And then, for Trafford, time dragged, although it could not have done so for the others, who were working with increasing urgency.  If they failed to have the emergency rocket drive ready in time then, inevitably, Vindictive would fall into the sun, into the blazing orb whose observed diameter was now increasing appreciably with every passing minute.  This was his ship, he knew, and he should have been in charge of repairs - but Pettigrew insisted that he should take things easy until fully recovered.  Furthermore, he knew that should he join the working party there would be a clash of personalities between himself and the Empress, and the consequent delay to the job in hand might well prove fatal.

At intervals the Empress and her companions would trudge wearily into the control room, there to bolt down the meal that the Lady Susanna had prepared for them.  Now and again one of them would collapse onto an acceleration couch to sleep like a dead man, but the Empress Irene was never among their number.  She was driving the others, but driving herself even harder.  Trafford realized then that the Committee of which Pettigrew was a member had indeed succeeded in producing a superwoman.  He respected her, admired her, even.  But he still didn't like her.

And then the Lady Susanna was called upon to bear a hand and the Commander was left alone, to maintain the listening watch and to carry out what simple navigational duties were required.  And so he sat there, struggling to stay awake, hearing only the hiss and crackle of interstellar static that was the voice of giant suns and of nascent hydrogen atoms, jerking to full awareness when, every now and again, some freak of reception shaped the incoherent signals into the semblance of Morse or some similar but alien code.

He contented himself with getting the closed circuit TV into operation, and with it he was able to peer into compartment after holed compartment, watching the spacesuited figures as they worked, at times illuminated by relatively dim emergency lights, at other times by brief, glaring sunlight, at other times by the fitful flare of welding torches.  Then, belatedly, he realized that he was consuming precious power from the already depleted batteries and, guiltily, desisted.

It was when the main lights in the control room sprang into startling life that he knew that the repairs to the Mass Converter had been completed, and that with the controlled transmutation of matter into energy the ship was no longer so helpless as she had been - but still, nonetheless, little more than a derelict.