"I'm glad, Kim," she said unsteadily, "that I was able to do something important. You always do everything."
"The heck I do," he said. "But anyhow...."
He worked on the tank. She'd sheared it off with a tiny atomic torch and the severed fuel-line had closed of itself, of course. He spliced it into the Starshine's fuel-line, and waited eagerly for the heavy, viscid fluid to reach the catalyzer and then the engines.
"We'll—be all right now?" asked Dona hopefully.
"We were on transmitter-drive for five minutes, at a guess. You know what that means!"
She caught her breath.
"Kim! We're lost!"
"To say that we're lost is a masterpiece of understatement," he said wryly. "At transmitter-speed we could cross the First Galaxy in a ten-thousandth of a second. Which means roughly a hundred thousand light-years in a ten-thousandth of a second. And we traveled for three hundred seconds or thereabouts. What are our chances of finding our way back?"
"Oh, Kim!" she cried softly. "It's unthinkable!"
He watched the meters. Suddenly, the engines caught. For the fraction of a second they ran irregularly. Then all was normal. There was light. There was weight. An indignant roar came from forward.