She could not raise Mrs Eakers. The sloven, she thought bitterly, has probably switched off her alarm so she could sleep. Lazy baggage! Her house looked it — and smelled it, too.
But she kept trying to call Mrs Eakers, or anyone else in range of her suit radio while she again lined up the ship for City, with offset to compensate for the now vector. She was cautious and most alert this time — in consequence she wasted only a few seconds of fuel when the gyros again tumbled.
She unclutched the gyros and put them out of her mind, then took careful measure of the situation. The Eakers dump was now a planetary light in the sky, shrinking almost noticeably, but it was still the proper local reference point. She did not like the vector she got. As always, they seemed to be standing still in the exact center of a starry globe — but her instruments showed them speeding for empty space, headed clear outside the node.
‘What’s the matter, Grandma Hazel?’
‘Nothing, son, nothing. Grandma has to stop and look at some road signs, that’s all.’ She was thinking that she would gladly swap her chance of eternal bliss for an automatic distress signal and a beacon. She reached over, switched off the child’s receiver, then repeatedly called for help.
No answer. She switched Lowell’s receiver back on. ‘Why did you do that, Grandma Hazel?’
‘Nothing. Just checking it.’
‘You can’t fool me! You’re scared! Why?’
‘Not scared, pet. Worried a little, maybe. Now shut up; Grandma’s got work to do.’
Carefully she lined up the craft by flywheel; carefully she checked it when it tried to swing past. She aimed both to offset the new and disastrous vector and to create a vector for City Hall. She intentionally left the gyros unclutched. Then she restrapped Lowell in his saddle, checked its position. ‘Hold still,’ she warned. ‘Move your little finger and Grandma will scalp you.’
Just as carefully she positioned herself, considering lever arms, masses, and angular moments in her head. Without gyros the craft must be balanced just so. ‘Now,’ she said to herself, ‘Hazel, we find out whether you are a pilot — or just a Sunday pilot.’ She ducked her helmet into the eyeshade, picked a distant blip on which to center her crosshairs, and gunned the craft.
The blip wavered; she tried to rebalance by shifting her body. When the blip suddenly slipped off to one side she cut the throttle quickly. Again she checked her vector. Their situation was somewhat improved. Again she called for help, not stopping to cut the child out of hearing. He said nothing and looked grave.
She went through the same routine, cutting power again when the craft ‘fell off its tail.’ She measured the vector, called for help — and did it all again. A dozen times she tried it. On the last try the thrust stopped with the throttle still wide open. With all fuel gone there was no need to be in a hurry. She measured her vector most carefully on the Eakers’ ship, now far away, then checked the results against the City Hall blip, all the while calling for help. She ran through the figures again; in a fashion she had been successful. They were now unquestionably headed for City Hall, could not miss it by more than a few miles at most — almost jumping distance. But, while the vector was correct in direction, it was annoyingly small in quantity — six hundred and fifty miles at about forty miles an hour; they would be closest in about sixteen hours.
She wondered whether Edith really had needed that other spare oxygen bottle. Her own gauge showed about half full. She called for help again, then decided to go through the problem once more; maybe she had dropped a decimal in her head. While she was lining up on City Hall, the tiny light in the stereo tank faded and died. Her language caused Lowell to inquire, ‘What’s the matter now, Grandma?’
‘Nothing more than I should have expected, I guess. Some days, hon, it just isn’t worth while to wake up in the morning.’ The trouble, she soon found, was so simple as to be beyond repair. The stereo radar would no longer work because all three cartridges in the power pack were dead. She was forced to admit that she had been using it rather continuously — and it took a lot of power.