Virgil leaped to the crane controls. The powerful electromagnet rolled along the high mono-rail and fell into position above the slack copter blades. The rotor was unlocked and the magnet lifted it lightly into the air and deposited it across the room. The magnet dropped hungrily down on the slick new blades.
"What are you kids doing in here?" Jonathan asked automatically as he worked. He glanced at the ship set in its cradle. "Oh, looks like a space ship of some kind. Ancient model though, isn't it? Klee was telling me you were tinkering around out here at something." He reached up to guide the rotor as it came swinging down. "I remember when I was a kid. Always fussing around with things. Built an amphibious car when I was about your age, Virgil." He grinned across the room at Lanya over the copter blades. "I was the envy of our city ... until Joe Morgan got an expensive custom-built job from his father. What do you two expect to do with that ship when it's finished? Explore the solar system?" He chuckled at his own crude joke.
"We expect to rocket to Earth," said Lanya, who was unaccustomed to lying and thought that an answer to this question was necessary. Virgil scowled at her darkly.
"Earth, eh?" Jonathan said in a way that indicated he was preoccupied and hadn't grasped the significance of the words at all. "Easy there, Virgil ... all right. Off!" The power left the magnet and it floated up to the ceiling and locked into position.
Virgil looked immensely relieved, but Lanya was puzzled. Their father never seemed to hear a word they said. It was this indifference to the importance of their existence that was the cause of their bold resolve. Maybe running away from home was a good thing to do. Maybe they wouldn't be taken for granted after that.
"The kids seem to be building a space ship out in the shop," their father said that evening as he watched the newscast on the telescreen. "Said they were going to Jupiter or some place." He lapsed into silence to follow the announcement on the telescreen.
"Earth," Lanya corrected from the floor where she was idly fitting together a chain reaction with a three-dimensional atom construction kit. It was an old toy she had long ago outgrown but, because of her father's indifference, she had none of the more advanced educational-therapy play-things.
Klee smiled indulgently. "That's nice," she said. "Have a good time. Jonathan, who was that economist I thought so much of last year?"
"You mean Gulgjar?"