"Better toss out the light bomb. Also radiate radio on the finding frequency. Hatch!"
"Hatch here."
"Hatch, send out a cruiser class thataway and pick 'em up."
Hatch laughed in a brittle tone. "It's been on its way for six minutes, Commodore. Half of our job is done!"
Wilson said, "Good!" and closed his mike. Half of the job was done, but it was, as far as Ted Wilson was concerned, the lesser half. He wanted the lifeship that sheltered Alice Hemingway.
Three hundred ships combing the spaceways with magnetic detectors and radar and eyesight. One ship combing God-knows-what with a half-cooked infrawave gizmo in which nobody had any confidence. One-half of the job done on what was as much a fluke of luck as good management.
And out there in the awful dark Alice was trapped in a space can with a happy-go-lucky hulk of a pilot who lacked the drive and ambition to buck for his own command, no matter how deeply mortgaged, and a small, wiry ruler of industry who bought what he could not command, and knew no more about spacing than Aunt Agatha's pet Siamese tomcat.
Wilson laughed bitterly. A-spacing she had wanted. Now she had it.
Pictures went through Wilson's mind. A picture of Charles Andrews comforting Alice by the force of his personal drive, confident that money could buy anything, including rescue from space. Andrews calming her fears and—it must be chill in the lifeship by now—bringing her the animal comfort of warmth, and offering to take care of her. His wispy arms about her, his bony hands caressing her as he held her head on his shoulder, his—
This picture was replaced by the vision of big indolent collar-ad Pilot Jock Norton. He would be taking over because he alone in that lifeship knew what spacing was all about. Mentally, Wilson could see Andrews a little hysterical because the financier was out of his element, and Norton taking over completely. Maybe Andrews had succumbed to some nervous affliction because of the strain.