"They probably did," said Burke, "and we didn't answer. See if you can pick up some voices, Keller."
Keller twirled dials and set indicators. Voices burst into speech. "Reporting UFO sighted extreme altitude coördinates—First rocket exhausted fuel in multiple attacks and fell, sir." Another voice, very brisk, "Thirty-second squadron, scramble! Keep top altitude and get under it. If it descends within range, blast it!" Another voice said crisply, "Coördinates three-seven Jacob, one-nine Alfred...."
Keller turned the voices down to mutters because they were useless.
Burke said, "Hell! We ought to land somewhere and check over the ship. Keller, can you give me a microphone and a wavelength somebody will be likely to pick up?"
Keller shrugged and picked up masses of wire. He began to work on an as yet unfinished wiring job. Evidently, the ship was not near enough to completion to be capable of a call to ground. It had taken off with many things not finished. Burke, at the controls, found it possible to think of a number of items that should have been examined exhaustively before the ship left the mould in which it had been made. He worried.
Pam said in a strange voice, "I thought I might rate as a heroine for stowing away on this voyage, but I didn't think we'd have to dodge rockets and fighter planes to get away!"
There was no comment.
"I'm a beginner at navigation," said Burke a little later, more worried than before. "I know we have to go out over the north magnetic pole, but how the hell do I find that?"
Keller beamed. He dropped his wiring job and went to the imposing bank of electronic instruments. He set one, and then another, and then a third. The action, of course, was similar to that of an airline pilot when he tunes in broadcasting stations in different cities. From each, a directional reading can be taken. Where the lines of direction cross, there the transport plane must be. But Keller turned to shortwave transmitters whose transmissions could be picked up in space. Presently, eighty miles high, he wrote a latitude and longitude neatly on a slip of paper, wrote "North magnetic pole 93°W, 71°N, nearly," and after that a course.
"Hm," said Burke. "Thanks."