‘You can’t Everybody is out searching.’
Castor tugged at Pollux’s sleeve. ‘Old Charlie.’
‘Huh?’ Say, Mrs Fries, is old Charlie out searching?’
‘I doubt if he knows about it.’
They rushed into their suits, cycled by spilling and wasting air, did not bother with safety lines. Old Charlie let them in. ‘What’s all the fuss about, boys?’
Castor explained Charlie shook his head. ‘That’s too bad, that really is. I’m right sorry.’
‘Charlie, we’ve got to have your scooter.’
‘Right now!’ added Pollux.
Charlie looked astonsished. ‘Are you fooling? I’m the only one can gun that rig.’
‘Charlie, this serious! We’ve got to have it’
‘You couldn’t gun it’
‘We’re both pilots.’
Charlie scratched meditatively while Castor considered slugging him for his keys — but his keys probably weren’t on him — and how would one find anything in that trash pile? Charlie finally said, ‘If you’ve just got to, I suppose I better gun it for you.’
‘Okay, okay! Hurry up! Get your suit on!’
‘Don’t be in such a rush. It just slows you down.’
Charlie disappeared into the underbush, came out fairly promptly with a suit that seemed to consist mostly of vulcanized patches. ‘Dog take it,’ he complained as he began to struggle with it, ‘if your mother would stay home and mind her own business, these things wouldn’t happen.’
‘Shut up and hurry!’
‘I am hurrying. She made me take a bath. I don’t need no doctors. All the bugs that ever bit me, died.’
When Charlie had dug his scooter out of the floating junk-yard moored to his home they soon saw why he had refused to lend it. It seemed probable that no one else could possibly pilot it Not only was it of vintage type, repaired with parts from many other sorts, but also the controls were arranged for a man with four hands. Charlie had been in free fall so long that he used his feet almost as readily for grasping and handling as does an ape; his space suit had had the feet thereof modified so that he could grasp things between the big toe and the second, as with Japanese stockings.
‘Hang on. Where we going?’
‘Do you know where the Eakers live?’
‘Sure. Used to live out past that way myself. Lonely stretch.’ He pointed. ‘Right out there, ’bout half a degree right of that leetle second-magnitude star — say eight hundred, eight hundred ten miles.’
‘Cas, maybe we’d better check the drift reports in the store?’
Charlie seemed annoyed. ‘I know Rock City. I keep up with the drifts. I have to.’
‘Then let’s go.’
‘To Eakers’?’
‘No, no — uh, just about…’ He strained his neck, figured the position of the Sun, tried to imagine himself in Hazel’s suit, heading back. ‘About there — would you say, Pol?’
‘As near as we can guess it.’
The crate was old but Charlie had exceptionally large tanks on it; it could maintain a thrust for plenty of change-of-motion. Its jet felt as sweet as any. But it had no radar of any sort. ‘Charlie, how do you tell where you are in this thing?’
‘That.’
‘That’ proved to be an antiquated radio compass loop. The twins had never seen one, knew how it worked only by theory. They were radar pilots, not used to conning by the seats of their suits. Seeing their faces Charlie added, ‘Shucks, if you’ve got any eye for angle, you don’t need fancy gear. Anywhere within twenty miles of the City Hall, I don’t even turn on my suit jet — I just jump.’
They cruised out the line that the twins had picked. Once in free fall Charlie taught them how to handle the compass loop. ‘Just plug it into your suit in place of your regular receiver. If you pick up a signal, swing the loop until it’s least loud.
‘That’s the direction of the signal — an arrow right through the middle of the loop.’
‘But which way? The loop faces both ways.’
‘You have to know that. Or guess wrong and go back and try again.’
Castor took the first watch. He got plenty of signals; the node was buzzing with talk — all bad news. He found, too, that the loop, while not as directional as a ‘salad bowl’ antenna, usually did not pick up but one signal at a time. As they scooted along, endlessly he swung the loop, staying with each signal just long enough to be sure that the sound could not be Hazel.