Benj made a gesture of impatience.

“I know all that, but there is already a swarm of stations down there, the shadow satellites. Even I know that they all have relay equipment, since they’re all reporting constantly to the computers up here and at any given moment nearly half of them must be behind Dhrawn. Why can’t a controller riding one of these, or a ship at about the same height, tie into their relays and handle landing and lift-off from there? Delay shouldn’t be more than a second or so even from the opposite side of the world.”

“Because,” Ib started to answer, and then fell silent. He remained so for a full two minutes. Benj did not interrupt his thinking; the boy usually had a good idea of when he was ahead.

“There would have to be several minutes of interruption of neutrino data while the relays were being preempted,” Ib said finally.

“Out of the how many years that they’ve been integrating that material?” Benj was not usually sarcastic with either of his parents, but his feelings were once more growing warm. His father nodded silently, conceding the point, and continued to think.

It must have been five minutes later, though Benj would have sworn to a greater number, that the senior Hoffman got suddenly to his feet.

“Come on, son. You’re perfectly right. It will work for an initial space-to-surface landing, and for a surface-to-orbit lift-off, and that’s enough. For surface-to-surface flight even one second is too much control delay, but we can do without that.”

“Sure!” enthused Benj. “Lift off into orbit, get your breath, change the orbit to suit your landing spot. and go back down.”

“That would work, but don’t mention it. For one thing, if we made a habit of it there would be a significant interruption of neutrino data transmission. Besides, I’ve wanted an excuse for this almost ever since I joined this project. Now I have one, and I’m going to use it.”

“An excuse for what?”

“For doing exactly what I think Barlennan has been trying to maneuver us into doing all along: put Mesklinite pilots on the barge. I suppose he wants his own interstellar ship, some time, so that he can start leading the same life among the stars that he used to do on Mesklin’s oceans, but he’ll have to make do with one quantum jump at a time.”

“Is that what you think he’s been up to? Why should he care about having his own space pilots so much? And come to think of it, why wasn’t that a good idea in the first place, if the Mesklinites don’t learn how?”

“It was, and there’s no reason to doubt that they can.”

“Then why wasn’t it done that way all along?”

“I’d rather not lecture on that subject just now. I like to feel as much pride in my species as circumstances allow, and the explanation doesn’t reflect much credit either on man’s rationality or his emotional control.”

“I can guess, then,” replied Benj. “But in that case, what makes you think we can change it now?”

“Because now, at the trifling cost of descending to the same general level of emotional reasoning, we have a handle on some of man’s less generous drives. I’m going down to the planetology lab and filibuster. I’m going to ask those chemists why they don’t know what trapped the Kwembly, and when they say it’s because they don’t have any samples of the mud, I’m going to ask them why they don’t. I’m going to ask them why they’ve been making do with seismic and neutrino-shadow data when they might as well be analyzing mineral samples carted up here from every j spot where a Mesklinite cruiser has stopped for ten minutes. If you prefer not to descend to that level, and would rather work with mankind’s no-bier emotions, you be thinking of all the heart-rending remarks you could make about the horror and cruelty of leaving your friend Beetchermarlf to suffocate slowly on an alien world parsecs from his home. We could use that if we have to take this argument to a higher authority, like the general public. I don’t think we’ll really need to, but right now I’m in no mood to restrict myself to clean fighting and logical argument. he “If Alan Aucoin growls about the cost of operating the barge (I think has too much sense), I’m going to jump on him with both feet. Energy has been practically free ever since we’ve had fusion devices; what costs is personal skill. He’ll have to use Mesklinite crews anyway, so that investment is already made; and by letting the barge drift out here unused he’s wasting its cost. I know there’s a small hole in that logic, but if you point it out in Dr. Aucoin’s hearing I’ll paddle you for the first time since you were seven, and I don’t think the last decade has done too much to my arm. You let Aucoin do his own thinking.”

“You needn’t get annoyed with me, Dad.”

“I’m not. In fact, I’m not as much annoyed as I am scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Of what may happen to Barlennan and his people on what your mother calls ‘that horrible planet.’

“But why? Why now, more than before?”

“Because I’m coming gradually to realize that Barlennan is an intelligent, forceful, thoughtful, ambitious, and reasonably well-educated being, just as my only son was six years ago; and I remember your homemade diving outfit much too well. Come on. We have an astronautics school to get organized, and a student body to collect.”

At two hundred miles, the barge was just visible as a star-like object reflecting Lalande 21185’s feeble light. Benj had watched the vessel as it pulled up to that distance and moved into what its pilot considered a decent station-keeping orbit, but neither he nor the pilot had discussed technical details. It was so handy to be able to hold a conversation without waiting a full minute for the other fellow’s answer that Benj and Beetchermarlf had simply chattered.

These conversations were becoming less and less frequent. Benj was really back at work now and, he suspected, making up for lost time. Beetchermarlf was often too far away on practice flights to talk at all, and even more frequently too occupied to converse with anyone but his instructor.

“Time to turn it over, Beetch,” the boy ended the present exchange as he heard Tebbetts’ whistling from down the shaft. “The taskmaster is on the way.

“I’m ready when he is,” came the reply. “Does he want to use your language or mine this time?”

“He’ll let you know; he didn’t tell me. Here he is,” replied Benj.

The bearded astronomer, however, spoke first to Benj after looking quickly around. The two were drifting weightless in the direct-observation section at the center of the station’s connecting bar, and Tebbetts had taken for granted that the barge and his student would be drifting alongside. All his quick glance caught was the dull ember of a sun in one direction and the dimly lit disc of Dhrawn, little larger than Luna seen from Earth, in the other.

“Where is he, Benj? I thought I heard you talking to him, so I assumed he was close. I hope he isn’t late. He should be solving intercept orbits, even with nomographs instead of high-speed computers, better than that by now.”

“He’s here, sir.” The boy pointed. “Just over two hundred miles away, in a 17.8-minute orbit around the station.”

Tebbetts blinked. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t think this heap of hardware would whip anything around in that time at a distance of two hundred feet, let alone that many miles. He’d have to use power, accelerating straight toward us—”

“He is, sir. About two hundred G’s acceleration. The time is the rotation period of Mesklin, and the acceleration is the gravity value at his home port. He says he hasn’t been so comfortable since he signed up with Barlennan, and wishes there were some way to turn up the sunlight.”

The astronomer smiled slowly.