‘Got to make a call? I’ll take you unless those lunks have taken our scooter.’
‘You needn’t, Mother Hazel.’
‘I’d enjoy it I’ve been promising Lowell a ride for weeks. Or will it take too long?’
‘Shouldn’t. It’s only eight hundred miles or so out.’ The doctor was not held down to the local speed limit in her errand of mercy. ‘Do it in two hours, with juice to spare.’ Off they went, with Buster much excited. Hazel allotted one-fourth her fuel as safety margin, allotted the working balance for maximum accelerations, figuring the projected mass-ratios in her head. Quite aside from the doctor’s privilege to disregard the law, high speed was not dangerous in the sector they would be in, it being a ‘thin’ volume of the node.
Their destination was an antiquated winged rocket, the wings of which had been torched off and welded into a tent-shaped annex to give more living room. Hazel thought that it had a shanty-town air — but so did many of the ships in Rock City. She was pleased enough to go inside and have a sack of tea and let Lowell out of his spacesuit for a time. The patient, Mr Bakers, was in a traction splint; his wife could not pilot their scooter, which was why Dr Stone granted the house call. Dr Stone received a call by radio while they were there; she came back into the general room looking troubled. ‘Smatter?’ inquired Hazel.
‘Mrs Silva. I’m not really surprised; it’s her first child.’
‘Did you get the co-ordinates and beacon pattern? I’ll run you right—’
‘Lowell?’
‘Oh. Oh, yes,’ It would be a long time in a suit for a youngster.
Mrs Eakers suggested that they leave the child with her.
Before Lowell could cloud up at the suggestion Dr Stone said, ‘Thanks, but it isn’t necessary. Mr Silva is on his way here. What I was trying to say, Mother Hazel, is that I probably had better go with him and let you and Lowell go back alone. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. Pipe down, Lowell! I’ll have us home in three-quarters of an hour and Lowell can have his nap or his spanking on time, as the case may be.’
She gave Dr Stone one of two spare oxygen bottles before she left; Dr Stone refused to take both of them. Hazel worked the new mass figures over; with Edith, her suit, and the spare bottle subtracted she had spare fuel. Better hit it up pretty fast and get home before the brat got cranky—
She lined up on City Hall by flywheel and stereo, spun on that axis to get the sun out of her eyes, clutched her gyros, and gave it the gun.
The next thing she knew she was tumbling like a liner in free fall. She remembered from long habit to cut the throttle but only after a period of aimless acceleration, for she had been chucked around in her saddle, thrown against her belts, and could not at first find the throttle.
When they were in free fall again she remembered to laugh. ‘Some ride, eh, Lowell?’
‘Do it again, Grandma!’
‘I hope not.’ Quickly she checked things over. There was not much that could go wrong with the little craft, it being only a rocket motor, an open rack with saddles and safety harness, and a minimum of instruments and controls. It was the gyros, of course; the motor had been sweet and hot. They were hunting the least bit, she found, that being the only evidence that they had just tumbled violently. Delicately she adjusted them by hand, putting her helmet against the case so that she could hear what she was doing.
Only then did she try to find where they were and where they were going. Let’s see — the Sun is over there and that’s Betelgeuse over yonder — so City Hall must be out that way. She ducked her helmet into the hemispherical ‘eye shade’ of the stereo. Yup! there she be!
The Eakers place was the obvious close-by point on which to measure her vector. She looked around for it, was startled to discover how far away it was. They must have coasted quite a distance while she was fiddling with the gyros. She measured the vector in amount and direction, then whistled. There were, she thought, few grocery shops out that way — darn few neighbours of any sort. She decided that it might be smart to call Mrs Eakers and tell her what had happened and ask her to call City Hall — just in case.