Farradyne again ignored the oddness of the sky to examine the small
auxiliary panel fastened to one edge of the main control panel. It
contained a small meter calibrated in arbitrary units of three colors.
The needle stood high, about three-quarter scale, in the middle of
the blue region. Below the meter was the toggle switch, and on either
side of the switch were flat buttons, blue to the right and red to the
left. Behind the panel was a metal box; emerging from the box a cable
no longer than a lead pencil snaked away into the maze of wiring behind
the main equipment.
He considered the thing carefully. Booby traps were unlikely, but
there were destruction-charges used to prevent the capture of secret
equipment.
The destruction triggers usually were protected switches, placed in
such a position and built in such a manner that when the crew wished to
destroy their secret devices, they had to do it deliberately.
So Farradyne eyed the small panel critically and decided that while
there must be some destruction-device included in such a highly secret
piece of gear, it was not on the front panel where it might be pressed
accidentally or in the heat of excitement. He was even certain that not
very much could happen if he tinkered with the switches, so long as he
was in space and a few light years from anything large and hard. It was
also extremely unlikely that any gear of this sort would be easy to
foul-up. The destruction of the gadget in space would leave the ship
and crew marooned in the void between the stars.
He took the cross-bar toggle in his hand and pulled. It resisted his
efforts, and so he tried pushing. It moved down in a wide arc and as
he moved the switch down, the pressure of the drive suddenly caught up
with the seat of his pants and Farradyne was sitting in his pilot's
chair instead of floating above it by a fraction of an inch. He thrust
the toggle all the way down and a full one-gravity of force came on.
Above his head the stars resumed their familiar appearance.
The needle on the meter stayed where it was, at three-quarter scale.
Farradyne chuckled aloud. _He had it now._ One button to start the
equipment for warm-up period; the toggle to control its functioning;
and the other button to cut the gear off when the flight was concluded.
It was as simple as that, and although Farradyne had sat in many a
spaceman's bar and heard arguments as to the possibilities of exotic
operation of alien equipment, he knew that mechanical and electrical
principles are universal and that their exploitation would most likely
lead toward universal simplification.
Then, being practical, Farradyne dropped the subject and began to think
about where he was, where he had come from, and where he was going. He
put his eye to the point-of-drive telescope and caught a small star on
the cross-hairs. This was undoubtedly Sol, considerably tinier than its
appearance from Pluto, but of the right color. A true stellar point, it
was, which meant that he must be light years from it.
He squinted through the point-of-departure periscope and cut the drive
so that the flare would not blind him. Behind was the constellation
of Lyra and on the cross-hairs was another tiny star of no particular
consequence.
He got out his Spaceman's Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the
listings were several semi-dwarfs of the F, G and K classifications and
one of them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol, was located in
the right position, so far as Farradyne could determine--
The sound of a whimper cut into his thoughts, and he remembered the
possibilities of the scene down in the salon. He snapped on the
intercom and listened, wondering whether he could actually sit there
and let Norma go to work on Carolyn. Man's inhumanity to man was a pale
and insignificant affair compared to the animal ferocity of a woman
about to settle up a long-standing account with another woman.
His curiosity got the better of him. He sauntered down the stairs.
Norma stood before the bound Carolyn, her eyes glassy and her
face impersonal. In one hand she held a small bottle of acid from
Farradyne's workshop and in the other hand she held a little pointed
glass-bristle brush. As Farradyne came down the stairs, Norma dipped
the brush in the acid and approached Carolyn, holding the brush as she
would a pencil.