“Never mind,” Crane said. “She is doing nicely.”
Crane had already revived the stranger. DuQuesne was nowhere in sight. Dorothy blushed vividly and disengaged her arms from around Seaton’s neck. Seaton, also blushing, dropped his arms and Dorothy floated away, clutching frantically at a hand-hold just out of her reach.
“Pull me down, Dick !” Dorothy laughed.
Seaton grabbed her ankle unthinkingly, neglecting his own anchorage, and they floated in the air together. Martin and Margaret, each holding a line, laughed heartily.
“Tweet, tweet—I’m a canary,” Seaton said, flapping his arms. “Toss us a line, Mart.”
“A Dicky-bird, you mean,” Dorothy said.
Crane studied the floating pair with mock gravity.
“That is a peculiar pose, Dick. What is it supposed to represent—Zeus sitting on his throne?”
“I’ll sit on your neck, you lug, if you don’t get a wiggle on with that rope !”
As he spoke, however he came within reach of the ceiling, and could push himself and his companion to a line.
Seaton put a bar into one of the engines and, after flashing the warning light, applied a little power. The Skylark seemed to leap under them; then everything had its normal weight once more.
“Now that things have settled down a little,” Dorothy said, “I’ll introduce you two to Miss Margaret Spencer, a very good friend of mine. These are the boys I told you so much about, Peggy. This is Dr. Dick Seaton, my fiancé. He knows everything there is to be known about atoms, electrons, neutrons, and so forth. And this is Mr. Martin Crane, who is a simply wonderful inventor. He made all these engines and things.”
“I may have heard of Mr. Crane,” Margaret said, eagerly. “My father was an inventor, too, and he used to talk about a man named Crane who invented a lot of instruments for supersonic planes. He said they revolutionized flying. I wonder if you are that Mr. Crane?”
“That is unjustifiedly high praise, Miss Spencer,” Crane replied, uncomfortable, “but as I have done a few things along that line I could be the man he referred to.”
“If I may change the subject,” Seaton said, “where’s DuQuesne?”
“He went to clean up. Then he was going to the galley to check damage and see about something to eat.”
“Stout fella!” Dorothy applauded. “Food! And especially about cleaning up—if you know what I mean and I think you do. Come on, Peggy, I know where our room is.”
“What a girl!” Seaton said as the women left, Dorothy half supporting her companion.. “She’s bruised and beat up from one end to the other. She’s more than half dead yet—she didn’t have enough life left in her to flag a hand-car. She can’t even walk; she can just barely hobble. And did she let out one single yip? I ask to know. ‘Business as usual,’ all the way, if it kills her. What a girl!”
“Include Miss Spencer in that, too, Dick. Did she ‘let out any yips’? And she was not in nearly as good shape as Dorothy was, to start with.”
“That’s right,” Seaton agreed, wonderingly. “She’s got plenty of guts, too. Those two women, Marty my old and stinky chum, are blinding flashes and deafening reports. . . . Well, let’s go get a bath and shave. And shove the air-conditioners up a couple of notches, will you?”
When they came back they found the two girls seated at one of the ports. “Did you dope yourself up, Dot?” Seaton asked.
“Yes, both of us. With amylophene. I’m getting to be a slave to the stuff.” She made a wry face.
Seaton grimaced too. “So did we. Ouch! Nice stuff that amylophene.”
“But come over here and look out of this window. Did you ever see anything like it?”
As the four heads bent, so close together, an awed silence fell upon the little group. For the blackness of the black of the interstellar void is not the darkness of an earthly night, but the absolute absence of light—a black beside which that of platinum dust is merely gray. Upon this indescribably black backdrop there glowed faint patches which were nebulae; there blazed hard, brilliant, mufti-colored, dimensionless points of light which were stars.
“Jewels on black velvet,” Dorothy breathed. “Oh, gorgeous . . . wonderful !”
