“Det var som fanden,” said the engineer.

  “Fwhat?”

  “De hell you say. I got to look into dis.” Herr Syrup scurried from the cabin, his nightgown flapping about his hairy shanks and the forgotten fire extinguisher still jetting plastifoam on the door behind him.

  “Oh, dear.” Emily wrung her hands. “We just don’t have any luck.”

  McConnell’s voice came back. “Nivver ye mind, macushla, for Oi heard how ye feared for me loife, an’ that at a moment whin ye though ye’d the upper hand. So ’tis humbly Oi ask your pardon for all I said earlier this night. ’Twas a good thrick ye’ve played on me now, ever, if it did not work, an’ minny a long winther evenin’ we’ll whoile away in afther years a-laughin’ at it.”

  “Oh, Rory!” breathed Emily, leaning against the door.

  “Oh, Emily!” breathed McConnell on his side.

  “Rory!” whispered the girl, closing her eyes.

  The unnoticed plastifoam crept up toward her ears.

  Sarmishkidu slithered into the Number Three hold and found Herr Syrup huddled gloomily beneath one of the enormous beer casks. He had a mug in one hand and the tap of the keg in the other. Claus perched on a rack muttering: “Damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von’t damn Rory McConnell. Damn anybody who von’t sit up all night damning Rory McConnell.”

  “Oh, there you are,” said the Martian. “Your breakfast has gotten cold.”

  “I don’t vant no breakfast,” said Herr Syrup. He tossed off his mug and tapped it full again.

  “Not even after your triumph last watch?”

  “Vat good is a triumph ven I ain’t triumphant? I have sealed him into de machine room, ja, vich is to say ve can’t move de ship from dis orbit. You see, de polarity reverser vich I installed on de geegee lines, to give us veight, is in dere vit’ him, and we can’t travel till it has been taken out again. So ve can’t go direct to New Vinshester ourselves. And he has also de electrical parts locked up vit him.”

  “I have never sullied my mathematics with any attempt at a merely practical application,” said Sarmishkidu piously, “but I have studied electromagnetic theory and it would appear upon integration of the Maxwell equations that you could rip out wires here and there, machine the bar and plate metal stored for repair work in the shop, and thus improvise an oscillator.”

  “Sure,” said Herr Syrup. “Dat is easy. But remember, New Vinshester is about ten t’ousand kilometers avay. Any little laboratory model powered just off a 220-volt line to some cabin, is not going to carry a broadcast dat far. At least, not vun vich has a reasonable shance of being noyiced dere in all de cosmic noise. I do have access to some powerful batteries.

  “By dissharshing dem very quick, we can send a strong signal, but short-lived, so it is not likely in so little a time dat anyvun on de capital asteroid is listening in on dat particular wavelengt’. For you see, vit’out de calibrated standards and meters vich McConnell has, I cannot control de frequency. Mush most likely it vould happen ve broadcast on a frequency vich no vun of New Vinshester’s small population uses or is tuned in on.”

  He sighed. “No, I have spent de night trying to figure out somet’ing, and all I get is de answer I had before. To make an SOS dat vill have any measurable shance of being heard, ve shall have to have good cable, good impedances, meters and so on—vich McConnell is now sitting on.

  “Or else ve shall have to run for a long time t’rough many unknown freqvencics, to be sure of getting it least vun vich vill he heard; and for dat ve shall have to use de enshine room g’enerator, vich McConnell is also sitting on.”

  “He is?” Sarmishkidu brightened. “But it puts out a good many thousands of volts, doesn’t it?”

  “I vas speaking figurative, damn de luck.” Herr Syrup put the beer mug to his lip, lifted his mustache out of the way with a practiced forefinger, and bobbed his Adam’s apple for a while.

  Sarmishkidu folded his walking tentacles and let down his bulbous body. He waggled his ears, rolled his eyeballs, and protested: “But ye can’t giff up yets! Ve chust can’t! Here iss all dis beautiful beer vot I could sell at fifty percents profit, even if I haff der pretzels und popcorn free. Und vot goot iss it doing? None!”

  “Oh, I vouldn’t say dat,” answered Herr Syrup, a trifle blearily, and drew another mugful.

  “Dis lot has too much carbonation for my taste,” he complained. “You t’ink I ban an American? It makes too mush head.”

