"Relax, boys, we've still got three hours," she told them. "Radar hasn't spotted the scuttlebug yet. But our new communications officer, Lal, has them on the line. He's apparently convinced them of his honorable intentions and gotten an exact prediction of arrival time. They think Major ... uh, General Elbertson has the situation well in hand. They even think Hot Rod's operational!"
The crew relaxed around the circular room, squatting wherever convenient, and sipping luxuriously at the cups of coffee, munching sandwiches, and for the moment content.
Hot Rod had been secured to the ship with extra acceleration cables, and as soon as practicable a remote-controlled Confusor would be placed aboard to assist in any fast maneuvers that they might have to make; but for now there was no acceleration, and the group composed of the wheel, the big laser, the dump and the pile moved peacefully in orbit under free-fall conditions.
Millie began to hum a soft tune. Someone else brought forth a harmonica that had been smuggled aboard, and suddenly Paul Chernov burst into song, his deep baritone, perhaps inspired by the captain's speech earlier in the day, lending the wailing "The Spaceman's Lament," an extra folk beat:
"The captain spoke of stars and bars
Of far-off places like maybe Mars
But the slipsticks slip on this ship of ours—
And we'll get where I wasn't going!"
Mike looked over at Millie as she drank her coffee, a slender, dark figure—able with a soldering iron; able as a defending panther; able as a spaceman's mate. He was glad the captain of the ship was a proper marrying officer, for he had an idea the feeling he felt was mutual, as he joined with the crew in the chorus:
"There's a sky-trail leading from here to there
And another yonder showing—
But when we get to the end of the run
It'll be where I wasn't going...."