He watched as they swung her around, stern down, and sank with her through the blackness, toward the bluish-white, moon-lighted arc of Earth a thousand miles below.
He pressed a button. The image of tugs and hull faded and the control room of the old ship swam onto the screen.
Colonel Halter saw the crew, sitting in a half circle, before the control panel.
The telescreen in the control room of old Alpha was yet dark. The faces watching it held no care lines or laugh lines, only a vague expression of kindness. They could be faces of wax or those of people dying pleasantly.
Colonel Halter shook his head. Brilliant—the finest space people in the field seventy-five years back—and now he was to get them to come out of that old hull. God almighty, how could you pull people out of an environment they were perfectly adjusted to? Logic? Force? Reason? Humoring? How could you know?
Talk to them, he told himself. He dreaded it, but the problem had to be faced.
He flipped a switch on his desk; saw light jump into their screen and his own face take shape there; saw their faces on his own screen, set now, like the faces of stone idols.
He turned another dial. The picture swung around so that he was looking into their eyes and they into his.
Halter said, "Captain McClelland?"
One of the old men nodded. "Yes."