gh receptors wire-connected with the
outside; foremen-robots, globes a yard in diameter covered with horns
and spikes like old-fashioned ocean-navy mines; worker-robots, in a
variety of shapes, but mostly looking like many-clawed crabs.

Neither the converter nor the reactor had sustained any damage while
the fissionables were burning out. So the robots began tearing out
reactor-elements, and removing plutonium slugs no longer capable of
sustaining chain reaction but still dangerously radioactive. Nuclear
reactors had become simpler and easier to service since the First Day
of the Year Zero, when Enrico Fermi put the first one into operation,
but the principles remained the same. Work was less back-breaking and
muscle-straining, but it called for intense concentration on screens
and meters and buttons that was no less exhausting.

The air around them began to grow foul. Finally, the air-analyzer
squawked and flashed red lights to signal that the oxygen had dropped
below the safety margin. They had no mobile fan equipment, or time to
hunt any; they put on their fishbowl helmets and went back to work.
After twelve hours, with a few short breaks, they had the reactors
going. Jerry Rivas and a couple of others took a heavy-duty lifter and
went looking for conversion mass; they brought back a couple of tons
of scrap-iron and fed it to the converters. A few seconds after it was
in, the pilot lights began coming on all over the panels. They took
two more hours to get the oxygen-separator and the ventilator fans
going, and for good measure they started the water pumps and the
heating system. Then they all went outside to the ship to sleep. The
sun was just coming up.

It was sunset when they rose and returned to the building. The
airlocks opened at a touch on the operating handles. Inside, the air
was fresh and sweet, the temperature was a pleasantly uniform 75
degrees Fahrenheit, the fans were humming softly, and there was
running hot and cold water everywhere.

Jerry Rivas, Anse Dawes, and the three tramp freighter fo'c'sle hands
took lifters and equipment and went off foraging. The rest of them
went to the communications center to get the telecast station, the
radio beacon, and the inside-screen system into operation. There were
a good many things that had to be turned on manually, and more things
that had been left on, forty years ago, and now had to be repowered or
replaced. They worked at it most of the night; before