There were times when it seemed doubtful. Then Link blamed himself for trying it. Still, Thistlethwaite had chosen the Glamorgan on his own and had gotten as far as Trent in her. But there were times when it didn’t appear that the ship would ever get anywhere else. The log book had a plenitude of emergencies written in its pages as the Glamorgan went onward.
She leaked air. They didn’t try to keep the inside pressure up to the standard 14.7 pounds. They compromised on eleven, because they’d lose less air at the lower pressure. Even so, the fact that the Glamorgan leaked was only one of her oddities. She also smelled. Her air system was patched and her generators were cobbled, and at odd moments she made unrefined noises for no reason that anybody could find out. The water pressure system sometimes worked and sometimes did not. The refrigeration unit occasionally turned on when it shouldn’t and sometimes didn’t when it should. It was wise to tap the thermostat several times a day to keep frozen stores from thawing.
The overdrive field generator was also a subject for nightmares. Link didn’t understand overdrive, but he did know that a field shouldn’t be kept in existence by hand-wound outer layers on some of the coils, with wedges driven in to keep contacts tight which ought to be free to cut off in case of emergency. But it could be said that everything about the ship was an emergency. Link would have come to have a very great respect for Thistlethwaite because he kept such tinkered wreckage working. But he was appalled at the idea of anybody deliberately trusting his life to it.