“Damn it, I headed in the wrong direction.”
Rioz knew better than to laugh. He said, “How did you do that?”
“It wasn’t my fault. The trouble was the shell was moving way out of the ecliptic. Can you imagine the stupidity of a pilot that can’t work the release maneuver decently? How was I to know? I got the distance of the shell and let it go at that. I just assumed its orbit was in the usual trajectory family. Wouldn’t you? I started along what I thought was a good line of intersection and it was five minutes before I noticed the distance was still going up. The pips were taking their sweet time returning. So then I took the angular projections of the thing, and it was too late to catch up with it.”
“Any of the other boys getting it?”
“No. It’s ’way out of the ecliptic and’ll keep on going forever. That’s not what bothers me so much. It was only an inner shell.
But I hate to tell you how many tons of propulsion I wasted getting up speed and then getting back to station. You should have heard Canute.”
Canute was Richard Swenson’s brother and partner.
“Mad, huh?” said Rioz.
“Mad? Like to have killed me! But then we’ve been out five months now and it’s getting kind of sticky. You know.”
“I know.”