"Yes, sir," said Roger. "There's just enough to get down." Roger sent the craft in a shallow dive. Suddenly the rockets cut out. The last of the fuel was gone. Roger glided the jet boat to a smooth stop on the night side of the planetoid.
"How much longer before the reactor units go up?" asked Shinny.
Connel turned, thinking he had heard something on the communicators, then answered Shinny's question. "Only four hours," he said.
The crew of spacemen climbed out of the jet boat into the still blackness of the night side of the planet. There wasn't anything left to do.
They sat around on the hard surface of the planet, staring at the strange stars overhead.
"You know," said Astro, "I might be able to set up something to convert some of the U235 in the reactors to fuel the jet boat."
"Impossible, Astro," said Alfie. "You'd need a reduction gear. And not only that, but you haven't any tools to handle the mass. If you opened one of those boxes, you'd be fried immediately by the radiation!"
"Alfie's right," said Connel. "There's nothing to do but wait."
Major Connel turned his face up as far as he could in the huge fish-bowl helmet to stare at the sky. His eyes wandered from star cluster to star cluster, from glowing Regulus, to bright and powerful Sirius. He stifled a sigh. How much he had wanted to see more—and more—and more of the great wide, high, and deep! He remembered his early days as a youth on his first trip to Luna City; his first sensation at touching an alien world; his skipper, old, wise, and patient, who had given him his creed as a spaceman: "Travel wide, deep, and high," the skipper had said to the young Connel, "but never so far, so wide, or so deep as to forget that you're an Earthman, or how to act like an Earthman!" Even now, years later, the gruff voice rang in his ears. It wasn't long after that that he had met Shinny. Connel smiled behind the protection of his helmet, as he looked at the wizened spaceman, who was now old and toothless, but who still had the same merry twinkle in his eye that Connel had noticed the first time he saw him. Connel had signed on as first officer on a deep spacer bound for Titan. Shinny had come aboard and reported to Connel as rocketman. Shinny had promptly started roaring through the passageways of the huge freighter in his nightshirt singing snatches of old songs at the top of his voice. It had taken Connel four hours to find where Shinny had hidden the bottle of rocket juice! Connel laughed. He looked over at the old man fondly.
