Knight couldn't stop his mind quick enough. The Thing caught it in mid-flight, and stopped scrabbling. "So that is why. This is a prison ship and can come only so close to Earth. For a moment, I believed you Earthmen were stronger mentally than you are."
Hell, I should have known, Knight thought. This is the Star Climber. It's never been back to Earth since its maiden launching. It's not a prison ship exactly, just a place to live while you serve out your years of separation from Earth. And only an Earthman can know the poignant loneliness that comes when he is kept from seeing and smelling and hearing the loveliness of the planet that bore him. Five years of an indefinable torture—five years of loneliness and a sense of loss so deep that it brings you from sleep, screaming for Earth like a kid in the dark begs for his mother.
You go aboard the Star Climber or one of her sisters. They load you and supplies aboard. They salute you even in your punishment—you and the others who are serving the same sentences. Just before you step through the spacelock, you look up and see the beauty of Earth above you. You look down at the Moon's dusty plain.
And you set forth on your Odyssey of punishment. You can go anywhere you please. You can settle anywhere—on any planet. You can do anything you damn please so long as you stay half a million miles from Earth for the period of your sentence.
If you come closer than that, the SP ships will blow you into eternity if you do not heed them when their noses are red.
Like now.
Kent Knight strode to the viewplate and clicked it on.
Her nose was red all right. But it was fading, now that the SP's warning was heeded. But there were going to be explanations—the SP commander would come jetting across in his space suit, his regulation four-man guard behind him. "Explain why you have crossed the line," he would say. Our story will have to be good, Thing, Kent Knight thought. Only an emergency will excuse the infraction. And it must be an honest-to-God emergency, or the Star Climber becomes a satellite of some lonely star for twice our original sentence. That should stymie you, Thing.
"Will they take our eyes, Kent?" Sammy asked anxiously, "and tow us to some godforsaken spot and leave us?"
"I hope so, Sammy," Kent Knight breathed and the part of his mind that was his was chuckling at the Thing. It chuckled, too. "An SP ship can go to Earth," it said.