  “Dot iss on special order from me,” confided the Martian. “In der head iss der profit, if vun iss not too chenerous in scraping it off.”

  “You is got too many arms and not enough soul,” said Herr Syrup. “I t’ink for dat I let you clean out my cabin. It is got full vit’ congealed plastifoam. And to make a new fire extingvisher for it, vy, I take a bottle of your too carbonated beer and if dere is a fire I shake it and take my t’umb off de mout’ and— Of course,” mused Herr Syrup, “could be you got so much CO2 coming out, I get t’rown backvards.”

  “If you don’t like my beer,” said Sarmishkidu, half closing his eyes, “you can chust let me haff der stein you got.”

  “Action and reaction,” said Herr Syrup.

  “Hm-m-m?”

  “Newton’s t’ird law.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, but what relevance does that have to—”

  “Beer. I shoot beer out de front end of de bottle, I get tossed on my can.”

  “But you said it was a bottle.”

  “—a, ja, ja, ja—”

  “Weiss’ nicht wie gut ich dir bin?” sang the Martian.

  “I mean,” said Herr Syrup, wagging a solemn finger, “de bottle is a kind of rocket. Vy, it could even…it could even—”

  His voice ground to a hall. The mug dropped from his hand and the beer splashed on the floor.

  “Beerslayer!” screamed Claus.

  “But darlin’,” said Rory McConnell into the intercom, “Oi don’t loike dried apricots.”

  “Oh, hush,” said Emily Croft from the galley. “You’ve never been healthier in your life.”

  “Oi feels loike Oi’m rottin’ away. Not through the monotony so much, me swate, whilst Oi can be hearin’ the soft voice iv yez, but the only ixersoise Oi can get is calisthinics which has always bored me grievous.”

  “True,” said Emily, “all those fuel pipes and things don’t leave much room for classical dancing, do they? Poor dear!”

  “Oi’d thrade me mither’s brown pig for a walk in the rain wi’ yez, macushla.”

  “Well, if you’d only give us your parole not to make trouble, dear, we could let you out this minute.”

  “No, ye well know the Force has me prior oath an’ the Force Oi’ll foight for till ’tis disbanded either through victhory or defayt. An’ how long will it take the auld omadhaur Syrup to realaze ’tis him has been defayted? Oi’ve lain in here almost a wayk be the clock. Oi hear noises day an’ noight from the machine room, an’ divvil a word Oi can git iv fwhat’s goin’ on. Let me out, swateheart! Oi bear no ill will. Oi’l kiss the pretty lips iv ye an’ we’ll all go down to Grendel an’ say nothin’ about fwhat’s happened. Save iv course that Oi’ve won the loveliest girl in the galaxy for me own.”

  “I wish I could,” sighed Emily. “How I wish it! ’O’Dion who sent my heart mad with love!’ ”

  “Who’s this Dion?” bristled Major McConnell.

  “Nobody you need worry about, dear. It’s only a quotation. Translated, naturally. But what I mean to say is, Mr. Syrup and Mr. Sarmishkidu have so much to take care of and it won’t be long now, I swear it won’t, just another day or two, they say, and then their project will be over and they can— Oh! I promised not to tell! But what I mean, dear, is that I’ll stay behind and I’m not supposed to let you out immediately, maybe not for still another day, but I’ll look after you and make you nice lunches and— Yes,” said Emily with a slight shudder, “there won’t even be any more dried fruit in your meals, because I’ve run out of what there was; in fact, for days now I’ve been giving it all to you and eating corned beef and drinking beer myself, and I must admit it tastes better than I remembered, so if you insist on calcifying your liver after we’re married, why, I suppose I’ll have to also, and actually, darling, I don’t know anyone who I’d rather calcify my liver with. Really.”

  “Fwhat is all this?” Rory McConnell stepped back, his big frame tensing. “Ye mane they’ve not jist been puttherin’ about, but have some plan?”

  “I mustn’t tell! Please, beloved, honestly, I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy, and now I must go. They need me to help, too. I have been installing pipe lines and things and actually, dear, it’s very exciting. I mean, when I use a welding torch I have to wear a helmet very much like a classical dramatic mask, so I stand there reciting from the Agamemnon as if I were on a real Athenian stage, and do you know, I think when this is all over and we’re married and have our own Greek theater in the garden I’ll organize a presentation of the whole Orestes trilogy—in the original, of course—with welding outfits. ’Bye now!” Emily blew a kiss down the intercom and pattered off.

