‘They intended to. Hazel said she would be home in forty-five minutes.’
‘There’s a bare possibility that they are still with the Eakers. We’ll find out.’ He lunged toward the door.
The twins returned to find their home and City Hall as well in turmoil. They had been spending an interesting and instructive several hours with old Charlie.
Their father turned away from the Stone’s radio and demanded, ‘Where have you two been?’
‘Just over in Charlie’s hole. What’s the trouble?’
Roger Stone explained. The twins looked at each other. ‘Dad,’ Castor said painfully, ‘you mean Hazel took Mother out in our scooter?’
‘Certainly.’ The twins questioned each other wordlessly again.
‘Why shouldn’t she? Speak up.’
‘Well, you … well, it was like this —’
‘Speak up!’
‘There was a bearing wobble, or something, in one of the gyros,’ Pollux admitted miserably. ‘We were working on it’
‘You were? In Charlie’s place!’
‘Well, we went over there to see what he had in the way of spare parts and, well, we got detained, sort of.’
Their father looked at them for several seconds with no expression of any sort. He then said in a flat voice, ‘You left a piece of ship’s equipment out of commission. You failed to log it. You failed to report it to the Captain. He paused. ‘Go to your room.’
‘But Dad! We want to help!’
‘Stay in your room; you are under arrest’
The twins did as they were ordered. While they waited, the whole of Rock City was alerted. The word went out: the doctor’s little boy is missing; the boy’s grandmother is missing. Fuel up your scooters; stand by to help. Stay on this wave length.
‘Pol, quit muttering!’
Pollux turned to his brother. ‘How can I help it?’
‘They can’t be lost, not really lost. Why, the stereo itself would stand out on a screen like a searchlight’
Pollux thought about it ‘I don’t know. You remember I said I thought we might have a high-potential puncture in the power pack?’
‘I thought you fixed that?’
‘I planned to, just as soon as we got the bugs smoothed out in the gyros.’
Castor thought about it ‘That’s bad. That could be really bad.’ He added suddenly, ‘But quit muttering, just the same. Start thinking instead. What happened? We’ve got to reconstruct it’
‘ “What happened?” Are you kidding? Look, the pesky thing tumbles, then anything can happen. No control.’
‘Use your head, I said. What would Hazel do in this situation?’
They both kept quiet for some moments, then Pollux said, ‘Cas, that derned thing always tumbled to the left, didn’t it? Always.’
‘What good does that do us? Left can be any direction.’
‘No! You asked what Hazel would do. She’d be along her homing line, of course — and Hazel always oriented around her drive line so as to get the Sun on the back of her neck, if possible. Her eyes aren’t too good.’
Castor screwed up his face, trying to visualise it. ‘Say Eakers’ is off that way and City Hall over here; if the Sun is over on this side, then, when it tumbles, she’d vector off that way.’ He acted it with his hands.
‘Sure, sure! When you put in the right coordinates, that is. But what else would she do? What would you do? You’d vector back — I mean vector home.’
‘Huh? How could she? With no gyros?’
‘Think about it Would you quit? Hazel is a pilot. She’d ride that thing like a broomstick.’ He shaped the air with his hands. ‘So she’d be coming back, or trying to, along here — and everybody will be looking for her way over here.’
Castor scowled. ‘Could be.’
‘It had better be. They’ll be looking for her in a cone with its vertex at Eakers’ — and they ought to be looking in a cone with its vertex right here, and along one side of it at that’
Castor said, ‘Come along!’
‘Dad said we were under arrest’
‘Come along!’
City Hall was empty, save for Mrs Fries who was standing watch, red-eyed and tense, at the radio. She shook her head. ‘Nothing yet.’
‘Where can we find a scooter?’