The chief analyst was waiting for him. "We have everything you need, Lieutenant, except the orbital stuff. We'll do the best we can on that and have a good estimate in a few minutes. Meanwhile, you can mark up your figures. Incidentally, what power are you going to use to move the asteroid?"
"Nuclear explosions," Rip said, and saw the chief's eyes pop. He added, "With conventional chemical fuel for corrections."
He felt rising excitement. The whole ship seemed to have come to life. There was excited tension in the computer room when he went in with the chief. Spacemen, all mathematicians, were waiting for him. As the chief led him to a table, they gathered around him.
Rip took command. "Here's what we're after. I need to plot an orbit that will get us out of the asteroid belt without any collisions, take us as close to the sun as possible without having it capture us, and land us in space about ten thousand miles from earth. From then on I'll throw the asteroid into a braking ellipse around the earth and I'll be able to make any small corrections necessary."
He spread out a solar system chart and marked in the positions of the planets as of that moment, using the daily almanac. Then he put down the position of the asteroid, taking it from the paper the chief analyst handed him.
"Will you make assignments, Chief?"
The chief shook his head. "Make them yourself, Lieutenant. We're at your service."
Rip felt a little ashamed of some of the unkind things he had said about spacemen. "Thank you." He pointed to a spaceman. "Will you calculate the inertia of the asteroid, please?" The spaceman hurried off.
"First thing to do is plot the orbit as though there were no other bodies in the system," Rip said. "Where's Santos?"
"Here, sir." The corporal had come in unnoticed with Rip's reference books.