All but one of them.
And that one blazed, a flaming sun, off toward the left.
Jon Hoff flicked a glance at Joshua and the old man's face was frozen in a mask that was disbelief and fear and something touching horror.
And, he thought, I knew. I knew what it might be like. I had some idea. But he had none at all.
He pulled his eyes from the vision plate and saw the banks of instruments and his stomach seemed to turn over and his fingers were all thumbs.
No time to live with the ship, he told himself. No time to get to know it as it really is. What must be done he must do by intellect alone, by the sketchy knowledge impressed upon his brain—a brain that was not trained or ready, that it might take many years to make trained and ready.
"What are we to do?" Joshua whispered. "Lad, what are we to do?"
And Jon Hoff thought: What are we to do?
He walked slowly forward and mounted the steps to the chair that said NAVIGATOR on the back of it. Slowly he hoisted himself into the chair and it seemed that he sat on the edge of space itself, that he sat upon a precipice from which at any moment he might slip off and tumble into space.
He put his hands down carefully and gripped the chair's arms and hung on tight and fought to orient himself, to know that he sat in a navigator's chair and that in front of him were trips and buttons that he could press or trip and that the pressing and the tripping of them would send signals to the pulsing engine room.