The tension breaks once during the long session, when Luna calls Gloria to warn Connie to be sure the female crew members wear concealing garments at all times if the men came aboard.
"Not suit-liners, Connie, they're much too tight." It is the older woman, Myda. Bud chuckles.
"Your light sleepers, I think. And when the men unsuit, your Andy is the only one who should help them. You others stay away. The same for all body functions and sleeping. This is very important, Connie; you'll have to watch it the whole way home. There are a great many complicated taboos. I'm putting an instruction list on the bleeper, is your receiver working?"
"Da, we used it for France's black-hole paper."
"Good. Tell Judy to stand by. Now listen, Connie, listen carefully. Tell Andy he has to read it all. I repeat, he has to read every word. Did you hear that?"
"Ali, dinko," Connie answers. "I understand, Myda. He will."
"I think we just lost the ball game, fellas," Bud, laments. "Old mother Myda took it all away."
Even Dave laughs. But later when the modulated squeal that is a whole text comes through the speaker, he frowns again. "There goes the good stuff."
The last factors are cranked in; the revised program spins, and Luna confirms them. "We have a pay-out, Dave," Lorimer reports. "It's tight but there are at least two viable options. Provided the main jets are fully functional."
"We're going EVA to check."
That is exhausting; they find a warp in the deflector housing of the port engines and spend four sweating hours trying to wrestle, it back. It is only Lorimer's third sight of open space but he is soon too tired to care.
"Best we can do," Dave pants finally. "We'll have to compensate in the psychic mode."
"You can do it, Dave-o," says Bud. "Hey, I gotta change those suit radios, don't let me forget."
In the psychic mode… Lorimer surfaces back to his real self, cocooned in Gloria's big cluttered cabin, seeing Connie's living face. It must be hours, how long has he been dreaming?
"About two minutes," Connie smiles.
"I was thinking of the first time I saw you."
"Oh yes. We'll never forget that, ever." Nor will he… He lets it unroll again in his head. The interminable hours after the first long burn, which has sent Sunbird yawing so they all have to gulp nausea pills. Judy's breathless voice reading down their approach: "Oh, very good, four hundred thousand… Oh great, Sunbird, you're almost three, you're going to break a hundred for sure-" Dave has done it, the big one.
Lorimer's probe is useless in the yaw, it isn't until they stabilize enough for the final burst that they can see the strange blip bloom and vanish in the slot. Converging, hopefully, on a theoretical near intersetion point.
"Here goes everything."
The final burn changes the yaw into a sickening tumble with the starfield looping past the glass. The pills are no more use and the fuel feed to the attitude jets goes sour. They are all vomiting before they manage to hand-pump the last of the fuel and slow the tumble.
"That's it, Gloria. Come and get us. Lights on, Bud. Let's get those suits up."
Fighting nausea they go through the laborious routine in the fouled cabin. Suddenly Judy's voice sings out, "We see you, Sunbird! We see your light! Can't you see us?"
"No time," Dave says. But Bud, half-suited, points at the window. "Fellas, oh, hey, look at that."
"Father, we thank you," says Dave quietly. "All right, move it on, Doc. Packs."
The effort of getting themselves plus the propulsion units and a couple of cargo nets out of the rolling ship drives everything else out of mind. It isn't until they are floating linked together and stabilized by Dave's hand jet that Lorimer has time to look.
The sun blanks out their left. A few meters below them Sunbird tumbles empty, looking absurdly small. Ahead of them, infinitely far away, is a point too blurred and yellow to be a star. It creeps: Gloria, on her approach tangent.
"Can you start, Sunbird?" says Judy in their, helmets. "We don't want to brake any more on account of our exhaust. We estimate fifty kay in an hour, we're coming out on a line."
"Roger. Give me your jet, Doc."
"Goodbye, Sunbird," says Bud. "Plenty of lead, Dave-o."
Lorimer finds it restful in a childish way, being towed across the abyss tied to the two. big men. He has total confidence in Dave, he never considers the possibility that they will miss, sail by and be lost. Does Dave feel contempt? Lorimer wonders; that banked-up silence, is it partly contempt for those who can manipulate only symbols, who have no mastery of matter?
He concentrates on mastering his stomach.
It is a long, dark trip. Sunbird shrinks to a twinkling light, slowly accelerating on the spiral course that will end her ultimately in the sun with their precious records that are three hundred years obsolete. With, also, the packet of photos and letters that Lorimer has twice put in his suit-pouch and twice taken out. Now and then he catches sight of Gloria, growing from a blur to an incomprehensible tangle of lighted crescents.
"Woo-ee, see there," Bud says. "No wonder they can't accelerate, that thing is a flying trailer park. It'd break up."
"It's a space ship. Got those nets tight, Doc?"
Judy's voice suddenly fills their helmets. "I see your lights! Can you see me? Will you have enough left to brake at all?"
"Affirmative to both, Gloria," says Dave.
At that moment Lorimer is turned slowly forward again and he seeswill see it forever: the alien ship in the starfield and on its dark side the tiny lights that are women in the stars, waiting for them. Threeno, four; one suit-light is way out, moving. If that is a tether is must be over a kilometer.
"Hello, I'm Judy Dakar!" The voice is close. "Oh, mother, you're big! Are you all right? How's your air?"
"No problem."
They are in fact stale and steaming wet; too much adrenalin. Dave uses the jets again and suddenly she is growing, is coming right at them, a silvery spider on a trailing thread. Her suit looks trim and flexible; it is mirror-bright, and the pack is quite small. Marvels of the future, Lorimer thinks; Paragraph One.
"You made it, you made it! Here, tie in. Brake!"
"There ought to be some historic words," Bud murmurs. "If she gives us a chance."
"Hello, Judy," says Dave calmly. "Thanks for coming.".
"Contact!" She blasts their ears. "Haul us in, Andyl Brake, brake the exhaust is back there!"
And they are grabbed hard, deflected into a great arc toward the ship. Dave uses up the last jet. The line loops.
"Don't jerk it," Judy cries. "Oh, I'm sorry." She is clinging on them like a gibbon, Lorimer can see her eyes, her excited mouth. Incredible. "Watch out, it's slack."
"Teach me, honey," says Andy's baritone. Lorimer twists and sees him far back at the end of a heavy tether, hauling them smoothly in. Bud offers to help, is refused. "Just hang loose, please," a matronly voice tells them. It is obvious Andy has done this before. They come in spinning slowly, like space fish. Lorimer finds he can no longer pick out the twinkle that is Sunbird. When he is swung back, Gloria has changed to a disorderly cluster of bulbs and spokes around a big central cylinder. He can see pods and miscellaneous equipment stowed all over her. Not like science fiction.