They sneaked into the solar system that held fabulous old Earth from far outside the ecliptic, where the chance of radar detection was least; they came to a relative dead halt millions of miles from the planet and cautiously scanned the surrounding volume of space with their own radar.
No ships seemed to be in space. Earth’s solar system turned out to be a trivial affair, only five planets, scarcely a half-dozen moons among them. None of the planets except Earth itself was anything like inhabitable.
“Hold tight,” said Ross grimly, “I’m not so good at this fine navigation.” He cautiously applied power along a single vector; the starship leaped and bucked. He corrected with another; and the distant sun swelled in their view plates with frightening rapidity. The alarm beeps bleated furiously, and the automatic cutoff restored all controls to neutral.
Ross, sweating, picked himself up from the floor and staggered back to the panel. Helena said carefully, “You’re doing fine, Ross, but if you’d like me to take over for a minute——”
Ross swallowed his pride and stood back. After one wide-eyed stare of shock—she wasn’t even calculating!—he gripped the loops and closed his eyes and waited for death.
There was a punishing bump and his eyes flew open. Helena was looking at him apologetically. “You would have done it better,” she lied, “but anyway we’re down.”
Ross lied, “Of course, but I’m glad you had the practice. Where—uh, where are we?”
Helena silently showed him the radar plot. Earth, it seemed, had a confusing multiplicity of continents; they were on one in the northern hemisphere, a large one as Earth’s continents went, and smack in the middle of it. It was night on their side of Earth just then; and, by the plot, a largish city was only a dozen or so miles away.
“Okay,” said Ross wearily, “landing party away. Helena, you stay here while Bernie and I——”
Helena said simply, “No.”