  Rory McConnell sat down on a generator shield and began most furiously to think.

  The first beer-powered spaceship in history rested beneath a derrick by the main cargo hatch.

  It was not as impressive as Herr Syrup could have wished. Using a small traveling lift for the heavy work, he had joined four ten-ton casks of Nashornbräu end to end with a light framework. The taps had been removed from the kegs and their bungholes plugged, simple electrically-controlled Venturi valves in the plumb center being substituted. Jutting on orthogonal axes from each barrel there were also L-shaped exhaust pipes, by which it was hoped to control rotation and sideways motion. Various wires and shafts, their points of entry scaled with gunk, plunged into the barrels, ending in electric beaters. A set of relays was intended to release each container as it was exhausted. The power for all this—it did not amount to much—came from a system of heavy-duty EXW batteries at the front end.

  Ahead of those batteries was fastened a box, some two meters square and three meters long. Sheets of plastic were set in its black-painted sides by way of windows. The torso and helmet of a spacesuit jutted from thereof, removably fastened in a screw-threaded hatch cover which could be turned around. Beside it was a small stovepipe valve holding two self-closing elastic diaphragms through which tools could be pushed without undue air loss. The box had been put together out of cardboard beer cases, bolted to a light metal frame and carefully sized and gunked.

  “You see,” Herr Syrup had explained grandly, “in dis situation, vat do ve need to go to New Vinshester? Not an atomic motor, for sure, because dere is almost neglishible gravity to overcome. Not a nice streamlined shape, because ve have no air hereabouts. Not great structural strengt’, for dere is no strain odder dan a very easy acceleration; so beer cardboard is strong enough for two, t’ree men to sit on a box of it under Eart’ gravity. Not a fancy t’ermostatic system for so short a hop, for de sun is far avay, our own bodies make heat and losing dat heat by radiation is a slow process. If it does get too hot inside, ve can let a little vater evaporate into space t’rough de stovepipe valve to cool us; if ve get shilly, ve can tap a little heat t’rough a coil off de batteries.

  “All ve need is air. Not even mush air, since I is sitting most of de time and you ban a Martian. A pair of oxygen cylinders should make more dan enough; ja, and ve vill need a chemical carbon-dioxide absorber, and some desiccating stuffs so you do not get a vater vapor drunk. For comfort ve vill take along a few bottles beer and some pretzels to nibble on.

  “As for de minimal boat itself, I have tested de exhaust velocity of hot, agitated beer against vacuum, and it is enough to accelerate us to a few hundred kilometers per hour, maybe t’ree hundred, if ve use a high enough mass ratio. And ve vill need a few simple navigating instruments, an ephemeris, slide rule, and so on. As a precaution, I install my bicycle in de cabin, hooked to a simple homemade g’enerator, yust a little electric motor yuggled around to be run in reverse, vit’ a rectifier. Dat vay, if de batteries get too veak ve can resharshe dem. And also a small, primitive oscillator ve can make, short range, ja, but able to run a gamut of freqvencies vit’out exhausting de batteries, so ve can send an SOS ven ve ban qvite close to New Vinshester. Dey hear it and send a spaceship out to pick us up, and dat is dat.”

  The execution of this theory had been somewhat more difficult, but Herr Syrup’s years aboard the Mercury Girl had made him a highly skilled improviser and jackleg inventor. Now, tired, greasy, and content, he smoked a well-earned pipe as he stood admiring his creation. Partly, he waited for the electric coils which surrounded the boat and tapped the ship’s power lines, to heat the beer sufficiently; but that was very nearly complete, to the point of unsafeness. And partly he waited for the ship to reach that orbital point which would give his boat full tangential velocity toward the goal; that would be in a couple of hours.

  “Er…are you sure we had better not test it first?” asked Sarmishkidu uneasily.

  “No, I t’ink not,” said Herr Syrup. “First, it vould take too long to fix up an extra barrel. Ve been up here a veek or more vit’out a vord to Grendel. If O’Toole gets suspicious and looks t’rough a telescope and sees us scooting around, right avay he sends up a lifeboat full of soldiers; vich is a second reason for not making a test flight.”

  “But, well, that is, suppose something goes wrong?”

