"So what? You're talking yourself around a circle, right back to where you started from."
"Only considering the thing from all angles." DuQuesne was unruffled. "We have lots of time, since it will take them quite a while to perfect this formation. To finish the summing up—we want to use this vessel, but is it safe? It is. Why? Because the Fenachrone, having had atomic energy themselves for a long time, are thoroughly familiar with its possibilities and have undoubtedly perfected screens through which no such bomb could penetrate.
"Furthermore, we can install the high-speed drive in this ship in a few days—I gave you all the dope on it over the educator, you know—so that we'll be safe, whatever happens. That's the safest plan, and it will work. So you move the stores and our most necessary personal belongings in here while I'm figuring out an orbit for the Violet. We don't want her anywhere near us, and yet we want her to be within reaching distance while we are piloting this scout ship of ours to the place where she is supposed to be in Plan XB218."
"What are you going to do that for—to give them a chance to knock us off?"
"No. I need a few days to study these brains, and it will take a few days for that battleship mother ship of ours to get into her assigned position, where we can steal her most easily." DuQuesne, however, did not at once remove his headset, but remained standing in place, silent and thoughtful.
"Uh-huh," agreed Loring. "I'm thinking the same thing you are. Suppose that it is Seaton that's got them all hot and bothered this way?"
"The thought has occurred to me several times, and I have considered it at some length," DuQuesne admitted at last. "However, I have concluded that it is not Seaton. For if it is, he must have a lot more stuff than I think he has. I do not believe that he can possibly have learned that much in the short time he has had to work in. I may be wrong, of course; but the immediately necessary steps toward the seizure of that battleship remain unchanged whether I am right or wrong; or whether Seaton was the cause of this disturbance."
When the conversation was thus definitely at an end, Loring again incased himself in his space suit and set to work. For hours he labored, silently and efficiently, at transferring enough of their Earthly possessions and stores to render possible an extended period of living aboard the vessel of the Fenachrone.
He had completed that task and was assembling the apparatus and equipment necessary for the rebuilding of the power plant before DuQuesne finished the long and complex computations involved in determining the direction and magnitude of the force required to give the Violet the exact trajectory he desired. The problem was finally solved and checked, however, and DuQuesne rose to his feet, closing his book of nine-place logarithms with a snap.