“Oh!” Joan’s thought soared high. “So Margie may work yet, if we wait a while?”
“Check. Browning can’t take the ship away from you, can he?”
“No. Nobody can do anything until the job is done or I punch that red ‘stop’ button there. D’you suppose she can do it? Storm? How long can we wait?”
“Half an hour, I’d say. No, to settle the point definitely, let’s wait until I can get a full ten-second prediction and see what Margie’s doing about the situation then.”
“Wonderful! But in that case, it might be a good idea for you to be looking at the chart, don’t you think?” she asked, pointedly. His eyes, at the moment, were looking directly into hers, from a distance of approximately twelve inches.
“I’ll look at it later, but right now I’m. . . .”
The ship quivered under the terrific, the unmistakable trip-hammer blow of propellant heptadetonite. Unobserved by either of the two scientists most concerned, the sigma curve had, momentarily, become a trifle less irregular. The point of the saw-tooth wave had touched the zero line. Margie had acted. The visiplate, from which the heavily-filtered glare of the vortex had blazed so long, went suddenly black.
“She did it, Storm!” Joan’s thought was a mental shriek of pure joy. “She really worked!”
Whether, when the ship went free, Joan pulled Storm down to her merely to anchor him, or for some other reason; whether Cloud grabbed her merely in lieu of a safety-line or not; which of the two was first to put arms around the other; these are moot points impossible of decision at this date. The fact is, however, that the two scientists held a remarkably unscientific pose for a good two minutes before Joan thought that she ought to object a little, just on general principles. Even then, she did not object with her mind; instead she put up her block and used her voice.
“But, after all, Storm,” she began, only to be silenced as beloved women have been silenced throughout the ages. She cut her screen then, and her mind, tender and unafraid, reached out to his.