"Your pal Haedaecker. He bombed Alpha IV!"
"But—?"
"We'll twist his arm, Grayson. Maybe he'll explain the guy who tried to shoot you to bits on Proxima I. Maybe a lot of other things. Anyway, he's the joker in this deck."
Stacey eyed Paul with a glitter, "D'ye mind if I start going home to my wife?"
Paul snapped off the communications panel entirely. "They've made it," he said. "It'll be complete from now on. And we'll criss-cross this galaxy with radio beacons from star to star and bit by bit until the Z-wave contact is complete between Mother Sol and any of her Colonies."
"Let's take Stacey home," suggested Nora.
Paul turned to the panel and set some switches, adjusted some dials, and threw in the main switch. The floor surged below them and Paul put his eye to the spotting telescope as his ship began to move.
Paul yawned as the minutes passed and the ship gained speed towards Sol, aimed by his watchful eye. Time passed, and Paul, finally released from all of the trouble and worry, began to hum. Eventually he began to sing, in that off-key voice:
"Round and round and round go the deuterons!
Round and round and round the magnet swings 'em!