He held up a silencing hand to Donnelly. "There's a reason behind all this. Just wait for a moment, please. Just wait and listen—"
It was a fumbling-fingered ten minutes later, after Donnelly had signed off, that Hal Burnett finally found the tiny red plastic box in the little emergency medical kit. Trembling he held it in his hand as he floated in free fall.
It was a little red key—a key to Earth, to life and to the chance to ram every cold, precise, contemptuous word down his father's over-analytical mouth.
He didn't really hate the old man but he knew that he feared him. He feared also that his father might be right about him after all. Who in his own mind, he thought bitterly, should know a son better than that son's own father.
A quick surge of elation swept over him as he swam quickly to the Tele-screen and switched it on. It wasn't a bit like saying good-bye to an old friend, he thought, as he gazed at the flaming prominences not so far below him. After a while he switched the instrument off and swam triumphantly back to his bunk.
There were some tri-dimensional color slides in the ditty bag hanging by his bunk. He took them out and looked at them. None of them were of his father.
The girl was there, though. She was a small, cute girl with a rainbow of laughter wreathed about her. She hadn't been really important before, but she sure was important now that he was going to live. His old man had foretold that, too.
After a little while he put the slides back in the portable holder and broke open the plastic box. It contained a gleaming hypo filled with what looked like a small quantity of water. There was an odd peppermint-like odor about it.
There were no instructions. Just the needle and the little red box.