"I used to think I did," she answered, shortly.
He saw pain darken her blue eyes and decided to probe no further. Instead, he wandered about, inspecting the instruments. A few minutes later, with a spaceman's indefinable alertness, he felt a change in the ship.
"They still aboard?" he called to Truesdale, who remained at the door although Brecken had disappeared.
The youth glanced over his shoulder but did not trouble to reply. Phillips' jaw set, and he took a quick step toward the other. Before he reached the doorway, however, Brecken returned from the corridor. Shouldering Truesdale aside, he strode into the control room. "Well," he announced, "the old fool hopped off like he said. Got a viewer in here?"
"I have it on now," called Donna from the instrument desk. "There he goes."
They gathered around the screen to watch. Near one edge was the image of another ship, with several spacesuited figures clustered around its entrance port. The girl made an adjustment, and the view crept over to the center of the screen just as the last of the figures vanished into the opening. Almost immediately, the other rocket slanted away on a new course.
Donna followed it on the screen until the brief flashes of its jets were dimmed by a new radiance—the ruddy disk of Mars. "We are where he said," she admitted. "Now what?"
She looked at Phillips, who merely shrugged. "What do you make of it?" she insisted.
"Pretty much as he said, probably," answered the engineer. "He's heading for Deimos, I suppose. I hear they're landscaping the whole moon—it's only about five miles in diameter—and building a new space station for a radio beacon and relay."
"Does that log say anything about the plague ship?" asked Truesdale nervously.