"I always knew you went around in circles, Doc," complained Murphy, "but this is the first time I ever saw it come out literally."
"Not circles, you culture hound, ellipses as any student would know."
"And what, may I ask again, is the purpose of this little venture?" Lomack was trying to be funny.
"In addition to dishing Dudley," I replied calmly, "I'm going to demonstrate that Einstein was right."
As we walked past the striped side of the ship to set out for supplies I glanced at the bow. We were in! Childishly printed, showing that one of us had been blotto, I read: "Beerbuster," sprawled on the bow plate. The previous name, "Zebra," the remnant of a five-day drunk, had been obliterated by the simple process of smearing catsup on it. The ship was all ready to go.
So were we.
We were out in free space beyond Pluto's orbit towing a third load of asteroids; four big, juicy ones, taking them to the empty region we'd picked for the job. I was doing the piloting, pretty routine once the course was picked. Listless was back in the store room checking over the equipment we had picked up on this trip and, incidentally, giving his toes a rest. He twiddles his lowest extremities so much when he pilots that after a while he gets cramps and has to quit. Wears hell out of his socks that way. I heard him yell as he stubbed one of his darlings against a plate. We had half a dozen plates back there with specially designed foundations. They were to go on the asteroids and Listless had figured out an embedding foundation to fasten the plates to the rocky surfaces we had to deal with. We'd left Murphy out with the fifteen we'd already carted. Which might sound dangerous to Murphy, but in spite of what I say, Listless is a mighty good navigator and can find a comet in a dark nebula if he wants to.
We came up to the cluster and spotted Murphy soaring about with a plate in one hand. He saw us and tried to wave the plate but only succeeded in wiggling himself. Those big plates, with disintegration chambers attached have plenty of inertia.
Two of the rocks on which he had completed the job were separated. I surrendered the controls to Lomack who swung the ship around and sent the four we were towing swinging toward the rest of the pile. Then he jumped the ship at the right moment and they came to a stop not twenty feet from the others. Nice shooting, I thought, although I wouldn't admit it. Murphy came across to the ship and we started unloading the plates.