I wasn't worried. I can be awfully sure of myself when I'm around anything mechanical, from an inch-high rheostat to the guide lines on a sixty-foot control board.
The ship had the right feel about her. I'd have trusted my life to her, but Pete kept sniffing like he could smell the odor of charred flesh. To make him feel better I thumped him on the back and told him not to worry, that he'd appreciate what a fine ship she was when he saw the green Earth filling the viewpane, misty with spring rains. He'd lived alone so long he'd become suspicious of everything.
Eaten up by his own fears, tormented by shadows, an old man before his time. Some of my confidence seemed to seep into him as I talked. He didn't look so old when he looked up.
He was sitting on a bulkhead chronometer, which meant that time was ticking away right under him. He was a dead ringer for old Father Time himself, but for an instant as he returned my stare there was a strange look in his eyes. As though he'd shrugged off his woes, and was gazing straight back across the years at his lost youth.
"Maybe you're right, Jim," he said. "When do we take off?"
"Before the yardmaster visiphones Callisto City to find out if I really did make a killing last night!" I told him.
I was standing close to the control board, my thumb on the oscillatory circuit. There are two ways of starting an atomotor. You can test out the strength of the circuit by letting the power drum through the board before you give the dial a full turn.
Or you can switch the power on full blast, reaching peak in ten seconds and letting the ship do its own testing. I liked the second way best. A ship that can't absorb the shock of a take-off at sixty gravities will almost certainly fly apart in space.
I switched the power on full strength. From the corner of one eye I had a brief, soul-satisfying glimpse of Pete stiffening in utter consternation. A mean trick to play on a pal? No. I don't think so. I wasn't asking him to take the plunge alone. I was sharing the risks, and I was doing him a favor.
When you're taking a swim you just prolong the agony by sitting around on a diving raft wriggling your toes in the icy water. It's best to jump right in, and get it over with.