"To nineteen decimals," he declared. "You couldn't squeeze another frank into our accumulators with a proof-bar, and since they're sending us all the power we want to draw, we won't need to touch our batteries or tap our own beam until we're almost to Jupiter. To cap the climax, what it takes to make big medicine on those spherical friends of ours, we've got. We're not sitting on top of the world, ace—we've perched exactly at the apex of the entire universe!"
"How long is it going to take?"
"Don't know. Haven't figured it yet, but it'll be beaucoup days," and the two wanderers from far-distant Earth settled down to the routine of a long and uneventful journey.
They gave Saturn and his spectacular rings a wide berth and sped on, with ever-increasing velocity. Past the outer satellites, on and on, the good ship Forlorn Hope flew into the black-and-brilliant depths of interplanetary space. Saturn was an ever-diminishing disk beneath them: above them was Jupiter's thin crescent, growing ever larger and more bright, and the Monarch of the Solar System, remaining almost stationary day after day, increasing steadily in apparent diameter and in brilliance.
Although the voyage from Titan to Ganymede was long, it was not monotonous, for there was much work to be done in the designing and fabrication of the various units which were to comprise the ultra-radio transmitting station. In the various compartments of the Forlorn Hope there were sundry small motors, blowers, coils, condensers, force-field generators, and other items which Stevens could use with little or no alteration; but for the most part he had to build everything himself. Thus it was that time passed quickly; so quickly that Jupiter loomed large and the Saturnian beam of power began to attenuate almost before the Terrestrials realized that their journey was drawing to an end.
"Our beam's falling apart fast," Stevens read his meters carefully, then swung his communicator beam toward Jupiter. "We aren't getting quite enough power to hold our acceleration at normal—think I'll cut now, while we're still drawing enough to let the Titanians know we're off their beam. We've got lots of power of our own now; and we're getting pretty close to enemy territory, so they may locate that heavy beam. Have you found Ganymede yet?"
"Yes, it will be on the other side of Jupiter by the time we get there. Shall I detour, or put on a little more negative and wait for it to come around to this side?"
"Better wait, I think. The farther away we stay from Jupiter and the major satellites, the better."
"All x—it's on. Suppose we'd better start standing watches, in case some of them show up?"
"No use," he dissented. "I've been afraid to put out our electromagnetic detectors, as they could surely trace them in use. Without them, we couldn't spot an enemy ship even if we were looking right at it, except by accident; since they won't be lighted up and it's awfully hard to see anything out here, anyway. We probably won't know they're within a million kilometers until they put a beam on us. Barkovis says that this mirror will reflect any beam they can use, and I've already got a set of photo-cells in circuit to ring an alarm at the first flash off of our mirror plating. I'd like to get in the first licks myself, but I haven't been able to dope out any way of doing it. So you might as well sleep in your own room, as usual, and I'll camp here right under the panel until we get to Ganymede. There's a couple of little things I just thought of, though, that may help some; and I'm going to do 'em right now."