Barstow stared past him. “Yeah, it’s him,” Lazarus confirmed. “Don’t stare-it’s rude. He’s going with us. Have you seen Libby?”
“Here I am, Lazarus.” Libby separated himself from the throng and approached with the ease of a veteran long used to free fall. He had a small satchel strapped to one wrist.
“Good. Stick around. Zack, how long till you’re all loaded?”
“God knows. I can’t count them. An hour, maybe.”
“Make it less. If you put some husky boys on each side of the hole, they can snatch them through faster than they are coming. We’ve got to shove out of here a little sooner than is humanly possible. I’m going to the control room. Phone me there the instant you have everybody in, our guests here out, and the Chili broken loose. Andy! Slayton! Let’s go.”
“Later, Andy. We’ll talk when we get there?’
Lazarus took Slayton Ford with him because he did not know what else to do with him and felt it would be better to keep him out of sight until some plausible excuse could be dreamed up for having him along. So far no one seemed to have looked at him twice, but once they quieted down, Ford’s well-known face would demand explanation.
The control room was about a half mile forward of where they had entered the ship. Lazarus knew that there was a passenger belt leading to it but he didn’t have time to look for it; he simply took the first passageway leading forward. As soon as they got away from the crowd they made good time even though Ford was not as skilled in the fishlike maneuvers of free fall as were the other two.
Once there, Lazarus spent the enforced wait in explaining to Libby the extremely ingenious but unorthodox controls of the starship. Libby was fascinated and soon was putting himself through dummy runs. Lazarus turned to Ford. “How about you, Slayton? Wouldn’t hurt to have a second relief pilot.”
Ford shook his head. “I’ve been listening but I could never learn it. I’m not a pilot”
“Huh? How did you get here?”
“Oh. I do have a license, but I haven’t had time to keep in practice. My chauffeur always pilots me. I haven’t figured a trajectory in many years.”
Lazarus looked him over. “And yet you plotted an orbit rendezvous? With no reserve fuel?”
“Oh, that. I had to.”
“I see. The way the cat learned to swim. Well, that’s one way.” He turned back to speak to Libby, was interrupted by Barstow’s voice over the announcing system:
“Five minutes, Lazarus! Acknowledge.”
Lazarus found the microphone, covered the light under it with his hand and answered, “Okay, Zack! Five minutes.” Then he said, “Cripes, I haven’t even picked a course. What do you think, Andy? Straight out from Earth to shake the busies off our tail? Then pick a destination? How about it, Slayton? Does that fit with what you ordered Navy craft to do? “No, Lazarus, no!” protested Libby. “Huh? Why not?”
“You should head right straight down for the Sun.”
“For the Sun? For Pete’s sake, why?”
“I tried to tell you when I first saw you. It’s because of the space drive you asked me to develop.”
“But, Andy, we haven’t got it.”
“Yes, we have. Here.” Libby shoved the satchel he had been carrying toward Lazarus.
Lazarus opened it.
Assembled from odd bits of other equipment, looking more like the product of a boy’s workshop than the output of a scientist’s laboratory, the gadget which Libby referred to as a “space drive” underwent Lazarus’ critical examination. Against the polished sophisticated perfection of the control room it looked uncouth, pathetic, ridiculously inadequate.
Lazarus poked at it tentatively. “What is it?’ he asked. “Your model?”
“No, no. That’s it. That’s the space drive.”
Lazarus looked at the younger man not unsympathetically. “Son,” he asked slowly, “have you come unzipped?”
“No, no, no!” Libby sputtered. “I’m as sane as you are. This is a radically new notion. That’s why I want you to take us down near the Sun. If it works at all, it will work best where light pressure is strongest.”
“And if it doesn’t work,” inquired Lazarus, “what does that make us? Sunspots?”