"True, but it's better than Gallileo had." He hoped Webber wouldn't point out that Gallileo hadn't tried to plot a voyage across space with his instrument.
Actually there was something strange about the few observations he'd made. He had reconstructed their path to the best of his ability—not a bad guess since no records had been kept. At the time they had left Sol they hadn't been heading directly toward the Centauris. Nona must have used their tangential motion to take them out of the system as fast as she could and later had looped back toward their present destination. The sketchy charts Docchi had, indicated the Centauris by plus or minus a few degrees, all the accuracy he could expect from the telescope. It was in the stars themselves that he had detected changes he couldn't account for.
At the far side a woman stood. Jordan nodded to her. "I wasn't asked for my opinion about all this," she said defiantly. "I don't like it. I want to go back."
Jordan cocked his head humorously. "You should have told the guards this while they were here. They'd have been glad to take you with them."
"I certainly wouldn't leave with them," she said in surprise. "Look how they acted while they were here."
"I'm afraid you're out of luck. We can't turn back because of you."
"Don't tell me we're marooned here," said the woman vehemently. "The guards left a couple of scout ships, didn't they? Why can't we take those back to Earth?"
"For the same reason they didn't," said Jordan patiently. "The range of the scouts is limited, it wouldn't reach then and it won't do it now."
"Pshaw," said the woman. "You're just arguing. Docchi said the gravity generator in each ship could be changed to a drive without much work—something about adding a little star encyclopedia unit. I think that's what he said."
Docchi started. Had he said that? He must have for the woman to have remembered it. He shouldn't have made such a statement, first because it wasn't so. He had made the possibility of return to Earth seem too easy.