Space

"So sub-light speed is down." said the captain, sitting down and motioning for her chief engineer to do the same. "Can we go direct to light speed?"

The engineer shook his long head as he sat. "You'll melt the inductors."

"Refresh my memory."

"The inductors smooth the ride," said the engineer patiently. "Without them we'd be bounced around like - I don't know - like BBs in a can of spray paint. Eventually we'd shake the ship apart, like the Nautilus in '98."

"I thought Nautilus was on the Novgorod station." said the fool of a first lieutenant, speaking for the first time.

"That's the Nautilus E," replied the engineer. He was a tall, raw man with a pale face, where it was not marked with grease, but for the moment he slumped so low in his chair that the captain and lieutenant (neither of them particularly tall women) towered over him. "They built her after the Nautilus D broke up. But the point is, no," he said, turning back to the captain, "we can't go direct to light speed. We're stuck."

"For the moment." replied the captain. Ever the optimist, that one.

But the engineer shrugged. "Until we figure out how to fix it with what's left. My potassium rods are all broken up, and the sodium ones, they make a nice weld, but they don't dig deep enough. I suppose I could grind the casing down to enable the sodium rods to get in," he went on as the thought struck him, "but I don't think I could ever build it up again. Unless..." he trailed off, turning over a series of possibilities in his head, none of them promising when looked at closely. "I'll keep working at it, but -" he left the sentence hanging as the chief surgeon walked in.

"What are our casualties?" the Captain asked.

"Remarkable few for so furious a bout," replied the surgeon, helping himself to a drink from the sideboard. "Five killed directly when the engine blew up, three with burns, of which two should survive, and of course the crew of the launch."

"The yawl," said the first lieutenant.

"Launch or yawl, they're dead just the same."

And not even the lieutenant could argue with that.

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