"We don't know," Cleveland snapped back, "and we don't know where you are, either. Can't figure anything without data. I see you're still breathing air. Where are the Nevians? How much time have we got yet?"
"Not enough, I'm afraid. By the looks of things they will be within range of us in a couple of hours, and you haven't even touched our detector screen yet."
"A couple of hours!" In his relief Cleveland shouted the words. "That's time to burn—we can be just about out of the Galaxy in that...." He broke off at a yell from Rodebush.
"Broadcast, Spud, BROADCAST!" the physicist had cried, as Costigan's image had disappeared utterly from his plate.
He cut off the Boise's power, stopping her instantaneously in mid-space, but the connection had been broken. Costigan could not possibly have heard the orders to change his beam signal to a broadcast, so that they could pick it up; nor would it have done any good if he had heard and had obeyed. So immeasurably great had been their velocity that they had flashed past the speedster and were now unknown thousands—or millions—of miles beyond the fugitives they had come so far to help; far beyond the range of any possible broadcast. But Cleveland understood instantly what had happened. He now had a little data upon which to work, and his hands flew over the keys of the calculator.
"Back blast, at maximum, seventeen seconds!" he directed crisply. "Not exact, of course, but that will put us close enough so that we can find 'em with our detectors."
For the calculated seventeen seconds the super-ship retraced her path, at the same awful speed with which she had come so far. The blast expired and there, plainly limned upon the observation plates, was the Nevian speedster.
"As a computer, you're good, Cleve," Rodebush applauded. "So close that we can't use the neutralizers to catch him. If we use one dyne of drive we'll overshoot a million kilometers before I could snap the switch."
"And yet he's so far away and going so fast that if we keep our inertia on it'll take all day at full blast to overtake—no, wait a minute—we could never catch him." Cleveland was puzzled. "What to do? Shunt in a potentiometer?"
"No, we don't need it." Rodebush turned to the transmitter. "Costigan! We are going to take hold of you with a very light tractor—a tracer, really—and whatever you do, DON'T CUT IT, or we can't reach you in time. It may look like a collision, but it won't be—we'll just touch you, without even a jar."