"About a half million miles out," he said after a moment's thought. "But the important thing is that we're on our way but your pilot doesn't know where he's going."
"Can you strike a line between Terra and Polaris at a distance of three hundred million miles?"
"Duck soup," replied Farradyne. "But how fast?"
"Zero with respect to Terra at three hundred million."
"Let's go up and start computing," he suggested. "I'll construct you some grub after we get the first approximation and get the ship on the preliminary correction course."
He led her up to the course computer in the control room, where she added the time of rendezvous to the rest of the figures. He plunked at the keyboard steadily for a minute, then sat back while the calculator machine went through the program of arithmetical operations for which it was designed. He took the punched paper strip from the machine and fed it into the autopilot, and then said, "Now we'll go below and eat."
"You haven't been waiting for me, have you?"
He nodded, hoping that he looked a bit lovesick.
"You shouldn't have."
She led him below and eyed the dirty dishes with womanly amusement. "You're a sweet sort of liar, Charles," she said, turning and coming into his arms.