Part 5
Jack White looked up from his keyboard, "And get the passengers into bed for turnover, too!"
"You take Matt, Doc," said Wyckoff, authoritatively. "Don't make an announcement, just go the rounds and call out engine crew as if it were a piece of routine. Matt, you stand out in the hall and tell them there to report to the boom room presto. When you get 'em all out, Doc, go and tell Tim Daneshaw I'll be down to report in a minute. Jolly 'em up a bit if you can."
Wyckoff himself advanced a couple of steps into the pilot-room. Powell passed him again on his way back to the massive data spitter and said, "Thought we asked you to clear out."
His rudeness seemed not to affect the easy poise of the slim old man. Wyckoff's voice was conciliatory, "I've got to make some sort of report on this beehive to the captain. It's the general impression that we're in the middle of disaster."
Powell roared, "Avery! Who let this out? The passengers are rioting!"
"Not rioting--praying more likely," corrected the man at the door.
"That'll keep 'em out of trouble," Avery flipped back, his pencil moving feverishly across a scratch pad.
Wyckoff called across the clatter of the spitter, now operating with a ferocious din, "What'll we tell 'em, Avery? They've got to know something or there will be a riot or worse. Is there really any danger?"
"There's always danger," Avery was growling again, "when some unmitigated unweaned engineers on an unmentionable planet cook up a foolproof system of astrogation."
He handed the scratch pad to Jack White and waved a hand at A calculator. "Take off these and add them into the firing times. I'll send Wilman and Adams up and put them on the intercom for porthole reports during firing. I'm going with Sam and stop the rush for the life-boats we don't have."
Donning his jak, he arose and kicked his way defiantly through the welter of paper and stamped free of it as he reached the door. He hurried up the corridor to the elevator, eight or ten paces in advance of Wyckoff, and jabbed the button. "Sam my boy," he barked impatiently, waiting for the car, "the worst cause of panic is panic. I've been on the market and I know!"
* * * * *
The elevator door slid shut and Wyckoff repeated his earlier question, "Is it really bad, El?"
"Probably nothing a little prompt action can't fix," Avery replied. "It's going to take two more turnovers, though. You know we haven't any jets in the nose to amount to anything, and we'll have to tack back across our charted course like bats out of you know where. Carruthers will have to whip up a new batch of charts for the sky-watchers, too, but we can still outsmart those idiots on earth and land on Venus _if_ we want to."
"If we _want_ to?" The car stopped and the two got out.
"I said if we want to, and that's what I meant," Avery replied tartly, heading up the Saloon floor corridor. "I'll bet most of us didn't want or expect much more than to cut loose from our old lives and problems; and that's completely accomplished. Most of us just wanted to crawl away and die with some decent measure of privacy. We can do that, too, if we want to."
Through the thin panel of the saloon door the music came, singing weakly at first, then growing, tremulously....
Eternal Father, God of Grace, Whose hand hath set the stars in place,
"We've changed our minds, Elbert," said Samuel Wyckoff.
Who biddst the planets turn and sweep To Thine appointed orbits keep, Oh hear us when to Thee we cry For those in peril in the sky!
A moment's silence through the door. Wyckoff pushed it open for Avery and followed him into the room.
The hundreds of people standing in the room, looking at Captain Daneshaw in the center, did not notice the two until they had almost reached him. Hundreds of breaths, thousands of muscles clenched, they awaited the word. Avery gave one furtive, almost guilty look around at the staring faces; then, his jauntiness returning, he took the last few steps to the captain's side. Tim Daneshaw raised his hand, unnecessarily, for silence. Avery spoke.
"With your assistance, we shall land on Venus on schedule."
A great sigh from hundreds of lips.
Avery continued, "We are off course because of a factor that was overlooked in building the _Colonia_. But there is no reason why we can't meet our new home when she gets there. There is no reason why we can't do a better job than the engineers and Space Commission expected of us." _No_ reason. There were more ways of outsmarting young fools than tying their feet with high tension wire. He gestured at Sam Wyckoff. "Tell 'em what to do next, trouble shooter."
Wyckoff took up, "There will be two more turnovers, the first within a couple of hours, I expect. You've just been through one and know what to do as far as remaining in your cabins with a good supply of solid food in your kits and plenty of packaged water. As Mr. Avery expresses it, we shall have to run to catch up with our course, so there will be acceleration, too. The gravitators will be switched on again immediately after turnover, but, since acceleration may be intermittent the ship may seem bumpy until a constant acceleration has been reached. All of you who are not essential crew or involved with food service or care of animals had better go for rations at once and then strap into your bunks with a sedative and maybe a good book. Food services go hand out ration packs and report back here. Crew members still in the hall meet with Mr. Avery by the stage." He paused for breath. "And before you walk not run to the nearest food hatch," (tension in the Great Saloon was a new thing, alert, responsive), "let's have three rousing cheers for a better man with a calculator than any on earth! Hip! Hip!..."
"Hoo-ray!" Deafening.
"Hip!... Hip!..."
"Hoo-ray!"
The third cheer was a wave of noise that had no beginning but dimmed suddenly when a woman near the captain folded her hands and bowed her head. The crowd followed the example like one being.
Avery, too, bowed his head for a moment, fierce triumph fading from his face; then he strode down the floor to the stage as the throng moved in orderly departure to the doors around the room, a man here and there following him.
Tim Daneshaw grasped Sam Wyckoff's hand with a quick, friendly shake. "_Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be_," he quoted musingly; and both men followed the little line leading the way to Avery and action.