  “Den de spacesuit keeps me alive for several hours and you can stand vacuum about de same lengt’ of time. Emily vill be vatching us t’rough de ship’s telescope, so she can let McConnell out and he can come rescue us.”

  “And what if he can’t find us? Or if we have an accident out of telescopic range from here? Space is a large volume.”

  “I prefer you vould not mention dat possibility,” said Herr Syrup with a touch of hauteur.

  Sarmishkidu shuddered. “Der t’ings vot an honest pizznizzman hass got to— Donnerwetter! Wat is das?”

  The sharp crack was followed by an earthquake tremble through girders and plates. Herr Syrup sat down, hard. The deck twitched beneath him. He bounced up and pelted toward the exit. “Dat vas from de stern!” he shouted.

  He whipped through the bulkhead door. Sarmishkidu toiling in his wake, and up an interhold ladder to the axial passageway. Emily Croft had just emerged from the galley, a frying pan in one hand and an apron tied around her classic peplum. “Oh, dear,” she cried, “I’m sure Rory’s cake has fallen. What was that noise?”

  “Yust vat I vould like to know.” The engineer flung himself down the corridor. As he neared the stern, a faint acrid whiff touched his nose. “In de enshine room, I am afraid,” he panted.

  “The engine—Rory!” shrieked the girl.

  “Comin’, macushla,” said a cheerful voice, and the gigantic red-thatched shape swung itself up from the after companionway.

  Rory McConnell hooked thumbs in his belt, planted his booted feet wide, and grinned all over his smoke-blackened snub face. Herr Syrup crashed to a halt and stared frog-eyed. The Freeman’s green tunic hung in rags and blood trickled from his nose. But the soot only made his teeth the more wolfishly white and his eyes the more high-voltage blue, while his bare torso turned out to carry even thicker muscles than expected.

  “Well, well, well,” he beamed. “An’ so here we all are ag’in. Emily, me love, Oi ask your humble pardon for inny damage, but Oi couldn’t wait longer for the soight iv yez.”

  “Vat have you done?” wailed Herr Syrup.

  “Oil, well, sor. ’twas nothin. Oi had me carthridges, an’ a can opener an’ me teeth an’ ither such tools. So Oi exthracted the powder, tamped it in an auld beer bottle, lay a fuse, fired me last shot to loight same, an’ blew out wan iv thim doors. An’ now, sor, let’s have a look at fwhat ye been doin’ this past wayk, an’ thin Oi think it best we return to the cool green hills iv Grendel.”

  “Ooooh,” said Herr Syrup.

  McConnell laughed so that the hall rang with his joy, looked into the stricken wide gaze of his beloved and opened his arms. “Not so much as a kiss to seal the bethrothal?” he said.

  “Oh…yes…I’m sorry, darling.” Emily ran toward him.

  “I am sorry,” she choked, burst into tears, and clanged the frying pan down on his head.

  McConnell staggered, tripped on his boots, recovered, and waltzed in a circle. “Get away!” screamed Emily. “Get away!”

  Herr Syrup paused for one frozen instant. Then he flung out a curse, whirled, and pounded back along the corridor. At the interhold ladderhead he found Sarmishkidu, puffing along at the slow pace of a Martian under Terrestrial gee. “What has transpired?” asked Sarmishkidu.

  Herr Syrup scooped him up under one arm and bounded down the ladder. “Hey!” squealed the Martian. “Let me go! Bist du gauz geistegestört? What do you mean, sir? Urush nergatar shalmu ishkadan! This instant! Versteh’st du?”

  Rory McConnell staggered to the nearest wall and leaned on it for a few seconds. His eyes cleared. With a hoarse growl, he sprang after the engineer. Emily stuck a shapely leg in his path. Down he went.

  “Please!” she wept. “Please, darling, don’t make me do this!”

  “They’re gettin’ away!” bawled McConnell. He got to his feet. Emily hit him with the frying pan. He sagged back to hands and knees. She stooped over him, frantically, and kissed the battered side of his head. He lurched erect. Emily slugged him again.

  “You’re being cruel!” she sobbed.

  The bulkhead door closed behind Herr Syrup. He set the unloading controls. “Ve ban getting out of here,” he panted. “Before de Erser gets to de master svitch and stops everyt’ing cold.”

  “What Erser?” sputtered Sarmishkidu indignantly.

  “Ours.” Herr Syrup trotted toward the beer boat.