"Indeed?" The tone was sarcastic. "Elucidate, Mister Mate."
"It takes us up out of the plane of the ecliptic, then back again beyond the planetoid belt. That's very good, sir, and quite safe, but didn't you omit the fuel consumption factor? The course as plotted gives two shifts of forty-five degrees each, or half a complete stop, as far as fuel is concerned. It would cut down the amount of fuel available for exploration on Pluto to—well, here are the figures as I've worked them out. We'd have about enough for two or three landings. But if we went right through the danger belt of the planetoids as originally planned, we would save enough fuel to really explore the planet. We have to explore thoroughly if we're going to find beryllium there. It won't lie on the surface. Why, it's hardly worth going on at all if we can't do any more exploring than that.... That's my opinion, sir, and I didn't volunteer it, and I ask your pardon in advance."
The great space captain smiled easily. "No need to beg my pardon at all. At first glance one would think you had the right of it, but I just happen to have gone into the matter a little deeper. You understand the reasons behind this voyage? Well, suppose that after having been away for two years we come back right on schedule, but without a load of beryllium, without having found any trace of it. What will happen? The League of Planets simply orders out another expedition, better equipped, and we go down as having failed."
"But Captain! In two years there may not be enough light alloys left on the three planets to build another ship as big as this! The service to Mars will have to be stopped long before that. The lithium mines there can't operate unless the water supply from Venus is maintained."
"Well, what of it? Nobody likes to work in that Martian colony."
Adam caught his breath.
"But how are the atomic motors that do all the work going to operate without the lithium from Mars?"
"And what of that, even? It would be temporary. Just a few months or years till another expedition could be sent out. You take things too seriously. What is there to prove that some other method of armoring space-ships won't be found? Beryllium may not be necessary after all."
"Perhaps you're right." Adam was still skeptical. "But is it likely, sir? You've been on the space run so long you haven't kept up with chemistry. The armor against meteorites now is so thick that any metal but beryllium would double the weight of the vessel, and even with these seven million horsepower Buvier-Manleys we couldn't make the run from Venus to Mars. Why, sir, it would mean the end of the lithium mines, it would mean the end of atomic power, and we'd have to go back to the barbarism of the twentieth century, when they ran everything by electricity from waterfalls!"