"Just old enough," promised Dick, "to get your seat warmed if you don't
do what you're told. Remember, you're a sailor on a spaceship now.
Pop's the Skipper, and I'm First Mate. If you don't obey orders, it's
mutiny, and--"
"I'm obeying," said Bobby hastily. He followed his brother down the
corridor, up the ramp, to the bridge. "Can I push the button when we
take off, huh, Dick?"
After his high expectations, it wasn't such a great thrill. Dick set
the stops and dials, told him which button to press. "When I give the
word, kid." Of course, he got to sit in the pilot's bucket-chair, which
was something. Moira and Eleanor and Mom to lie down in acceleration
hammocks while Pop and Dick sat in observation seats. He waited, all
ears and nerves, as the slow seconds sloughed away. Pop set the hypos
running; their faint, dull throb was a magic sound in the silence.
Then there came a signal from outside. Dick's hand rose in
understanding response; fell again. "Now!"
* * * * *
Bobby jabbed the button in frantic haste. Suddenly the silence was
shattered by a thunderous detonation. There was a massive hand pressing
him back into the soft, yielding leather of his chair; the chair
retreated on oiled channels, pneumatic compensators hissing faintly,
absorbing the shock. Across the room a faulty hammock-hinge squeaked
rustily.
Then it was over as quickly as it had begun, and he could breathe
again, and Dick was lurching across the turret on feet that wobbled
queerly because up was down and top was bottom and everything was funny
and mixed up.
Dick cut in the artificial gravs, checked the meter dials with a
hurried glance, smiled.
"Dead on it! Want to check, Skipper?"
But Pop was standing by the observation pane, eyeing an Earth already
ball-like in the vastness of space. Earth, dwindling with each passing
moment. Bobby moved to his side and watched; Moira, too, and Eleanor
and Mom, and even Dick.
Pop touched Mom's hand. He said, "Martha--I'm not sure this is fair to
you and the children. Perhaps it isn't right that I should force my
dream on all of you. The world we have known and loved lies behind us.
Before us lies only uncertainty...."
Mom sort of sniffed and reached for a handkerchief. She turned her back
to Pop for a minute, and when she turned around again her eyes were red
and angry-looking. She said, "_You_ want to go on, don't you, Rob?"