Through their wonder a thought struck Seaton. He leaped to the board. “Look here, Mart. I didn’t recognize a thing out there and I wondered why. We’re heading away from the Earth and we must be making plenty of light-speeds. The swing around that big dud was really something, of course, but the engine should have . . . or should it?”
“I think not . . . Unexpected, but not a surprise. That close to Roche’s Limit, anything might happen.”
“And did, I guess. We’ll have to check for permanent deformations. But this object- compass still works—let’s see how far we are away from home.”
They took a reading and both men figured the distance.
“What d’you make it, Mart? I’m afraid to tell you my result”
“Forty-six point twenty-seven light-centuries. Check?”
“Check. We’re up the well-known creek without a paddle. . . . The time was twenty-three thirty-two by the chronometer—good thing you built it to stand going through a stone-crusher. My watch’s a total loss. They all are, I imagine. We’ll read it again in an hour or so and see how fast we’re going. I’ll be scared witless to say that figure out loud, too.”
“Dinner is announced,” said DuQuesne, who had been standing at the door, listening.
The wanderers, battered, stiff, and sore, seated themselves at a folding table. While eating, Seaton watched the engine—when he was not watching Dorothy—and talked to her. Crane and Margaret chatted easily. DuQuesne, except when addressed directly, maintained a self-sufficient silence.
After another observation Seaton said, “DuQuesne, we’re almost five thousand light- years away from Earth, and getting farther away at about one light-year per minute.”
“It’d be poor technique to ask how you know?”
“It would. Those figures are right. But we’ve got only four bars of copper left. Enough to stop us and some to spare, but not nearly enough to get us back, even by drifting—too many lifetimes on the way.”
“So we land somewhere and dig us some copper.”
“Check. What I wanted to ask you—isn’t a copper-bearing sun apt to have copper- bearing planets?”
“I’d say so.”
“Then take the spectroscope, will you, and pick out a sun somewhere up ahead—down ahead, I mean—for us to shoot at? And Mart, I s’pose we’d better take our regular twelve-hour tricks—no, eight; we’ve got to either trust the guy or kill him I’ll take the first watch. Beat it to bed.”
“Not so fast.” Crane said. “If I remember correctly, it’s my turn.”
“Ancient history doesn’t count. I’ll flip you a pickle for it. Heads, I win.”
Seaton won, and the worn-out travelers went to their rooms all except Dorothy, who lingered to bid her lover a more intimate good night.
Seated beside him, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, she sat blissfully until she noticed, for the first time, her bare left hand. She caught her breath and her eyes grew round.
” ‘Smatter, Red?”
“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed in dismay, “I simply forgot everything about taking what was left of my ring out of the doctor’s engine!”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
She told him; and he told her about Martin and himself.
“Oh, Dick—Dick—it’s so wonderful to be with you again!” she concluded. “I lived as many years as we covered miles!”
“It was tough . . . you had it a lot worse than we did . . . but it makes me ashamed all over to think of the way I blew my stack at Wilson’s. If it hadn’t been for Martin’s cautious old bean we’d’ve . . . we owe him a lot, Dimples.”
“Yes, we do . . . but don’t worry about the debt, Dick. Just don’t ever let slip a word to Peggy about Martin being rich, is all.”
“Oh, a matchmaker now? But why not? She wouldn’t think any less of him—that’s one reason I’m marrying you, you know—for your money.”
Dorothy snickered sunnily. “I know. But listen, you poor, dumb, fortune-hunting darling—if Peggy had any idea that Martin is the one and only M. Reynolds Crane she’d curl right up into a ball. She’d think he’d think she was chasing him and then he would think so. As it is, he acts perfectly natural. He hasn’t talked that way to any girl except me for five years, and he wouldn’t talk to me until he found out for sure I wasn’t out after him.”
“Could be, pet,” Seaton agreed. “On one thing you really chirped it—he’s been shot at so much he’s wilder than a hawk!”
At the end of eight hours Crane took over and Seaton stumbled to his room, where he slept for over ten hours like a man in a trance. Then, rising, he exercised and went out into the saloon.