Ahead, the moon's brilliant disk, almost completely illumined by the sun, gleamed calm and white amid the throbbing fires of the encircling stars. Evans and Seaworth contemplated its beauty with a silent wonder that not even long familiarity with the sight could dull. Calden, meantime, was calmly checking over dials and controls, while Hartley had already gone below to sleep against the next watch at the controls. This vital station was filled by the craft's three officers in successive watches of four hours each.
In the hours that followed, Evans felt slipping away from him the hope that he had cherished of meeting the Hawk in straight battle in mid-space. Since Commander Cain's warning to him, he had persuaded himself that because of Seaworth's presence the Hawk might really attack. Like all others in the Earth-Guard, Evans desired nothing more ardently than a final battle with the elusive and dreaded corsair.
But though the lookouts at every one of the great rocket's observation-cells kept an unceasing watch through the void, no sign of the black rocket was to be seen. The Earth-Guard ship might have been alone in space, had it not twice caught sight of great cargo-rockets plowing their way moonward in the slower space-lanes, and once passed an earth-bound Earth-Guard craft closely enough in a neighboring lane to exchange with it a flashing "Salute" signal in passing.
When Evans ascended to the pilot-house for his third watch at the controls, thirty-two hours after their start from earth, the moon's gleaming sphere was huge in the heavens before them.
"A dozen hours more and we'll be there," he commented disappointedly to Hartley and Seaworth, as he relieved the former at the controls. "I guess there's no chance of your wreaking your wrath on the Hawk this trip, Hartley."
"I told you it was crazy to think he'd tackle us," Hartley rejoined, "though I admit I've been hoping he would."
"Well, I haven't," Seaworth told them, grinning. "It may be just play to you lads in the Earth-Guard, but the Hawk nearly settled me twice and I hate to think what he'd do if he got me now."
"No danger," Evans told him as Seaworth followed the yawning Hartley down out of the pilot-house. "We'll have you safe and sound on the moon in a half day more, and if you can nab the Hawk there, it'll punish him for not showing up this trip."
Left alone in the pilot-house, Evans sat at the control-board with eyes glancing from one to another of the recording dials above it. Now and then he depressed a firing-lever, firing one of the rocket's side tubes to keep it from leaving its proper space-lane, but for the most part the great craft hurtled steadily onward in its course, and he occupied himself in contemplating through the windows the moon's bright sphere and the dazzling light-patches on it that marked the position of the lunar cities.