"Made it!" said Stacey.
Paul got up and went over to Nora. "I wasn't running away from you," he said plaintively. "It takes time to get the door open—"
"I forgive you," said Nora with a smile.
Back below them, Westlake said: "You're sure you missed?"
"I'm a master gunner," said the other. "It takes a good gunner to miss a ship that big when it is that close. I missed all right."
Westlake smiled. "We sure made that look good. But God what a job of timing! I thought we were going to have to blow out a tire to keep from catching them!"
[CHAPTER 15]
Once in space and safely away—Paul gloated that the former captors were without spacecraft now—he stopped the flight of the ship and spent a couple of hours making some course-calculations. The return to Latham's Triplets was jerky because he was uncertain of the distance and so they made it in five approximations, ending up finally with only a few hours to go for landing.