“Dinner is announced,” said DuQuesne, who had been standing at the door, listening.
The wanderers, battered, stiff, and sore, seated themselves at a folding table. While eating, Seaton watched the
engine-when he was not watching Dorothy-and talked to her. Crane and Margaret chatted easily. DuQuesne, except
when addressed directly, maintained a self-sufficient silence.
After another observation Seaton said, “DuQuesne, we’re almost five thousand light-years away from earth, and
getting farther away at about one light-year per minute.”
“It’d be poor technique to ask how you know?”
“It would. Those figures are right. But we’ve got only four bars of copper left. Enough. to stop us and some to
spare, but not nearly enough to get us back, even by drifting-too many lifetimes on the way.”
“So we land somewhere and dig up some copper.” “Check. What I wanted to ask you-isn’t a copperbearing sun apt
to, have copper-beating planets?”
“I’d say so.”
“Then take the spectroscope, will you, and pick out a sun somewhere up ahead-down ahead, I mean-for us to shoot
at? And Marty, I s’pose we’d better take our regular twelve-hour tricks-no, eight; we’ve got to either trust the guy or
kill him-I’ll take the first watch. Beat it to bed.”
“Not so fast.” Crane said. “If I remember correctly, it’s my turn.”
“Ancient history doesn’t count. I’ll flip you a nickel for it. Heads, I win.”
Seaton won, and the warn-out travelers went to their rooms-all except Dorothy, who lingered to bid her lover a
more intimate good night.
Seated beside him, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, she sat blissfully until she noticed, for the first
time, her bare left hand. She caught her breath and her eyes grew round.
“‘Smatter, Red?”
“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed in dismay, “I simply forgot everything about taking what was left of my ring out of the
doctor’s engine.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
She told him; and he told her about Martin and himself.
“Oh, Dick-Dick-it’s so wonderful to be with you again!” she concluded. “I lived as many years as we covered miles!”
“It was tough … you had it a lot worse than we did … but it makes me ashamed all over to think of the way I blew my
stack at Wilson’s. If it hadn’t been for Martin’s cautious old bean we’d’ve … we owe him a lot, Dimples.”
“Yes, we do … but don’t worry about the debt, Dick. Just don’t ever let slip a word to Peggy about Martin being rich,
is all.”
“Oh, a matchmaker now? But why not? She wouldn’t think any less of him-that’s one reason I’m marrying you, you
know-for your money.”
Dorothy snickered sunnily. “I know. But listen, you poor, dumb, fortune-hunting darling-if Peggy had any idea that
Martin is the one and only M. Reynolds Crane she’d curl right up into a ball. She’d think he’d think she was chasing
him and then he would think so. As it is, he acts perfectly natural. He hasn’t talked that way to any girl except me
for five years, and he wouldn’t talk to me until he found out for sure I wasn’t out after him.”
“Could be, pet,” Seaton agreed. “On one thing you really chirped it-he’s been shot at so much he’s wilder than a
hawk!”
At the end of eight hours Crane took over and Seaton stumbled to his room, where he slept for over ten hours like a
man in a trance. Then, rising, he exercised and went out into the saloon.
Dorothy, Peggy, and Crane were at breakfast; Seaton joined them. They ate the gayest, most carefree meal they had
had since leaving earth. Some of the worst bruises still showed a little, but, under the influence of the potent if
painful amylophene, all soreness, stiffness, and pain had disappeared.
After they had finished eating, Seaton said, “You suggested, Mart, that those gyroscope bearings may have been
stressed beyond the yield-point. I’ll take an integrating goniometer . . .”
“Break that down to our size, Dick-Peggy’s and mine,” Dorothy said.
“Can do. Take some tools and see if anything got bent out of shape back there. It might be an idea, Dot, to come
along and hold my head while I think.”
“”That is an idea if you never have another one.” Crane and Margaret went over and sat down at one of the
crystal-clear ports. She told him her story frankly and fully, shuddering with horror as she recalled the awful,
helpless fall during which Perkins had been killed.
“We have a heavy score to settle with that Steel crowd and with DuQuesne,” Crane said, slowly. “We can convict
him of abduction now…. Perkins’ death wasn’t murder, then?”
“Oh, no. He was just like a mad animal. He had to kill him. But the doctor, as they call him, is just as bad. He’s so
utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific, it gives me the compound shivers, just to think about him.”
“And yet Dorothy said he saved her life?”
“He did, from Perkins; but that was just as strictly pragmatic as everything else he has ever done. He wanted her
alive: dead, she wouldn’t have been any use to him. He’s as nearly a robot as any human being can be, that’s what I
think.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you. . . . Nothing would please Dick better than a good excuse for killing him.” – “He
isn’t the only one. And the way he ignores what we all feel shows what a machine he is. . . . What’s that?” The
Skylark had lurched slightly.
“Just a swing around a star, probably.” He looked at the board, then led her to a lower port. “We are passing the star
Dick was heading for, far too fast to stop. DuQuesne will pick out another. See that planet over there”-he
pointed-“and that smaller one, there?”
She saw the two planets-one like a small moon, the other much smaller-and watched the sun increase rapidly in
size as the Skylark flew on at such a pace that any earthly distance would have been covered as soon as it was
begun. So appalling was their velocity that the ship was bathed in the light of that strange sun only for moments,
then was surrounded again by darkness.
Their seventy-two-hour flight without a pilot had seemed a miracle; now it seemed entirely possible that they could
fly- in a straight line for weeks without encountering any obstacle, so vast was the emptiness in comparison with
the points of light scattered about in it. Now and then they passed closely enough to a star so that it seemed to
move fairly rapidly; but for the most part the stars stood, like distant mountain peaks to travelers in a train, in the
same position for many minutes.
Awed by the immensity of the universe, the two at the window were silent, not with the silence of embarrassment
but with that of two friends in the presence of a thing far beyond the reach of words. As they stared out into
infinity, each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of the whole world they had known, and the insignificance
of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to each other in understanding.
Unconsciously Margaret half shuddered and moved closer to Crane; and a tender look came over Crane’s face as he
looked down -at the beautiful young woman at his side. For she was beautiful. Rest and food had erased the marks
of her imprisonment. Dorothy’s deep and unassumed faith in the ability of Seaton and Crane had quieted her fears.
And finally, a costume of Dorothy’s well-made-and exceedingly expensive!-clothes, which fitted her very well and
in which she looked her best and knew it, had completely restored her self-possession.
He looked up quickly and again studied the stars; but now, in addition to the wonders of space, he saw a mass of
wavy black hair, high-piled upon a queenly head; deep brown eyes veiled by long, black lashes; sweet, sensitive lips;
a firmly rounded, dimpled chin; and a beautifully formed young body.
“How stupendous … how unbelievably great this is . . :’ Margaret whispered. “How vastly greater than any perception
one could possibly get on Earth … and yet . . .”
She paused, with her lip caught under two white teeth, then went on, hesitatingly, “But doesn’t it seem to you, Mr.
Crane, that there is something in man as great as even all this? That there must be, or Dorothy and I could not be
sailing out here in such a wonderful thing as this Skylark, which you and Dick Seaton have made?”
Days passed. Dorothy timed her waking hours with those of Seaton-preparing his meals and lightening the tedium
of his long vigils at the board-and Margaret did the same thing for Crane. But often they assembled in the saloon,
while DuQuesne was on watch, and there was much fun and laughter, as well as serious discussion, among the four.