“It’ll be close, Captain, awfully close,” Ben answered, and immediately turned back to the network of wiring in the instrument panel.
“Anything I can do, Ben?” Captain Eaton asked.
“Just hope and pray,” was the reply. “I think it’ll be all up to me now. It’s a one-man job getting these wires hooked up.”
“We could take one last look around the ship during this last hour,” Mr. Klecker proposed. “I have some books I want to take along.”
“Sorry, Kleck,” Ben said, “but we won’t have room for them. The flier will be crowded as it is. We won’t be able to take belongings of any kind, not even for survival, except for the emergency supplies the flier itself carries. The weight is that critical.”
“I don’t want a last look,” Gino spoke up. “Otherwise I might not want to leave the good old Carefree, even if she is going to crash.”
“Me either,” Isaac Newton added. “I want to remember her the way she was when all of us were very happy and really carefree.”
“One thing about Patch and me,” Garry put in. “We came aboard without anything but the clothes we’re wearing, and we’ll be leaving the same way.”
“There’s one thing I surely hate to leave behind,” Captain Eaton said. “Katrinka. She’s only a robot, but I’ve had her for so long that she’s almost like a member of the family.”
From now on, every minute was beginning to count desperately. Garry wished he could hold back the hands of the clock. He wished he could give Ben an extra hour. But this could not be.