[Person 1]: You do realize that if this fails, (long list of results of failure)
[Person 2]: eh... on second thought...
[Person 1]: (proceeds to do the thing) -- TheDragonsFlame
"Okay. Okay! Ooohhh... kay..." said the Ship's Human. "Okay, we could run the ion ejectors backwards. Reverse the polarity of the magnetic engines, sucking in the trail we left for up to three clicks. That'll give us enough exhaust to propel us to the cloud and fully refuel.... I think."
"You do realise that if this move fails, we could be looking at a catastrophic engine failure, overload, and possible fusion reaction sparking on our tail."
"Huh," said Human Steph. "I guess we could just -Idunno- shuffle our socks on the carpet for half an hour and just flakkin' zap the fuel tank. That'd get us ions."
Grax considered the alternative ion generation technique and what it had done to hir crew's limb filaments for forty-eight hours. "Let's get this safety manifold off so we can turn this sucker around. There's a lot of work in reversing the polarity."
"I know a guy who can do it in two seconds with a sonic screwdriver," grinned Human Steph. This had to be one of those obscure Human Culture Jokes.
"Well they're not here, so go fetch the mini-crane. I'm doing the sealing bolts."
Human Steff laughed anyway. They had the manifold off and the magnetic containment and ejection field flipped inside of half an hour. Making certain it would work before they employed it. And even then, they flipped the switch on the other side of adequate shielding.
There was no fusion reaction. There was, however, just enough fuel to make it to the cloud and fuel up properly.
Human Steph still proposed an engine upgrade when they got to the nearest spaceport.
[Image (c) CanStockPhoto/OlegDoroshin]
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