"Ugh! It's hot!" Harold put down the coffee and rummaged in some brown
paper bags. "Should be some glazed doughnuts.... Shoot! Bet I left them
in the kitchen!"
* * * * *
Orville faced him firmly. "You've shown me it'll fly. I believe you. Now
I give you one more chance--take me back!"
"But I can't!" Harold protested.
"There are laws about this sort of thing, my friend. This is abduction.
Kidnapping. You know what the penalty is for that?"
"Well, gee, I didn't mean to take you along, Orville. You hit that
switch--"
"It's criminal negligence, leaving a switch out there like that where it
could be hit by accident!"
"Had to put it there so I could reach up from below and work it."
Orville balled his fists and stood squarely. Funny--it was no trouble at
all, standing and walking around. If he hadn't seen those clouds, and
the landscape sinking away, he'd swear the two of them were still in
Harold's back yard.
"Do you take me back," he said, "or do I have to break every--"
"But I can't!" Harold grasped his wrist pleadingly. "I got her set up in
a sequence. If I tried to change the sequence now, why--" He shuddered.
"I haven't got any idea what might happen!"
Orville sat back down.
"I'm sorry." The weak way Harold said it made Orville feel worse than
ever.
"Me! Trapped up here in this thing with you!" Orville said bitterly.
"You can't even drive a car! You're just about the worst driver I know!"
"I know," Harold admitted. "But this is safer than a car. Besides, out
where we're going, there'll be no traffic problem." He gave his inane
giggle. "Far as I know, there's no one else at all!"
"And the neighborhood back there. Probably all blown to pieces. Polly.
The house. My car! I got complete coverage on it, but who ever heard of
a car wrecked by a spaceship? When we get back, if my insurance doesn't
cover it, I'll sue you!"
"There's nothing hurt at all," Harold said. "Unless someone had his hand
on the ship when we took off. I'd planned to have 'em stand back."
* * * * *
Orville closed his eyes. Something was crossing and crisscrossing inside
him like two rings tossed back and forth by jugglers. It was not
painful, but it was disturbing. Something must be going wrong. He didn't
trust Harold's mechanical ability. In the past ten years, Harold had
been fired from a couple of filling station jobs because of blunders,
once for leaving the plug out of a crank case, and once for botching up
a flat tire repair.
"Running kind of rough, isn't she?" Orville said. "What makes this
little--" He circled his hands sickly in front of his stomach.
Harold closed his eyes and made similar circles. "Oh, that's this
counter-grav of mine. You see, the gravitation of the Earth--"
"Can't you do anything about it?" Orville was in no mood to listen to
one of Harold's lectures.
"I could move her over so we couldn't feel it, but it would be shaking
the ship then. Might tear it apart."
"Won't it tear us apart?"
"I don't think so. We got more give to us than the ship has." Harold was
able to drink the coffee now. "No, I don't think I've done a bad job on
this. First time a machine is built, you're bound to run into a few
bugs. But this is working, so far, even better than I expected."
"Yeah," Orville had to admit, "it ain't bad--for a guy with no
mechanical ability whatever."