make it,
won't we?"

Everyone nodded dismally.

* * * * *

Mike the Angel had a job he emphatically didn't like. He was supposed to
convert the power plant of the _Brainchild_ from a spaceship driver into
a stationary generator. The conversion job itself wasn't tedious; in
principle, it was similar to taking the engine out of an automobile and
converting it to a power plant for an electric generator. In fact, it
was somewhat simpler, in theory, since the engines of the _Brainchild_
were already equipped for heavy drainage to run the electrical systems
aboard ship, and to power and refrigerate Snookums' gigantic brain,
which was no mean task in itself.

But Michael Raphael Gabriel, head of one of the foremost--if not _the_
foremost--power design corporations in the known Galaxy, did not like
degrading something. To convert the _Brainchild's_ plant from a
spaceship drive to an electric power plant seemed to him to be on the
same order as using a turboelectric generator to power a flashlight. A
waste.

To make things worse, the small percentage of hydrogen in the
atmosphere got sneaky sometimes. It could insinuate itself into places
where neither the methane nor the ammonia could get. Someone once called
hydrogen the "cockroach element," since, like that antediluvian insect,
the molecules of H_{2} can insidiously infiltrate themselves into places
where they are not only unwelcome, but shouldn't even be able to go. At
red heat, the little molecules can squeeze themselves through the
crystalline interstices of quartz and steel.

Granted, the temperature of Eisberg is a long way from red hot, but
normal sealing still won't keep out hydrogen. Add to that the fact that
hydrogen and methane are both colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and
you have the beginnings of an explosive situation.

The only reason that no one died is because the Space Service is what it
is.

Unlike the land, sea, and air forces of Earth, the Space Service does
not have a long history of fighting other human beings. There has never
been a space war, and, the way things stand, there is no likelihood of
one in the foreseeable future.

But the Space Service _does_ fight, in its own way. It fights the
airlessness of space and the unfriendly atmospheres of exotic planets,
using machines, intelligence, knowledge, and human courage as its
weapons. Some battles have been lost; others have been won. And the war
is still