He released the key and the screen automatically reoriented itself to primary position—on course. The stars showing before him were actually almost directly above his head, allowing for "yaw" due to offset angular acceleration.
Eighty hours to reversal. A hundred more of "descent" to Vega IX. Will Archer shrugged. Eight days between him and the fanciest fleshpots in the system. With a little more squirt—say about one-point-six G, which anybody but a cardiac case could easily stand—they could cut the trip in half, and sit down with juice to spare. But the freak-chasers loved comfort, and with all those specimens to drool over, they'd probably just as soon start for Sol III on chem-drive! Well, they or their sponsors were footing the bill, so—
The concave screen suddenly flickered to fifth position, showing a 120° range of the firmament, rotated 90° clockwise, to the pilot's left. At the same time, a buzzer started droning, and a yellow light blinked on the gauge panel to his right.
Toward one side of the screen, the great disc of Vega, selectively dimmed in projection, glowed like a blue-white moon. Near the center, a twelve-inch ring of light appeared and began to move slowly to the right. Whatever the ring indicated was too small and too distant to see, but to the unaided judgment its motion bore a disturbing resemblance to a collision course.
Evidently the detector-system thought otherwise, or a red light would be flashing instead of a yellow one, an all-quarters alarm-bell would be sounding instead of a buzzer, and the controls would have operated automatically to deflect the ship by a safe margin—or to the limit of its occupants' capacity to absorb shock. Fortunately, such instances were vanishingly rare: space is incredibly roomy.
Beneath the yellow blinker, a set of clicking meters recorded the flight components of the foreign object. Its direction cosines were changing slowly in a characteristically orbital manner; the object was probably a ship approaching the planet, although its velocity was a bit high for this proximity. But that was another pilot's worry.
The ring was moving faster now, approaching the edge of the field. Just as it touched, it disappeared, and the screen flashed to first position. The ring reappeared at far left, shifted to the right with gathering speed. It swung past the center with a rush, slowed down again, and reached the far edge as the screen reoriented to third position. Very slowly now, the ring moved out from the left side of the field.
The nearest distance of the respective courses had been about 45 miles; of the ships themselves, about 70. The ring drifted on toward the center of the screen and seemed to hover there.
Will Archer looked back at the meters and shook his head. Too fast by far. And the negative acceleration was only a fraction of a G—wait a minute! He stared at the meter in question. Its reading was positive!