John kissed Enid adequately, and said: "Stay healthy."
Enid laughed and said: "Stay whole!"
And then McBride was in the Haywire Queen and the air lock was cracked. The big ship lifted gently and zipped out of the lock with a casual disregard for distances. Unlike Drake's precision take-off, the Haywire Queen went through the open door with the air of wanting to leave quickly because there were better things to do than worry about hitting the center plus or minus an inch.
Enid pointed out the Dog Star to John McBride, Junior. "That's where your daddy is going," she told him. Junior McBride was more interested in the teething bone that he had clamped between toothless gums, than he was in the stellar regions.
He knew his daddy would be back.
The Haywire Queen approached and passed the speed of light from the hard side, and her terrific velocity dropped down to a figure that was expressible in miles per second without running out of zeroes. Below, and thirty degrees from the axis of the ship, Sirius and the Dark Companion beckoned from less than a thousand million miles. The lower dome of the ship sported the faces of the men, who were laying on their stomachs, looking down at the splendor of the first binary ever seen by man. Hammond mentioned it, as a matter of fact.