corroded area apart, you’ll have to make some.”

“How can we?”

Candle sighed. “I wish I had time to teach you to think, but instead, you’ll have to do as I tell you to do. I think you can probably make a battering ram out of water. You just—don’t interrupt—find or make a long cylindrical container, fill it with water and quick-freeze it in your refrigerator—”

“But they put R’thagna Bar in the refrigerator again—”

“Then I suggest you get him the hell out,” Candle said.

An hour later ten men smashed a half-ton cylinder of ice against the corroded junction of the two gears. Following Candle’s instructions, they next applied the ram to the door itself, which smoothly swung open. “You’ll find,” Candle explained, “that the only damage will be the two missing teeth on the aluminum gear. Since only two teeth are ever in contact at any time, you can simply slide the gear forward and engage it at a point where the teeth are intact. You’ll find, I’m quite sure, that your door will function properly. Also, Captain, don’t pull out of here until I’m aboard. I think I’d like to bring an assistant along, too.”

“An assistant?” Hansen asked.

Candle twirled the ends of his long white moustache. “You, my lad, if you’d like to go along.” He pulled a letter from his pocket and fanned the air with it. “I’m in complete command of this expedition—at least until His Exalted Excellency gets home to plant his seed.”

Hansen’s face glowed. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. Let’s get a couple of messages off to Sector Headquarters and get on board ship.”

“It may not be any joy ride,” Candle said thoughtfully. “You probably haven’t heard about it, but there’ve been a number of ship emergencies in the past few weeks.”

“Door failures?”

“No. At least none that I’ve heard of. But at least two Hegler drives have stopped working in mid space.”

“But, but there’s nothing to stop working—”

Candle’s eyes twinkled. “No moving parts, eh?”

Hansen reddened. “I hope I’ve outgrown that silly notion.”

Candle peered into Hansen’s eyes. “I’m sure you have. I’m sure that you will find out a lot more things for yourself. You’re the kind. And we’re going to need a lot of your kind, because failures—failures of so-called perfect mechanisms—are becoming more and more commonplace.” Candle pointed to the emergency light on the traffic control panel. “That light will be flashing with more and more frequency in the months to come. But not just to signal trouble in space. If I were a superstitious man, I’d think that the age of the perfect machine is about to be superseded by the age of the perfect failure—mechanical failures that can’t be explained on any level. I have several friends who’ve been in touch with me recently about—”

“You think that it’s time for a change?”

Candle smiled quickly. “That’s the idea. And the truth of the matter is that I am a superstitious man. I really believe, childishly, that the mechanics and motions of the galaxy may turn themselves upsidedown just to snap man out of his apathy and give him some work to do.”

Upsidedown turned out to be a good word. They boarded the big ship an hour later and were respectfully ushered into the presence of Captain Fromer and his staff.

“We’re underway,” Captain Fromer said. “We’ll be landing in nine days to deliver R’thagna Bar home.”

“How is he?” Hansen asked.

Fromer shrugged. “He’s been thawed out, frozen, and thawed out so many times, it’t anybody’s guess. Take a look for yourself.”

Someone pulled back a curtain to expose the recumbent, thawing, steamy form of His Exhalted Excellency