"No, we don't think it was Terrans," he said as he unstrapped. But before he could get out of the seat, they heard the lockdoor mechanisms working, and knew Jak was coming inboard, so the two stayed in the control room. Jon answered his mother's anxious questions as best he could.
Jak soon came running in and the two boys held a quick council, almost ignoring their mother in the excitement of trying to figure a safe way of bringing some of the fuel-stuff aboard and trying it out.
But at last she made herself heard. "I think you should wait and let Mr. C. decide about this," she said with determination.
"How is he—awake?"
"About the same—still unconscious."
"Then don't you see, Mom, that there's no telling when he'll wake up, and we don't want to wait that long?"
"I still say you mustn't take the chance of blowing us all to Kingdom Come before you can have his advice and help in deciding what to do with that new, untried and dangerous metal," she declared so firmly that they could not ignore her. "Now you listen to your mother. This is once when I'm setting my foot down. I will not let you do it!"
Nor could their pleas move her.
"All right, Mother," Jak finally conceded defeat with—if the truth must be told—an inner sense of relief. He, too, had been more than a little afraid of that untried stuff. But Jon had seemed so sure, while he knew very little about it. "We'll leave it here while we go set our markers on the other planets."
"Unless Pop wakes up before we're finished here," Jon added sullenly, somewhat humiliated because he felt his mother was treating him like a little boy instead of the man and scientist he now considered himself to be. "When he does, though, you'll see he'll say we should have tried it."