She could not raise Mrs Eakers. The sloven, she thought bitterly, has probably switched off her alarm so she could sleep. Lazy baggage! Her house looked it - and smelled it, too.
But she kept trying to call Mrs Eakers, or anyone else in range of her suit radio while she again lined up the ship for City, with offset to compensate for the now vector. She was cautious and most alert this time - in consequence she wasted only a few seconds of fuel when the gyros again tumbled.
She unclutched the gyros and put them out of her mind, then took careful measure of the situation. The Eakers dump was now a planetary light in the sky, shrinking almost noticeably, but it was still the proper local reference point. She did not like the vector she got. As always, they seemed to be standing still in the exact center of a starry globe - but her instruments showed them speeding for empty space, headed clear outside the node.
"What's the matter, Grandma Hazel?"
"Nothing, son, nothing. Grandma has to stop and look at some road signs, that's all." She was thinking that she would gladly swap her chance of eternal bliss for an automatic distress signal and a beacon. She reached over, switched off the child's receiver, then repeatedly called for help.
No answer. She switched Lowell's receiver back on. "Why. did you do that, Grandma Hazel?"
"Nothing. Just checking it"
"You can't fool me! You're scared! Why?"
"Not scared, pet Worried a little, maybe. Now shut up; Grandma's got work to do."
Carefully she lined up the craft by flywheel; carefully she checked it when it tried to swing past She aimed both to offset the new and disastrous vector and to create a vector for City Hall. She intentionally left the gyros unclutched. Then she restrapped Lowell in his saddle, checked its position. "Hold still," she warned. "Move your little finger and Grandma will scalp you"
Just as carefully she positioned herself, considering lever arms, masses, and angular moments in her head Without gyros the craft must be balanced just so. "Now," she said to herself, "Hazel, we find out whether you are a pilot - or just a Sunday pilot." She ducked her helmet into the eyeshade, picked a distant blip on which to center her crosshairs, and gunned the craft
The blip wavered; she tried to rebalance by shifting her body. When the blip suddenly slipped off to one side she cut the throttle quickly. Again she checked her vector. Their situation was somewhat improved. Again she called for help, not stopping to cut the child out of hearing. He said nothing and looked grave.
She went through the same routine, cutting power again when the craft 'fell off its tail." She measured the vector, called for help - and did it all again. A dozen times she tried it. On the last try the thrust stopped with the throttle still wide open. With all fuel gone there was no need to be in a hurry. She measured her vector most carefully on the Eakers' ship, now far away, then checked the results against the City Hall blip, all the while calling for help. She ran through the figures again; in a fashion she had been successful. They were now unquestionably headed for City Hall, could not miss it by more than a few miles at most - almost jumping distance. But, while the vector was correct in direction, it was annoyingly small in quantity - six hundred and fifty miles at about forty miles an hour; they would be closest in about sixteen hours.
She wondered whether Edith really had needed that other spare oxygen bottle. Her own gauge showed about half full. She called for help again, then decided to go through the problem once more; maybe she had dropped a decimal in her head. While she was lining up on City Hall, the tiny light in the stereo tank faded and died. Her language caused Lowell to inquire, "What's the matter now, Grandma?"
"Nothing more than I should have expected, I guess. Some days, hon, it just isn't worth while to wake up in the morning." The trouble, she soon found, was so simple as to be beyond repair. The stereo radar would no longer work because all three cartridges in the power pack were dead. She was forced to admit that she had been using it rather continuously - and it took a lot of power.
"Grandma Hazel! I want to go home!" She pulled out of her troubled thoughts to answer the child.
"We're going home, dear. But it's going to take quite a while."
"I want to go home right now?"
" I'm sorry but you can't"
"But -"
"Shut it up - or when I get you out of that sack, I'll give you something to yelp for. I mean it" She again called for help.
Lowell made one of his lightning changes to serenity. "That's better," approved Hazel. "Want to play a game of chess?"
"No."
"Sissy. You're afraid I'll beat you. I'll bet you three spanks and a knuckle rub."
Lowell considered this. "I get the white men?"
"Take 'em. I'll beat you anyhow."
To her own surprise she did. It was a long drawn-out game; Lowell was not as practised as she was in visualising a board and they had had to recount the moves on several occasions before he would concede the arrangement of men... and between each pair of moves she had again called for help. About the middle of the game she had found it necessary to remove her oxygen bottle and replace it with the one spare. She and the child had started out even but Lowell's small mass demanded much less oxygen.
"How about another one? Want to get your revenge?"
"No! I want to go home."
" We're going home, dear."
"How soon?"
"Well... it'll be a while yet I'll tell you a story."
"What story?"
"Well, how about the one about the worm that crawled up out of the mud?"
"Oh, I know that one! I'm tired of it"
"There are parts I've never told you, And you can't get tired of it, not really, because there is never any end to it. Always something new." So she told him again about the worm that crawled up out of the slime, not because it didn't have enough to eat, not because it wasn't nice and warm and comfortable down there under the water - but because the worm was restless. How it crawled up on dry land and grew legs. How part of it got to be the Elephant's Child and part of it got to be a monkey, grew hands, and fiddled with things. How, still insatiably restless, it grew wings and reached up for the stars. She spun it out a long, long time, pausing occasionally to call for aid.
Thechild was either bored and ignored her, or liked it and kept quiet on that account. But when she stopped he said, "Tell me another one"
"Not just now, dear." His oxygen gauge showed empty.
"Go on! Tell me a new one - a better one."
"Not now, dear. That's the best story Hazel knows. The very best. I told it to you again because I want you to remember it." She watched his anoxia warning signal turn red, then quietly disconnected the partly filled bottle on her own suit, closing the now useless suit valves, and replaced his empty bottle with hers. For a moment she considered cross-connecting the bottle to both suits, then shrugged and let it stand. "Lowell -"
"What, Grandma?"
"Listen to me, dear. You've heard me calling for help. You've got to do it now. Every few minutes, all the time."
"Why?"
"Because Hazel is tired, dear. Hazel has to sleep. Promise me you'll do it"
"Well... all right"
She tried to hold perfectly still, to breathe as little of the air left in her suit as possible. It wasn't so bad, she thought She had wanted to see the Rings - but there wasn't much else she had missed. She supposed everyone had his Carcassonne; she had no regrets.
"Grandma! Grandma Hazel!" She did not answer. He waited, then began to cry, endlessly and without hope.
Dr. Stone arrived back at the Rolling Stone to find only her husband there. She greeted himand added, "Where's Hazel, dear? and Lowell?"