Having to wear a vacuum suit while doing mechanic’s work was a handicap but they were not conscious of it. They had worn space suits whenever they were outside the pressurised underground city since before they could remember; they worked in them and wore them without thinking about them, as their grandfather had worn overalls. They conducted the entire overhaul without pressurising the ship because it was such a nuisance to have to be forever cycling an airlock, dressing and undressing, whenever they wanted anything outside the ship.
An IBM company representative from the city installed the new ballistic computer and ran it in, but after he had gone the boys took it apart and checked it throughout themselves, being darkly suspicious of any up-check given by a manufacturer’s employee. The ballistic computer of a space ship has to be right; without perfect performance from it a ship is a mad robot, certain to crash and kill its passengers. The new computer was of the standard ‘I-tell-you-three-times’ variety, a triple brain each third of which was capable of solving the whole problem; if one triplet failed, the other two would out-vote it and cut it off from action, permitting thereby at least one perfect landing and a chance to correct the failure.
The twins made personally sure that the multiple brain was sane in all its three lobes, then, to their disgust, their father and grandmother checked everything that they had done.
The last casting had been x-rayed, the last metallurgical report had been received from the spaceport laboratories, the last piece of tubing had been reinstalled and pressure tested; it was time to move the Rolling Stone from Dan Ekizian’s lot to the port, where a technician of the Atomic Energy Commission — a grease monkey with a Ph.D — would install and seal the radioactive bricks which fired her ‘boiler.’ There, too, she would take on supplies and reactive mass, stablised monatomic hydrogen; in a pinch the Rolling Stone could eat anything, but she performed best on ‘single-H.’
The night before the ship was to be towed to the spaceport the twins tackled their father on a subject dear to their hearts — money. Castor made an indirect approach. ‘See here, Dad, we want to talk with you seriously.’
‘So? Wait till I phone my lawyer.’
‘Aw, Dad! Look, we just want to know whether or not you’ve made up your mind where we are going?’
‘Eh? What do you care? I’ve already promised you that it will be some place new to you. We won’t go to Earth, nor to Venus, not this trip.’
‘Yes, but where?’
‘I may just close my eyes, set up a prob on the computer by touch, and see what happens. If the prediction takes us close to any rock bigger than the ship, we’ll scoot off and have a look at it. That’s the way to enjoy traveling.’
Pollux said, ‘But, Dad, you can’t load a ship if you don’t know where it’s going.’
Castor glared at him; Roger Stone stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly, ‘I begin to see. But don’t worry about it. As skipper, it is my responsibility to see that we have whatever we need aboard before we blast.’
Dr Stone said quietly, ‘Don’t tease them, Roger.’
‘I’m not teasing.’
‘You’re managing to tease me, Daddy,’ Meade said suddenly. ‘Let’s settle it. I vote for Mars.’
Hazel said, ‘The deuce it ain’t!’
‘Pipe down, Mother. Time was, when the senior male member of a family spoke, everybody did what he —’
‘Roger, if you think I am going to roll over and play dead —’
‘I said, “pipe down.” But everybody in this family thinks it’s funny to try to get around Pop. Meade sweet-talks me. The twins fast-talk me. Buster yells until he gets what he wants. Hazel bullies me and pulls seniority.’ He looked at his wife. ‘You, too, Edith. You give in until you get your own way.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘See what I mean? You all think papa is a schnook. But I’m not. I’ve got a soft head, a pliable nature, and probably the lowest I.Q. in the family, but this clambake is going to be run to suit me.’