"That's right. Kansas City has the details. It's a very complicated story."

"An hour later the Navy ship Iwo Jima-"

"Also stolen."

"Any connection with the Sea Statue incident at UCLA?"

"Every connection. Look, Chick-»

"I know, get it from Kansas City. Finally…" Chick fumbled among the spools of film on his desk. His voice was suspiciously mild as he said, "Here it is. Your notification that you'll be leaving Topeka on a commandeered Navy ship, the Heinlein; departure: Topeka Base at twenty-one hundred; destination: unknown, probably Neptune; purpose: official business. Garner, I always said it would happen, but I never really believed it."

"I haven't gone senile, Chick. This is urgent."

"Fastest attack of senility I ever heard of. What could possibly be urgent enough to get you into space at your age?"

"It's that urgent."

"You can't explain?"

"No time."

"Suppose I order you not to go."

"I think that would cost lives. Lots of lives. It could also end human civilization."

"Melodramatic."

"It's the literal truth."

"Garner, you're asking me to assume my own ignorance and let you go ahead on your own because you're the only expert on the situation. Right?"

Hesitation. "I guess that's right."

"Fine. I hate making my own decisions. That's why they put me behind a desk. But, Garner, you must know things Kansas City doesn't. Why don't you call me after takeoff? I'll be studying in the meantime."

"In case I kick off? Good idea."

"Don't let it slip your mind, now."

"Sure not."

"And take your vitamins."

Like a feathered arrow the Golden Circle fell away from the sun. The comparison was hackneyed but accurate, for the glant triangular wing was right at the rear of the ship, with the slender shaft of the fusilage projecting deep into the forward apex. The small forward wings had folded into the sides shortly after takeoff. The big fin was a maze of piping. Live steam, heated by the drive, circled through a generator and through the cooling pipes before returning to start the journey again. Most of the power was fed into the fusion shield of the drive tube. The rest fed the life support system.

In one respect the «arrow» simile was inexact. The arrow flew sideways, riding the sun-hot torch which burned its belly.

Kzanol roared his displeasure. The cards had failed again! He swept the neat little array between his clublike hands, tapped them into deck formation, and ripped the deck across. Then, carefully, he got to his feet. The drive developed one terran gravity, and he hadn't quite had time to get used to the extra weight. He sat down at the casino table and dug into the locker underneath. He came out with a new deck, opened it, let the automatic shuffler play with it for a while, then took it out and began to lay it out solitaire style. The floor around him was littered with little pieces of magnetized plastic card. Perhaps he could think up some fitting punishment for the pilot, who had taught him this game.

The pilot and copilot sat motionless in the control room. From time to time the pilot used his hands to change course a trifle. Every fourteen hours or so the copilot would bring Kzanol a bowl of water and then return to her seat. Actinic gas streamed from the belly of the ship, pushing it to ever higher velocities.

It was a beautiful night. Years had passed since Garner last saw the stars; in the — cities they couldn't shine through the smog and the neon glare, and even the American continents were mostly city. Soon he would see them more clearly than he had in half a century. The air was like the breath of Satan. Garner was damp with sweat, and so were Anderson and Neumuth.

"I still say we could do this by ourselves," said Anderson.

"You wouldn't know what to look for," Garner countered. "I've trained myself for this. I've been reading science fiction for decades. Centuries! Neumuth, where are you going?"

Neumuth, the short dark one, had turned and was walking away. "Time to get strapped down," he called back. "Bon voyage!"

"He's going forward, to the cockpit of the booster," said Anderson. "We go up that escalator to the ship itself."

"Oh. I wish I could see it better. It's just one big shadow."

The shadow was a humped shadow, like a paper dart with a big lizard clinging to its back. The paper glider was a ramjet-rocketplane, hydrogen fueled in the ramjet and using the cold liquid hydrogen to make its own liquid oxygen in flight. The slim cylinder clinging to its upper surface was a fusion drive cruiser with some attachments for rescue work. It carried two men.

Using its fusion motor in Earth's atmosphere would have been a capital offense. In taking off from ground eighteen hours earlier, Masney and Kzanol/Greenberg had broken twelve separate local laws, five supranational regulations and a treaty with the Belt.

Another ship roared a god's anger as it took off. Garner blinked at the light. "That was our rendezvous ship," Anderson said matter-of-factly.

Luke was tired of having to ask silly-seeming questions. He wasn't going to like Anderson, he decided. If the kid wanted to tell him why they needed a rendezvous ship, he would.

They had reached the bottom of the escalator. "Meet you at the top," said Garner, reaching into his ashtray. Anderson stared, jolted, as an invalid's travel chair became a flying saucer. An Arm using an illegal flying machine? An Arm?

Anderson rode up the stairs, whistling. This trip might be fun after all.

"Just leave the chair on the escalator platform," he said at the top. "We've made arrangements to have it delivered to the local Struldbrugs' Club. They'll take good care of it. I'll carry you in, sir."

"You get my medikit. I'll walk," said Garner. And he did, wobbling and using his arms freely. He barely reached his gee chair. Anderson found the medikit and followed. He checked Garner's crash web before he used his own.

"Neumuth? Ready," said Anderson, as if into empty air. He continued, "The other ramjet-rocket carried a bundle of solid fuel rockets as big as this ship. They're strap-ons. We don't have any more power than the Golden Circle, and we're a day and a hail behind them, so we use the strap-ons to give us an initial boost. Inefficient, but if it works-"

"— It's good," Garner finished for him. His voice was thickened by the pull of the linear accelerator. For five seconds the soundless pressure lasted, two gravities of pull. Then the rams fired and they were off.

It would take two days of uncomfortable two-gee acceleration to get there first, thought Garner, compressed in his chair. His old bones would take a beating. Already he was missing the gadgets in his own chair. This trip wasn't going to be fun.

Lars was eating a very messy sardine-and-egg sandwich when the buzzer buzzed. He put it down gently, using both hands, so that it wouldn't bounce in the nearly nonexistent gravity. He wiped his hands on his coverall, which he washed frequently, and went to the transceiver.

The maser beam had crossed the void in one instantaneous beep. The radio translated it into sound, then thoughtfully scaled it down against the minute Doppler shift. What came out was the colorless voice of Cutter, duty man at Cures.

"Thank you, Eros, your message received in full. No more emergencies this time, Lam. Topeka Base called us eight hours ago, giving us the time of takeoff and predicted course. According to your report the takeoff was four minutes late, but that's typical. Keep us posted.

"Thank you, Eros, your-"

Lars switched it off and went back to his sandwich. Briefly he wondered if Cutter had noticed that the Navy ship was following the two he had tracked eighteen hours ago. No doubt he had.