It was a long, long drag from Earth to Mars.
They had made much longer voyages, all of them, but in conditions which, compared to those in the lifeboat, were fantastically luxurious. There had been organized entertainment and ample facilities for self-entertainment. There had been a well-varied menu and meals had been occasions to look forward to. In the boat meals were something to be gotten through as expeditiously as possible. In spite of the skill of Sonya and Brenda, in spite of the wide variety of flavorings, the goo was still goo. Texture is as important as taste and appearance.
Of them all, Carnaby was the happiest. Grimes almost regretted that the navigator had been one of the officers remaining loyal to him. He, the Commodore, had always loved navigation, had always maintained that it was an art rather than a science. But he had always maintained, too, that it is rather pointless to keep a dog and to bark oneself. So . . . So Carnaby was the navigating officer. Carnaby was a direct descendant of those navigators who, in the days of sail on Earth's seas, had been called "artists." Grimes helped Carnaby when he was asked to, but this was not very often.
Out from Earth's orbit, in a widely arcing trajectory, swept the boat, its inertial drive unit hammering away with never a missed beat. Through the interplanetary emptiness—the near-emptiness—it flew, with the ruddy spark that was Mars at first wide on the bow but, with every passing day, the bearing closing. Carnaby was shooting at a moving target and, ideally, his missile (of which he was part) would arrive at Point X at precisely the same second as its objective. From a mere spark the red planet expanded to an appreciable disc, even to the naked eye. Astern, on the quarter, the blazing sun diminished appreciably.
Meanwhile Ken and Clarisse Mayhew rarely stirred from the little tent of plastic sheeting that they had made their private quarters—but they were not idle. Now and again Grimes would hear their soft voices as they vocalized their thoughts, their psionic transmissions. Castaways calling Mars . . . Castaways calling Mars . . . Do you hear me? Come in please. Come in . . . Come in . . . The radio-telephonic jargon sounded strange in these circumstances, but its use was logical enough.
On they drove, on, and on.
Mars was a globe now, an orange beach ball floating in the black sea of Space, its surface darkly mottled, the polar frost cap gleaming whitely. It was time, Carnaby announced, for deceleration. He and Grimes took their places at the controls, turned the lifeboat about its short axis until the thrust of the drive was pushing them away from the planetary objective instead of towards it. It would be days, however, before the braking effect was fully felt.
And then Mayhew came out from his tent and said, "John, I have them. I have the same man that I had before, when they gave us the bum's rush . . ."
Grimes made the last adjustment to his set of controls, said to Carnaby, "She's all yours, James." Then, to Mayhew, "Any joy, Ken?"
"I . . . I think so, John. They aren't overjoyed to learn that we're on our way to them, but they realize, I think, that we have no place else to go. We can land, they say, as long as we don't get underfoot."
"Decent of them. No, I'm not being sarcastic. After the exhibition that Hendriks put on the last time that we were out this way it's not surprising that they don't want to know us. Mphm. Well, I suggest that you go into a huddle with Ruth—frequencies and all that—and try to get them to set up some sort of radio beacon for us to home on. We'll set this little bitch down exactly where they want us to . . ."
"Into the jaws of a trap, perhaps," suggested Sonya pessimistically.
"No, Sonya. They aren't that sort of people," Mayhew told her.
"I sincerely hope that you're right."
"I am right," he said shortly. "In fact, now that they have learned quite a lot about us, they are hinting that they may be able to help us. After all, their level of technology is a high one."
"From you," she said, "that is praise."
"Machines have their uses," he admitted.
And Grimes thought, Can they get us back to where and when we belong? Science or black magic—what does it matter as long as it gets the right results . . .