"Yes, sir," said Tom. He reached in and quickly pulled out one of the two remaining slips.
"Number six," he said quietly. "I stay."
Connel, not bothering to open the last one, slapped the hat on his head and turned away.
"But, sir," said Tom, "I—ah—"
Connel cut him off with a wave of his hands. "No [buts]!" He turned to the others. "Manning, Higgins! Get me a course back to Junior and make it clean and straight. Astro, Shinny, stand by on the power deck for course change. Tom, get on the control deck. We're going back to snatch a hot copper filling right out of a sun's teeth!"
Once again the energy of the six spacemen was burned in twenty-four hour stretches of improvisation and detailed calculations. Roger and Alfie redesigned the fuse to ensure perfect co-ordination of the explosions. Astro and Shinny surpassed their previous efforts by putting enough power in the five small reaction units to more than do the job required. Tom, standing long watches on the control deck, devoted his spare time to the torturous equations that would mean failure or success to the whole project. And Major Connel, alert and alive once more, drove his crew toward greater goals than it had achieved before.
Nearly three days later, the Polaris appeared over the twin oceans of Tara and glided into an orbit just beyond the pull of the planet's gravity. Aboard the spaceship, last-minute preparations were made by the red-eyed spacemen.
In constant contact with Space Academy, using the resources of the Academy's scientific staff to check the more difficult calculations, the six men on the Polaris worked on.
Connel appeared on the radar bridge and flipped on the long-range scanner.
"Have to find out where Junior is," he said to Roger and Alfie.