"Distress sig—" Carl stiffened incredulously. "Rex, you're nuts!"
Rex smiled a slow, secret, satisfied smile. "I don't think so. 'Member when we were scouts? 'Member that time we got lost in the Big Neck Valley? We burned green wood and got a smoky fire started and used a blanket to send up a smoky SOS signal. We knew the rest of the troop was somewhere near and would see the signal. They came and got us.
"Well, this is the same thing. We're lost. This solar system never has been discovered, but we both know we're still in the known universe. All around us, maybe no more than fifty or sixty light-days off, are traffic lanes. Passenger ships, freighters. Then there's the SSI. It has ships everywhere. I figure if we send out a distress signal they're bound to see it over the sub-etheric, fifth-order ray detector. They'll see that signal as soon as I get started."
Carl was quiet. He was worried. This was a turn of affairs he hadn't expected. He remembered how fixed Rex's mind was on the subject of escape. Too fixed. Almost fanaticism. He hoped with all his heart Rex wasn't sick. Yet that the kid should kneel there, with that brightness in his eyes, and suggest sending up a distress signal which was to be sent across billions of miles of space—
"All right, Rex," he said gently. "I'm listening. You're to send up a distress signal and attract the attention of a Stellar Survey ship."
A derisive smile grew on Rex's lips. "You're listening," he scoffed. "Liar. You think I'm bats. But I'll show you."
He lay down again and turned his face to the wall and shortly Carl heard his deep breathing. Carl left.
That was in the second year. But another year passed. Carl found himself growing up. He had the shoulders of a man, and he could look back with a whimsical ruefulness on the immaturity which had led him and Rex to run away from home like callow ten-year-olds.
Carl longed for Earth, no less than Rex. Unlike Rex, he subdued the longing, but whenever his lonesome thoughts threatened to engulf him he diverted himself by climbing the thousand feet to the planet's surface. It was on such a voyage that he found the space-ship gone.
Carl and Rex had agreed to leave the ship on an eminence, so that if anybody did come they would see the ship and investigate. But the ship was undeniably gone, and Carl knew Rex had taken it.