"The only way, I guess. You can't do it hit-or-miss. I'm damn glad we've got plenty of stuff in our Op field and plenty of hydride for the engines. The horses will all know they've been at work before they get the field filled up again."
"So will you, Junior, believe me.... Ready, all? Start blasting."
Then, for three hours, the Pleiades moved slowly—for her—along a plotted and automatically-controlled course. It was very easy to tell where she had been; the sharply-cut, evenly-spaced, symmetrical pits left by the Galaxian's full-conversion blasts were entirely different from the irregularly-cratered, ages-old original surface.
"Knock off, Brownie," Garlock said then. "Go eat all you can hold and get some sleep. Come back in three hours. Jim, cut our speed to seventy-five percent."
Lola shed her scanner, heaved a tremendous sigh of relief, and disappeared.
Three silent hours later—all three were too intensely busy to think of anything except the work in hand—Lola came back.
"Take Belle's swath, Brownie. Okay, Belle, you can lay off. Three hours."
"I'll stay," Belle declared. "Go yourself; or send Jim."
"Don't be any more of a damn fool than you have to. I said beat it."
"And I said I wouldn't. I'm just as good...."