peculiar vessel for a cruise of indefinite duration. Stevens cut himself short on sleep and snatched his meals in passing; and Nadia, when not busy at her own tasks of observing, housekeeping, and doing what little piloting was required, was rapidly learning to wield most effectively the spanner and pliers of the mechanic and electrician. "I'm afraid our time is getting short, Steve," she announced, after making an observation. "It looks as though we're getting wherever it is we're going." "Well, I've got only two more jobs to do, but they're the hardest of the lot. It is Jupiter, or can you tell yet?" "Jupiter or one of its satellites, I think, from the point where they reversed their power. Here's the observation you told me to take."