he Hawk pursed his lips slightly, and for a little while he looked away and did not answer. When his voice came, it was tinged with bitterness.
"Eliot," he said, "I've been trying to find an excuse for my lapse. But there is none. It was the blunder of a novice, my not remembering to question Ku Sui about that secret panel. That was the cardinal point, yet it slipped my mind, in my preoccupation with the emergencies connected with the restoration of the brains.
"Our chances are only fair, Eliot; I'm telling you frankly how it appears to me. I believe we'll be pursued, and if we are the odds are greatly against us. The asteroid's far more powerful than we. And Jupiter only knows what new offensive resources Ku Sui may have given it: I had no time to study the several strange mechanisms I saw in its control room. Then, no nearby patrol ship would help us if we were attacked, for to them our enemy would be invisible, and they'd think us crazy."
He paused. But seeing the somber expression on the other's face, he smiled and cuffed him on the back.
"But maybe we won't even be pursued, Eliot! Maybe we'll be too far ahead for them to catch us! No doubt I've made it look too serious, so cheer up! We're alive, we've got everything we wanted, and we're hitting at full speed for Earth! And you know the luck of that space-adventurer they call the Hawk!"
Leithgow smiled gently in answer, then left the cabin for the sleep he needed so badly. Hawk Carse was left alone on watch in the fleeing Sandra.
A lonely, intent figure, he stood over the chart-table, working out their best course to Earth. Presently, however, he went back to the infra-red electelscope and swept it over the leagues behind. Carse could not detect any sign of the asteroid, but he remained for a little while at the eyepiece, staring at Satellite III. There it lay, a diminishing globe, three-quarters of it gleaming in the light flung by Jupiter. Dark patches mottled it: they would be the jungles. And there was the scintillant sheet that was the Great Briney Lake, with Port o' Porno nearby. On the other side of the little world, now, lay the hill containing Leithgow's laboratory. All going ... going ... falling swiftly behind. Satellite III, scene of so many clashes, plots and counter-plots, where so many times he and Eliot Leithgow had fought off the reaching hand of Ku Sui—soon it would be a million miles away. What adventures would he have before he saw it again?...
A little sound came from the Hawk, a half-sigh. Abruptly he called one of the men on his watch and stationed him at the 'scope, and then he returned to the chart-table and the work of calculating their course to Earth.