"Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it is a comet, and quite close—it's got a little bit of a dim tail."
Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and, blond head pressed close to brown, the two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer of the void.
"That's it, I just know it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer, you're a blinding flash and a deafening report!"
"Yeah—missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," he replied, grinning, "and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stations for being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse—I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it." He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became manageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.
"Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve—this is much better!" she exclaimed.
"Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're a spacehound just the same—you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.
Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his course sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made careful readings.
"That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, and he reduced their negative acceleration by a third. "There—we'll be just about traveling with it when we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P. of my bosom, our supper's been on minus time for hours. What say we shake it up?"
"I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking the savory Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before.
"Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"