"It's following a random pattern." Wallace studied his fingernails as he sought for words to make the explanation clear. "The s-tracer will show us when it is out of range—but there's no way for us to know how long it will stay in any one place."
"In other words there will be intervals when it will be directly across the planet from us. But unless it stayed there for close to three hours—the time we'd need to clear the atmosphere—it would pick up our signal as it came around, and run us down?"
"That's about it."
"Then we'll have to take the chance."
"We could. And if we can think of nothing better, we will. But the odds would be heavily against us. Most of its locale changes are made in a shorter period of time than we'd need to get away."
"We can't sit here for two years." Saxton was a man whose high-strung nature demanded action, and was the more inclined of the two to take chances. Wallace preferred weighing influencing factors before making any decision.
"I think we'd better wait," Wallace said. "Perhaps we'll be able to think of something that will give us a better chance."
Saxton pulled the sheet-blanket off his legs irritably, and climbed from the bunk, but he did not argue.
During the morning Saxton killed a small rodent, but found its flesh as inedible as that of the cat. Wallace stayed inside studying the charts and instruments.