Channing snarled and thrust the power lever down to the last notch. The little ship leaped upward under 5-1/2-G, and was gone from sight in less than a minute.
Arden shook her head. "What was that message you sent to Franks?" she asked.
"I told him that there was a wild-eyed pirate on the loose, and that he might make a stab at the Station. We are coming in as soon as we can get there and to be on the lookout for us on the landing communications radio, and also for anything untoward in the nature of space vessels."
"Then this is not exactly a shock," said Arden, waving the message from Murdoch.
"Not exactly," said Channing dryly. "Now look, Arden, you go to sleep. This'll take hours and hours, and gabbing about it will only lay you out cold."
"I feel fine," objected Arden.
"I know, but that's the gravanol, not you. The tape will keep you intact, and the gravanol will keep you awake without pain or nausea. But you can't get something for nothing, Arden, and when that gravanol wears off, you'll spend ten times as long with one tenth of the trouble you might have had. So make it easy for yourself now and later you'll be glad that you aren't worse."
The sky blackened, and Channing knew that they were free in space. Give them another fifteen minutes and the devil himself couldn't find them. With no flight plan scheduled and no course posted, they might as well have been in the seventeenth dimension. As they emerged from the thin atmosphere, there was a fleeting flash of fire from several miles to the East, but Channing did not pay particular attention to it. Arden looked through a telescope, and said that she thought that she saw a spaceship circling, but that she could not be sure.
Whatever it was, nothing came of it.