He leaned back in the pilot's chair slowly, his grip on the 'Tee' bar lightening and becoming more true. He looked at the beacon star and knew what Chat, Bren, and Scyth were working toward.
It lay there on the center of his panel like a winking flashlight. Lost in the star-field, which showed a myriad of points, some dim cloudy stuff, and a band of milky white, the beacon would have been nothing without that steady wink ... wink ... wink. He, himself, was lost. He had not the foggiest notion of where he was, excepting that Mother Terra must be far behind. Sol, a smallish, yellowish, completely average dwarf would show nothing to call attention to itself from the distance of a few light-years. Yes, somewhere back behind him lay Sol and his planets. But the winking beacon on Dusty's viewpanel was like a banner waved from a distant shore.
No man is alone so long as a lighthouse flashes its message of safety, or warns against danger.
Dusty took a deep breath. "Barb!" he called.
She came up the ladder. "Call me?"
"How's Scyth?" he asked.
"He's doing all right. How're you doing?"
Dusty nodded boyishly. "Look, Maw I'm flyin'," he told her with a chuckle. "Martin Gramer should see me now. This is simple like a duck's ear, and I—"
Barbara screamed and Dusty whipped his head back to look along the direction of her horrified eyes. To the viewpanel.