he laid hands on the switch and pulled.
A cloud of beer gushed frostily from one of the transverse pipes. After several rather unfortunate attempts, Herr Syrup managed to stop the boat's rotation. He looked around him. He hung in darkness, among blazing stars. Grendel was a huge gibbous green moon to starboard. The Mercury Girl was a long rusty spindle to port. The asteroid sun, small and weak but perceived by the adaptable human eye as quite bright enough, poured in through the spacesuit helmet in the roof and bounced dazzlingly off his bare scalp.
He swallowed sternly, to remind his stomach who was boss, and began taking navigational sights. Sarmishkidu rolled a red look "upward" at Claus, who clung miserably to the Martian's head with eyes tightly shut.
Herr Syrup completed his figuring. It would have been best to wait a while yet, to get the maximum benefit of orbital velocity toward New Winchester; but McConnell was not going to wait. Anyhow, this was such a slow orbit that it didn't make much difference. Most likely the factor would be quite lost among the fantastically uncertain quantities of the boat itself. One would have to take what the good Lord sent. He gripped the control levers.
A low murmur filled the cabin as the rearmost beer barrel snorted its vapors into space. There was a faint backward tug of acceleration pressure, which mounted very gradually as mass decreased. The thrust was not centered with absolute precision, and of course the distribution of mass throughout the whole structure was hit-or-miss, so the boat began to pick up a spin again. Steering by the seat of his pants and a few primitive meters, Herr Syrup corrected that tendency with side jets.
Blowing white beer fumes in all directions, the messenger boat moved slowly along a wobbling spiral toward New Winchester.
CHAPTER TEN
"Oh darling, dearest, beloved," wept Emily, dabbing at Rory McConnell's head, "forgive me!"
"I love yez too," said the Erseman, sitting up, "but unliss ye'll stop poundin' in me skull I'll have to lock yez up for the duration."
"I promise … I promise … oh, I couldn't bear it! Sweetheart—" Emily clutched his arm as he rose—"can't you let them go now? I mean, they've gotten clean away, you've lost, so why don't we wait here and, well, I mean to say, really."
"What do you mean to say?"
Emily blushed and lowered her eyes: "If you don't know," she said in a prim voice, "I shall certainly not tell you."
McConnell blushed too.
Then, resolutely, he started toward the bridge. The girl hurried after him. He flung back: "Tell me what it is they're escapin' in, an' maybe I'll be ready to concede hon'rable defeat." But having been informed,
he only barked a laugh and said, "Well, an' 'tis a gallant try, 'tis, but me with a regular spaceship at me beck can't admit the end of the game. In fact, me dear, I'm sorry to say they haven't a Plutonian's chance in hell."
By that time he was in the turret, sweeping the skies with its telescope. It took him a while to find the boat, already it was a mere speck in the gleaming dark. He scowled, chewed his lip, and muttered half to himself:
"'Twill take time to extract the polarity reverser, an' me not a trained engineer. By then the craft will be indeed hard to locate. If I went on down to Grendel to get help, "twould take hours to reach the ear
of himself an' assimble a crew, if I know me Erse lads. An' hours is too long. So—I'll have to go after our friends there alone. Acushla, I don't think ye'll betray their cause if ye fix me a sandwich or six an' open me a bottle of beer whilst I work."
McConnell did, in fact, require almost an hour to get the geegee repulsors to repulsing again. With the compensator still on the fritz, that put the ship's interior back in free fall state. He floated, dashing the sweat from his brow, and smiled at Emily. "Go strap yourself in, me rose of Grendel, for I may well have to make some sharp maneuvers an' I wouldn't be bruisin' of that fair skin—Damn! Git away!" That was addressed to the sweat he had just dashed from his brow. Swatting blindly at the fog of tiny globules, he pushed one leg against a wall and arrowed out the door.
Up in the turret again, harnessed in his seat before the pilot console, he tickled its control and heard the engines purr. "Are ye ready, darlin'?" he called into the intercom.
"Not yet, sweetheart," Emily's voice floated back. "One moment, please."
"A moment only," warned McConnell, squinting into the telescope. He could not have found the fleeing boat at all were it not for the temporary condensation of beer vapor into a cloud as expansion chilled it. And all he saw was a tiny, ghostly nebula on the very edge of vision. To be sure, knowing approximately what path the fugitives must follow gave him a track; he could doubtless always come within a hundred kilometers of them that way; but—
"Are ye ready, me sugar?"
"Not yet, love. I'll be with you in a jiffy."
McConnell drummed impatient fingers on the console. The Mercury Girl swung gently around Grendel. His head still throbbed.
"Da-a-arlin"! Time's a-wastin'! We'll be late!"
"Oh, give me just a sec. Really, dearest, you might remember when we're married and have to go out someplace a girl wants to look her best, and that takes time, I mean dresses and cosmetics and so on aren't classical but I guess if I can give up my principles for you so you can be proud of me and if I can eat the things you like even if they aren't natural, well, then you can wait a little while for me to make myself presentable and—"
"A man has two choices in this universe," said McConnell grimly to himself, "he can remain celibate or he can resign himself to spendin' ten per cent of his life waitin' for women."
He glared at the chronometer. "We're late already!" he snapped. I'll have to run off a different approach curve to our orbit an'—"
"Well, you can be doing it, can't you? I mean, instead of just sitting there grumbling at me, why don't you do something constructive like punching that old computer or whatever his?"
McConnell stiffened. "Emily," he said through thinned lips, "are ye by any chance stallin' me?" "Why, Rory, how could you? Merely because a girl has to-"
He calculated the required locus and said, "Ye've got just sixty seconds to prepare for acceleration." "But Rory!"
"Fifty seconds."
"But I mean to say, actually—" "Forty seconds."
"Oh, right-o, then. And I'm not angry with you, love, really I'm not. I mean, I want you to know a girl admires a man like you who actually is a man. Why, what would I do with one of those awful 'Yes, dear' types, they're positively Roman! Imperial Roman, I mean. The Republican Romans were at least virile, though of course they were barbarians and rather hairy. But what I meant to say, Rory, is that one reason
I love you so much—"
After about five minutes of this, Major McConnell realized what was going on. With an inarticulate snarl he stabbed the computer, corrected his curve for time lost, punched it into the autopilot, and slapped down the main drive switch.
First the ship turned, seeking her direction, and then a Terrestrial gravity of acceleration pushed him back into the chair. No reason to apply more; he felt sure that leprechaun job he was chasing could scarcely pick up one meter per second squared, and matching velocities would be a tricky enough business for one man alone. He saw Grendel swing past the starboard viewport and drop behind. He applied a repulsor field forward to kill some of his present speed, simultaneously giving the ship an impulse toward ten-thirty o'clock, twenty-three degrees "high". In a smooth arc, the Mercury Girl picked up the trail of Herr Syrup and began to close the gap.