“We’ll sneak into the lockroom. There won’t be anybody there tonight; at least we’ll get a night’s sleep.”
“Big deal,” grumbled Bernie, but he followed, complaining inarticulately to himself. Ross thought tiredly: All this work for a night’s sleep! And saw, half-formed, the dreadful procession of days and nights and years ahead …
They reached the lockroom and stumbled in breathlessly.
“Dearie!” Two guards, playing a card game on the floor with a ring of empty bottles around them, looked up in drunken delight. “Dearie!” repeated the bigger of the two. “Angela, look what we’ve got!”
Ross said stupidly. “But you shouldn’t be here—”
The guard made a clumsy pass at fluffing up her back hair and giggled. “Duty comes first, dearie. Angela, just lock that door, will you?” The other guard scrambled unevenly to her feet and weaved over to the door. It was locked before Ross or Bernie could move.
The big guard stood up too, leering at Bernie. “Wow!” she said. “New merchandise. Just be patient, dearie. We’ve got a little something to attend to in a couple of minutes, but we’ll have lots of time after that.”
Then things began to happen rapidly. There was Angela the guard, inarticulate, falling-down drunk; she waved bonelessly at a brightly flickering light on the far side of the lockroom. There was the other guard, reaching out for Bernie with one hand, pawing at a bottle with the other. There was Ross, a paralyzed spectator.
And there was Bernie.
Bernie’s eyes bulged wide as the guard came toward him. He babbled hysterically, “No! Nonononono! I said I’d kill myself and I—”
He stiff-armed the big guard and leaped for the lock door. Ross suddenly came to life. “Bernie!” he bellowed. “Hold it! Don’t jump!”
But it was too late. The one guard sprawling, the other staggering helplessly across the floor, Bernie was clear. He scrabbled at the lockwheels, spun them open. Ross tensed himself for the sudden, awful rush of expanding air; he leaped after Bernie just as Bernie flung the lock door open and jumped.
Ross jumped after.
There was no rush of air. They were not in space. Around them was no ripping, sucking void, no flaming backdrop of stars; around them were six walls and a Wesley board, and Helena peering at them wide-eyed and delighted.
“Well!” she said. “That was fast!”
Ross said, “But—”
Helena, hanging from the acceleration loops, smiled maternally. “Oh, it was nothing,” she said. “Ross, don’t you think we’re far enough away yet?”
Ross said hopelessly, “All right,” and cut the drive. The starship hung in space in the limbo between stars. Azor, Minerva, and the rest were light-years behind, far out of range of challenge.
Helena wriggled free from the loops and rubbed her arms where the retaining straps had gripped them. “After all,” she said demurely, “you told me how to run the ship, and really, Ross, I’m not quite stupid.”
Ross said, “But—”
“But what, Ross? It isn’t as if I were some sort of brainless little thing that had never run a machine in her life. My goodness, Ross—” She wrinkled her nose. “You should remember. All those days in the dye vats? Don’t you think I had to learn a little something about machines there?”
Ross swore incredulously. To compare those clumsy constructs of wheels and rollers with the subtle subelectronic flows of the Wesley force—and to make it work! He said, unbelievingly, “And the Minerva helped you vector in? They gave you the coordinates and radared your course?”
“Certainly.” Helena turned to Bernie, who was staring dazedly around him. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.
Ross turned his back on them and faced the Wesley Christmas tree of controls. Don’t question it, he told himself; take a miracle for what it is. God wanted you out of Minerva—and God moves in most mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
Anyway, they had to get going. When the court had exiled Helena in the starship they had gone through the customary rituals; not only was everything that looked like a weapon gone, along with all but a teacup of fuel for the auxiliary jets, but the food locker was stripped entirely. He put everything else out of his mind and began to calculate a setting.
Bernie said over his shoulder, “Home, huh? That place you call Halsey’s Planet?”
Ross shook his head. “Not this time. I got this far and I’m still alive; maybe I can finish the job. Anyway, I’ll try. The first solid suggestion I’ve had ever since I took off was what that half-witted old moron—” He ignored a little gasp from Helena. “—said back on Minerva. If Flarney had lived, he would have gone there; we’ll go there now.” He finished manipulating the calculator and began to set it up on the board. He said, “The name of the place is—Earth.”
X
It took Ross a while to learn a lesson, but when he learned it, it stuck. This time, he promised himself, no spaceport.
They sneaked into the solar system that held fabulous old Earth from far outside the ecliptic, where the chance of radar detection was least; they came to a relative dead halt millions of miles from the planet and cautiously scanned the surrounding volume of space with their own radar.
No ships seemed to be in space. Earth’s solar system turned out to be a trivial affair, only five planets, scarcely a half-dozen moons among them. None of the planets except Earth itself was anything like inhabitable.
“Hold tight,” said Ross grimly, “I’m not so good at this fine navigation.” He cautiously applied power along a single vector; the starship leaped and bucked. He corrected with another; and the distant sun swelled in their view plates with frightening rapidity. The alarm beeps bleated furiously, and the automatic cutoff restored all controls to neutral.
Ross, sweating, picked himself up from the floor and staggered back to the panel. Helena said carefully, “You’re doing fine, Ross, but if you’d like me to
