Happily, I was taking the last coins out of our machines and counting them while Ma entered the figures in the little red book as I called them out. Nice figures they were.
Yes, we’d had a good play on both of the Sirian planets, Thor and Freda. Especially on Freda. Those little Earth colonies out there are starved to death for entertainment of any kind, and money doesn’ t mean a thing to them. They’d stood in line to get into our tent and push their coins into our machines—so even with the plenty high expenses of the trip we’d done all right by ourselves.
Yes, they were right comforting, those figures Ma was entering. Of course she’d add them up wrong, but then Ellen would straighten it out when Ma finally gave up. Ellen’s good at figures. And got a good one herself, even if I do say it of my only daughter. Credit for that goes to Ma anyway, not to me. I’m built on the general lines of a space tug.
I put back the coin box of the Rocket-Race and looked up. “Ma—” I started to say. Then the door of the pilot’s compartment opened and John Lane stood there. Ellen, across the table from Ma, put down her book and looked up too. She was all eyes and they were shining.
Johnny saluted smartly, the regulation salute which a private ship pilot is supposed to give the owner and captain of the ship. It always got under my skin, that salute, but I couldn’t talk him out of it because the rules said he should do it.
He said, “Object ahead, Captain Wherry.”
“Object?” I queried. “What kind of object?”
You see, from Johnny’s voice and Johnny’s face you couldn’t guess whether it meant anything or not. Mars City Polytech trains ’em to be strictly deadpan and Johnny had graduated magna cum laude. He’s a nice kid but he’d announce the end of the world in the same tone of voice he’d use to announce dinner, if it was a pilot’s job to announce dinner.
“It seems to be a planet, sir,” was all he said.
It took quite awhile for his words to sink in.