"Channing didn't know we'd be looking for him, or he'd probably light a flare, too. Cheer up, Jimmy, after all this crude, electrical rigamarole is finished, and we gotta get right down to the last millimeter, it's the guy with the eye that polishes up the job. You'll have your turn."
Twenty minutes after the first glimmer of intelligent signal, the Relay Girl lifted from the South End and darted off at an angle, setting her nose roughly in the direction of the signal.
Her holds were filled with spare batteries and a whole dozen replacement cathodes as well as her own replacements. Her crew was filled to the eyebrows with gravanol, and there must have been a mile of adhesive tape and cotton on their abdomens. At 6-G she left, and at 6-G she ran, her crew immobilized but awake because of the gravanol. And though the acceleration was terrific, the tape kept the body from folding of its own weight. When they returned, they would all be in the hospital for a week, but their friends would be with them.
Ten minutes after take-off, the signals ceased.
Walt said: "Keep her running. Don's saving electricity. Tell me when we pick him up again."
Franklen, the pilot, nodded. "We haven't got a good start yet. It'll be touch and go. According to the slipstick boys, they must be clapping it up at between twenty-five hundred and five thousand miles per second to get that far—and coasting free or nearly so. Otherwise they'd have come in. Any suggestions as to course?"
"Sure. Whoop it up at six until we hit about six thousand. Then decelerate to four thousand by using 1-G. We'll vacillate in velocity between four and five until we get close."
Forty-one hours later, the Relay Queen made turnover and began to decelerate.
Channing said to Captain Johannson: "Better cut the decel to about a quarter-G. That'll be enough to keep us from bumping our heads on the ceiling and it will last longer. This is going to be a long chase, and cutting down a few MPS at a half-G isn't going to make much never-mind. I'll hazard a guess that the boys are on their way right now."