For he couldn't take the chance. He couldn't take the chance that they would sight him and run him down and not let him go back to the control room.
But the time would come before too long when he'd have to take a chance—when he'd have to make the dash. For before another day was gone he might he too weak to make it. And there were many days ahead before they reached Planet II.
The time would come when he'd have no choice. That he could stick it out was impossible. If he did not get food and water, he'd be a useless, crawling hulk with the strength and mind gone out of him by the time they reached the planet.
He went back to the control board and looked things over and it seemed to be all right. The ship still was building up velocity. The monitor on the computator was clocking its blue light and chuckling to itself, saying everything's all right, everything's all right.
Then he went back down the steps and to the corner where he'd been sleeping. He lay down and curled himself into a ball, trying to squeeze his belly together so it wouldn't nag him so and shut his eyes and tried to go to sleep.
With his ear against the metal he could hear the pulsing of the engines far back in their room—the song of power that ran through all the ship. And he remembered how he had thought a man might have to live with a ship to run her. But it hadn't turned out that way, although he could see how a man might learn to live with a ship, how a ship might become a part of him.
He dozed off and woke, then dozed off again—and this time there was a voice shouting and someone hammering at the door.
He came to his feet in one lithe motion, scrambled for the door, the key already in his fist, stabbing at the lock.
He jerked the door open and Mary stumbled in. She carried a great square can in one hand and a huge sack in the other and boiling down the corridor toward the door was a running mob that brandished clubs and screamed.
Jon reached down and hauled Mary clear, then slammed the door and locked it. He heard the running bodies thud against the door and then the clubs pounding at it and the people screaming.