"Oh, that! Well, that was just a little thing I figured out while we were waiting. It seemed stupid to waste fuel back-dragging from a pocket in space. After all, the easiest way out of a pocket is to let yourself be dumped out. I just reversed the gravitational plates, let Earth, which I had reckoned mathematically to be 'above' us, attract us out of the pocket.
"Since there is neither 'up' nor 'down' in space, we merely fell out of the vacuole pocket!"
"It penetrates," said Cap Hanson admiringly. "Yep, it finally penetrates. Well, boys?"
He glanced at us significantly. I knew what he was thinking. Diane and Biggs were showing unmistakable signs of wanting to be alone. But there was one more thing—
"Look, Mr. Biggs," I said. "Your explanation is all right, but it doesn't clear up the matter of direction! The vacuole wasn't traveling on the line of our Venus-Earth trajectory at all. It was shifting to starboard by fifteen points, which is why we were able to intersect it. How come—"
Lancelot Biggs looked faintly surprised.
"Why, Sparks, didn't you guess? That was the thing that made our amazing speed possible. To us, traveling our ten-day route, it looked as if the vacuole were moving to the right of Earth. Actually it was moving directly toward the spot where Earth would be in ten more hours. It was, in a way of speaking, an express-train racing along a short-cut. We hopped the train, and—here we are!"
There was a tiny cough from somewhere under the shelter of his arm. A soft voice said, "Sparks—"
"Yes, Miss Diane?"
"Sparks—would you mind closing the door on the way out, please?" asked Diane Hanson.