"Yeah. I've been looking for her—and I'm as big a dope as you. I wanted to offer her the chance to pilot the Haywire Queen out there. I couldn't find her in the inner system and so I was going to take a squint at Pluto. I stopped off to ask if you'd care to take the run with me."
"You know I would."
"Well, that takes care of both answers. Drake is on her way—shucks, she's there already—and the second part is you—and you want to go."
"I'll ask Enid," said McBride. "Come on, we'll go right down and see her now."
Enid McBride smiled. "His asking me is a matter of form," she told Hammond. "Naturally he'll go. I think it will be swell for him to go. He needs a vacation anyway."
"But—"
"No buts. You'll go and like it. I wouldn't want you to miss anything like this for the world."
"How about you?"
Enid smiled again. "I'm no pioneer type, John. You know that. I'd be out of place—and what would John Junior do? Oh, we could leave him with Anna, if I wanted to go, but somehow this is as far as I care to get from home—my folk's home, I mean. It's funny how after seven years a woman still speaks of her parents' home as her home in spite of the fact that she has a home and family of her own."