"She'll take it," Kelly said, with a boyish grin of almost suicidal abandon.
"Maybe she will, but how about us? You sort of creased the Slot getting us off Torriang. A little closer and—"
"I was still getting the touch. You ought to be glad I'm an instinctive astrogator."
He set the last dial with a rapid twirl and reached for the kissoff switch.
"You're out two decimal points," said Beliakoff, who worried about such trifles. "Enough to ionize us."
"I know, I know," Kelly grumbled, adjusting the dial. "I was just touching it for luck. Here we go!"
He depressed the kissoff switch. Beliakoff shut his eyes as the ship lurched Slotward, wishing that Kyne, their government-inspected, college-graduated astrogator was still aboard. Kyne had been an expert at the job. But then, three planets back, he had suddenly gone after a native stevedore with a micro-edge cleaver, screaming that no dirty alien would ever marry his daughter.
Kyne had no daughter.
Currently he was confined in Azolith, awaiting transportation Earthside, to a padded little homy room in the Spaceman's Snug Port.