"You've got to get hafnium! You've got to get fuel! You can't face a battleship!"
"But," said Kim, "battleships have fuel on board and they'll have hafnium too. It'll be risky—but convenient...."
3
Contact!
Actually there was less than a quart of fuel in the Starshine's tanks. Kim knew it ruefully well. It would run the little ship at interplanetary speed for perhaps six hours. On normal overdrive—two hundred light-speeds—it would send her just about one-seventh of a light-year, and star-systems averaged eight light-years apart in both the First and Second Galaxies.
Of course, on transmitter-drive—the practically infinite speed the Starshine alone in history had attained—the ship might circumnavigate the cosmos on a quart of fuel. But merely rising from Terranova would consume one-third of it, and landing on any other planet would take another third.
Actually the little ship was in the position of being able to go almost anywhere, but of having no hope at all of being able to come back.
It rose from Terranova though, just three days after the emergency was made clear. There were a few small gadgets on board—hastily made in the intervening seventy-two hours—but nothing deadly—nothing that could really be termed a weapon.
The Starshine climbed beyond the atmosphere of the Second Galaxy planet. It went on overdrive—at two hundred light-speeds—to a safe distance from Terranova's planetary system. Then it stopped in normal space, not stressed to allow for extra speed.
Kim jockeyed it with infinite care until it was aimed straight at the tiny wisp of nebulous light which was the First Galaxy, unthinkable thousands of light-years away. At long last he was satisfied. He pressed the transmitter-field button—and all space seemed to reel about the ship.