They sweated it out. The cooking got worse, when anyone bothered to cook. It was seven endless, Earth-standard days later when the daily call was answered by, ‘Roger — hello, darling!’
‘Edith! Are you all right?’
‘Getting that way.’
‘What’s your temperature?’
‘Now, darling, I won’t have you quack-doctoring me. My temperature is satisfactory, as is the rest of my physical being. I’ve lost a little weight, but I could stand to — don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t. Listen — you come home! You hear me?’
‘Roger dearest! I can’t and that’s settled. This entire ship is under quarantine. But how is the rest of my family?’
‘Oh, shucks, fine, fine! We’re all in the pink.’
‘Stay that way. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye, dear.’
Dinner that night was a celebration. Hazel cut her thumb again, but not even she cared.
The daily calls, no longer a nagging worry but a pleasure, continued. It was a week later that Dr. Stone concluded by saying ‘Hold on, dear. A friend of yours wants to speak with you.’
‘Okay, darling: Love and stuff — good-by.’
‘Roger Dodger?’ came a bass voice.
‘Van! You squareheaded bay window! I knew you were too mean to die.’
‘Alive and kicking, thanks to your wonderful wife. But no longer with a bay window; I haven’t had time to regrow it yet’
‘You will.’
‘No doubt. But I was asking the good doctor about something and she couldn’t give me much data. Your department Rog, how did this speed run leave you for single-H? Could you use some g-juice?’
Captain Stone considered it. ‘Have you any surplus, Captain?’
‘A little. Not much for this wagon, but it might be quite a lot for a kiddie cart like yours.’
‘We had to jettison, did you know?’
‘I know — and I’m sorry. I’ll see that a claim is pushed through promptly. I’d advance it myself, Captain, if alimony on three planets left me anything to advance.’
‘Maybe it won’t be necessary.’ He explained about the radar reflector. ‘If we could nudge back into the old groove we just might get together with our belongings.’
Vandenbergh chuckled. ‘I want to meet those kids of yours again; they appear to have grown up a bit in the last seven years.’
‘Don’t. They’ll steal your bridgework. Now about this single-H: how much can you spare?’
‘Enough, enough, I’m sure. This caper is worth trying, just for the sport. I’m sure it has never been done before. Never.’
The two ships, perfectly matched to eye and almost so by instrument, nevertheless had drifted a couple of miles apart while the epidemic in the liner raged and died out. The undetectable gravitational attraction between them gave them mutual escape velocity much less than their tiny residual relative motion. Up to now nothing had been done about it since they were still in the easiest of phone range. But now it was necessary to pump reactive mass from one to the other.
Roger Stone threw a weight fastened to a light messenger line as straight and as far as he could heave. By the time it was slowed to a crawl by the drag of the line a crewman from the War God came out after it on his suit jet. In due course the messenger line brought over a heavier line which was fastened to the smaller ship. Hand power alone took a strain on the line. While the mass of Rolling Stone was enormous by human muscle standards, the vector involved was too small to handle by jet and friction was nil. In warping in a space ship the lack of brakes is a consideration more important than numerous dents to ships and space stations testify.
As a result of that gentle tug, two and a half days later the ships were close enough to permit a fuel hose to be connected between them. Roger and Hazel touched the hose only with wrench and space-suit gauntlet, not enough contact to affect the quarantine even by Dr. Stone’s standards. Twenty minutes later even that connection was broken and the Stone had a fresh supply of jet juice.
And not too soon. Mars was a ruddy gibbous moon, bulging ever bigger in the sky; it was time to prepare to maneuver.