Now Eric had Larkin down, was pinning him, felt the man's hands twisting, clawing at his stomach, saw them come away with his gun. They grappled, and Eric cursed himself for forgetting the gun. Larkin held it, laughed, squeezed the trigger as Eric pushed clear.
Then the laughter faded as Larkin stared stupidly at the gun he had not known how to use. Larkin gasped once, held both hands to the growing red stain on his middle.
"Dead," Richardson said later. "They're both dead. You know, I think it's better this way. They would have been trouble. But now—now all we have to do is find the course again, turn the ship around—"
"It'll mean two extra generations in space," Chambers said. "They've been heading back for Earth twenty-five years."
With Eric, he studied the charts, assembled them, punched a few buttons on the computing machine. "Like this," Eric said. He twirled a few dials. "It takes a long time with the overdrive, but we'll be back on course in three years."
For a while he gazed out the port, fascinated by the huge sweep of the Milky Way, clear and beautiful in the black sky. When he turned back and away from it, Laurie stood beside him.
"Hello, Lazarus."
"Very funny," he said. "Call me Taine—better still, call me Eric."
"Eric, then. Hello, Eric."